A People's History of Modern Europe

From the monarchical terror of the Middle Ages to the mangled Europe of the twenty-first century, A People's History of Modern Europe tells the history of the continent through the deeds of those whom mainstream history tries to forget. Europe provided the perfect conditions for a great number of political revolutions from below. The German peasant wars of Thomas Müntzer, the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century, the rise of the industrial worker in England, the turbulent journey of the Russian Soviets, the role of the European working class throughout the Cold War, student protests in 1968 and through to the present day, when we continue to fight to forge an alternative to the barbaric economic system. By focusing on the role of women, trade unions and students, this history sweeps away the tired platitudes of the privileged upon which our current understanding is based, providing an opportunity to see our history differently.

William A. Pelz (1951-2017) was Director of the Institute of Working Class History in Chicago and a Professor of History at Elgin Community College. His works include A People's History of the German Revolution, (Pluto, 2018) Wilhelm Liebknecht and German Social Democracy (Haymarket, 2015), The Eugene V. Debs Reader (Merlin Press, 2014) and A People's History of Modern Europe (Pluto, 2016).