The result of extensive collaboration among leading scholars from across Europe, Conceptual History in the European Space represents a landmark intervention in the historiography of concepts. It brings together ambitious thematic studies that combine the pioneering methods of historian Reinhart Koselleck with contemporary insights and debates, each one illuminating a key feature of the European conceptual landscape. With clarifying overviews of such contested theoretical terrain as translatability, spatiality, and center-periphery dynamics, it also provides indispensable contextualization for an era of widespread disenchantment with and misunderstanding of the European project.

Michael Freeden is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and Professorial Research Associate, SOAS, University of London. His main interests are the nature of political thinking, the analysis of ideologies, and the study of liberal thought from the 19th century onwards. His books includeIdeologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach(1996),Liberal Languages (2005),The Political Theory of Political Thinking: The Anatomy of a Practice (2013) andLiberalism: A Very Short Introduction(2015). He is the founding editor of theJournal of Political Ideologies.

List of Figures

Introduction: Conceptual History: Challenges, Conundrums, Complexities
Willibald Steinmetz and Michael Freeden

Chapter 1. Europe at Different Speeds: Asynchronicities and Multiple Times in European Conceptual History
Helge Jordheim

Chapter 2. Multiple Transformations: Temporal Frameworks for a European Conceptual History
Willibald Steinmetz

Chapter 3. Concepts and Debates: Rhetorical Perspectives on Conceptual Change
Kari Palonen

Chapter 4. Conceptual History, Ideology and Language
Michael Freeden

Chapter 5. Transnational Conceptual History, Methodological Nationalism and Europe
Jani Marjanen

Chapter 6. Conceptual History: The Comparative Dimension
Jörn Leonhard

Chapter 7. Concepts, Contests and Contexts: Conceptual History and the Problem of Translatability
László Kontler

Chapter 8. Conceptualizing Spaces within Europe: The Case of Meso-Regions
Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi

Chapter 9. Conceptualizing Modernity in Multi- and Intercultural Spaces: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe
Victor Neumann

Chapter 10. Concepts in a Nordic Periphery
Henrik Stenius

Conclusions: Setting the Agenda for a European Conceptual History
Javier Fernández-Sebastián

Index