Julián Casanova's work, a professor and chair of Contemporary History at the University of Zaragoza, Indomitable Violence. The European Twentieth Century, turns out to be an extremely comprehensive synthesis of the entire twentieth-century Europe structured around a very clear guiding thread: extreme uncontrolled violence, which is directly mentioned in its title. In line with the didactic function of the historian, as alluded to by Julián Casanova himself in the Spanish prologue of his work Spain Divided in Two: A Brief History of the Spanish Civil War, it maintains an accessible prose that allows for a holistic view of the " kaleidoscopic" violences that traversed twentieth-century Europe.
The book begins with the bounce effect of colonial violence, which ends up manifesting itself on the European continent with World War I and reaches the violence of the Yugoslav wars at the end of the twentieth century, culminating in an epilogue that reflects on the memory of traumatic and violent pasts. This structure allows the author to synthesize the paths worked by recent historiography successfully. Along these lines, it is clear the influence of historian Mark Mazower's 1998 work: Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, whose guiding thread structured around violence and its diverse and integral approach are similar. However, this book differs from the great synthesis effort that Professor Casanova achieves to reach a non-specialized audience due to its greater page length.
To the guiding thread of the violence that ran through twentieth-century Europe, different types of violences adhere with diverse motivations. Among them stand out class-based violence, which remains an important conditioning factor for understanding the logics arising from the Soviet revolution and the reaction to it, which does not conclude until the end of the Cold War; ethnic-national violence, whose origins date back to nineteenth-century colonial violences and intensify with the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, as well as with ethnic cleansings emerging from new nation-states born out of world wars and that resurface at the end of the twentieth century with the disintegration of Yugoslavia and some post-Soviet states; and gender-based violence, with specific manifestations about women reaching the Yugoslav wars at the end of the twentieth century, linking also the brutalization of gender-crossed violence to fascist ideology that identifies the "red and Jewish" woman as principal enemy.
With these continuities, historian Julián Casanova nuances the separation between a first half of the twentieth century ravaged by war violence, which has come to be called the "European civil war" 1914/17-1945 or for Casanova himself "Europe against Europe," versus an era marked by peace. This question is questioned during the development of the Cold War and taking as a guiding thread violence in its most varied forms, this work allows us to understand the continuities of violence on which Europe has been built throughout the twentieth century. It can be seen how the analysis centered on the continuity of violence transforms it after 1945: in Eastern Europe with dictatorships aligned with the Soviet regime until their dissolution at the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s; in Southern European dictatorships in Spain, Portugal, and Greece that ended in the mid-70s; and even in democratic states before processes of decolonization such as with the Algerian war and its consideration as an extension of the French state, the development of Cold War proxy wars, and the persistence of terrorist organizations.
One of the greatest strengths of this work is therefore its great capacity for synthesis to place various episodes of violence in a broader context, examining their interconnections and differences in how they manifested themselves throughout the twentieth century in different parts of Europe. This becomes evident with the qualitative leaps that world wars represented in the forms taken by violences continuing after them. It favors academically rigorous progress in historical knowledge while at the same time maintaining the social role of the historian in his didactic-dissemination facet with an accessible narrative.
In relation to this, Casanova synthesizes the history of the three Yugoslav states that were built throughout the twentieth century, linking most of the violences analyzed throughout the book, which reappear forcefully with the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 90s. The disintegration of socialist regimes, the rise of irredentist nationalisms and their link to nation-states for the benefit of Serbian and Croatian elites, and the intensification of violence against Muslim women, integrate a good part of European violences that had previously manifested themselves. This counters the Western perspective on the awakening of "ancient Balkan hatreds" at the end of the century, taking Mark Mazower as reference, historian specializing in the Balkans.
Finally, the author, amidst a present society filled with conflicting cross-memories, offers reflections on the broader implications of violence in politics, culture, and collective memory. Julián Casanova examines how these violent episodes have influenced the formation of new national identities, memory policies, and historical revisionisms that complicate the historian's work, who may be relegated to the level of unverified political opinion. Nonetheless, this should serve for historians, recognizing modestly the truths they can contribute, to continue disseminating rigorously before a broader audience willing to approach the complexity of twentieth-century violence.
Bibliography
Casanova, J. (2013). Spain Divided in Two: A Brief History of the Spanish Civil War. Critica.
Casanova, J. (2020). Indomitable Violence: The European Twentieth Century. Critica.
Mazower, M. (1998). Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century. Allen Lane.
Comments