Despite the growing interest in general European history, the European dimension is surprisingly absent from the writing of contemporary history. In most countries, the historiography on the 20th century continues to be dominated by national perspectives. Although there is cross-national work on specific topics such as occupation or resistance, transnational conceptions and narratives of contemporary European history have yet to be worked out. This volume focuses on the development of a shared conception of recent European history that will be required as an underpinning for further economic and political integration so as to make lasting cooperation on the old continent possible. It tries to overcome the traditional national framing that ironically persists just at a time when organized efforts to transform Europe from an object of debate to an actual subject have some chance of succeeding in making it into a polity in its own right.

Konrad H. Jarausch is director of the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam and Lurcy Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. His research interest is currently focused on the German unification in 1989/90, the nature of the East German dictatorship and the problem of interpreting 20th-century German history in general. His publications includeThe Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories with Michael Geyer (Princeton 2002) andDie Umkehr: Deutsche Wandlungen 1945-1995 (München 2004).

Acknowledgments
List of Acronymns

Introduction:Contours of a Critical History of Contemporary Europe: A Transnational Agenda
Konrad H. Jarausch and Thomas Lindenberger

Part I: Contested Memories

Chapter 1. History of Memory, Policies of the Past: What For?
Henry Rousso

Chapter 2. Communist Legacies in the New Europe: History, Ethnicity, and the Creation of a Socialist Nation in Romania, 19451989
Dragos Petrescu

Chapter 3. Writing National Histories in Europe: Refl ections on the Pasts, Presents and Futures of a Tradition
Stefan Berger

Chapter 4. Between Europe and the Nation: The Inward Turn of Contemporary Historical Writing
Pieter Lagrou

Part II: Multiple Conflicts

Chapter 5. War and Conflict in Contemporary European History, 19142004
John Horne

Chapter 6. In Search of a Second Historicization: National Socialism in a Transnational Perspective
Kiran Klaus Patel

Chapter 7. The Origins of the Cold War in Eurasia: A Borderland Perspective
Alfred J. Rieber

Part III: Transnational Interactions

Chapter 8. Europe as Leisure Time Communication: Tourism and Transnational Interaction since 1945
Thomas Mergel

Chapter 9. Integration from Below? Migration and European Contemporary History
Karen Schönwälder

Chapter 10. Twentieth-Century Culture, Americanization, and European Audiovisual Space
Marsha Siefert

Chapter 11. Economics of West European Integration? Proving the Benefi ts 19521973
André Steiner

Part IV: Unfinished Political Processes

Chapter 12. A European Civil Society?
Hartmut Kaelble

Chapter 13. International Socialist Attempts at Bridge-Building in the Early Postwar Period
Örjan Appelqvist

Chapter 14. Nation Building in the Era of Integration: The Case of Moldova
Igor Casu

Postscript: The Subject(s) of Europe
Michael Geyer

Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors