The Age of Civil Wars in Europe, c. 1914-1949

Introduction

In the first half of the twentieth century, Europe experienced an unparalleled number of civil wars resulting in millions of deaths. Civil war, as much as inter-state war, was a defining feature of the period for many European societies, from Ireland in the west and Russia in the east, to Finland in the north and Spain and Greece in the south.

Literature Review

Since the 1990s, a rich and increasingly sophisticated body of literature has emerged on individual incidents of civil war, ranging from military studies to social and cultural analyses. However, remarkably little comparative work has been undertaken on civil wars in this period.

Gaps in Research

Even fewer studies have explored the connections between them – be it transfers of people, ideas, or practices – beyond their ideological tropes. This has resulted in a tacit assumption of exceptionalism, whereby each civil war is assumed to have been unique and self-perpetuating without any serious attempt to explain why that was so.

Project Objectives

This project challenges exceptionalist approaches to civil war. While it recognizes that significant differences in causes, forms, and/or aftermaths existed between individual civil wars, it argues that those civil wars can only be fully understood as a phenomenon within a pan-European context.

Methodology

The project will therefore investigate the origins, courses, and legacies of European civil wars through a fully integrated team of scholars with complementary expertise on the Russian, Finnish, Irish, Spanish, and Greek cases.

Expected Outcomes

1. Enable comparison between these different conflicts.
2. Go beyond the nation-centric tendencies of comparative approaches.
3. Arrive at a better understanding of what made the first half of the twentieth century an era of civil wars in Europe.