Rethinking the History of Europe: Old and New Approaches

Echoing Demosthenes’ berating of his fellow Athenians for their complacency in face of the looming threat from Macedonia, Marc Bloch’s scorching indictment of the failure of his contemporaries to rise to the occasion and rally in favour of alternatives to the growing menace of Nazism continues to resonate with us and to demand, as perhaps no other, our own response to the question of the political responsibility of historians as intellectuals and citizens. In Europe, no less than in France, perilously verging on collapse into that ‘strange defeat’ Bloch sought to come to terms with, it was imperative, he felt,