The Long 1970s

Today it is widely recognised that the 'long 1970s' was a decisive international transition period during which traditional, collective-oriented socio-economic interest and welfare policies were increasingly replaced by the more individually and neo-liberally oriented value policies of the post-industrial epoch. Seen from a distance of three decades, it is increasingly clear that these socio-economic and socio-cultural processes also found their expression at the level of national and international political power. The contributors to this volume explore these processes of political-cultural realignment and their social impetus in Western Europe and the Euro-Atlantic area in and around the 1970s in the context of three agenda-setting topics of international history of this period: human rights, including the impact of decolonisation; East-West dtente in Europe; and transnational relations and discourses. Going beyond the so-called Americanisation processes of the immediate postwar period, this volume reclaims Europe's place and particularly that of smaller European nations in contemporary Western history, demonstrating Europe's contribution to transatlantic transformation processes in political culture, discourse, and power during this period.