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THE NEW OLD WORLD
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism
Lineages of the Absolutist State
Considerations on Western Marxism
Arguments within English Marxism
In the Tracks of Historical Materialism
A Zone of Engagement
English Questions
The Origins of Postmodernity
Spectrum
THE NEW OLD WORLD
PERRY ANDERSON
This paperback edition published by Verso 2011
First published by Verso 2009
© Perry Anderson 2009
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-806-8
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Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in Sweden by ScandBook AB
For Alan Milward
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first versions of the following essays were published in the London Review of Books: ‘Origins’, 4 January and 26 January 1996; ‘Outcomes’, 20 September 2007; ‘France (I)’, 2 September and 23 September 2004; ‘Germany (I)’, 7 January 1999; ‘Italy (I)’, 21 March 2002; ‘Italy (II)’, 26 February and 12 March 2009; ‘Cyprus’, 24 April 2008; ‘Turkey’, 11 September and 25 September 2008. ‘Germany’ (II) was published in New Left Review No. 57, May–June 2009. An earlier version of ‘Theories’ was given as a Max Weber Lecture at the European University Institute in 2007.
I owe many debts in the writing of this book. I would like to thank, for their criticism or advice, my editors at the LRB and NLR, Mary-Kay Wilmers and Susan Watkins; and my friends Sebastian Budgen, Carlo Ginzburg, Serge Halimi, Çağlar Keyder, Peter Loizos, Franco Moretti, Gabriel Piterberg, Nicholas Spice, Alain Supiot, Cihan Tuğal; and in particular Zeynep Turkyilmaz, without whom I could not have written adequately on Turkey.
Unable, by reason of circumstance, to contribute to a volume in honour of Alan Milward, I have dedicated this book to him, though it is so unlike his work. It was his writing, of which I express my admiration in these pages, that first made me want to say something about Europe.
FOREWORD
Europe, as it has become more integrated, has also become more difficult to write about. The Union that now stretches from Limerick to Nicosia has given the continent an encompassing institutional framework of famous complexity, over-arching the nations that compose it, that sets this part of the world off from any other. This structure is so novel, and in many respects so imposing, that the term ‘Europe’,
