Europe: A New History

Published on April 22, 2026 (Episode 451)

Introduction

At the very beginning of his forthcoming book Europe: A New History, my guest Roderick Beaton asks a simple but disarming set of questions: Why a “new” history of Europe? Why might we need one? And what makes this history new?

His answer is not merely about newly discovered facts, or even reinterpretations of old ones. It is about events. “To study history,” he writes, “is to look for patterns to make sense of the things that happen…When things change, when new and unexpected events suddenly reshape the world that we thought we knew around us, the effect is like the turning of a kaleidoscope—the whole pattern changes.” The present does not leave the past untouched. It rearranges it.

So we need a new history of Europe not because the past has changed, but because our vantage point has. “The story told in this book,” Beaton writes, “has been shaped by the changed and changing perspective of the mid-2020s; it could not have been told this way before.” In this conversation, we explore what it means to write history under those conditions—and what Europe looks like when its past is seen anew.

About the Guest

Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature at King’s College London. A distinguished historian of Greece and Europe, he was knighted by King Charles III in 2024 for his services to history. He previously appeared on Historically Thinking to discuss The Greeks: A Global History.

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Past Episodes

• The Greeks

• The Greek Revolution and the Birth of Nationalism

• Prague: The Heart of Europe

• Edges are Interesting: A History of Eastern Europe

• The World the Plague Made

• Civic Bargain

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For Further Investigation

• Roderick Beaton, Europe: A New History (Basic Books, 2026)

• —, The Greeks: A Global History (Basic Books, 2021)

• John Rigby Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (Scribner, 1995)

• Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (Vintage, 2000)

• Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin, 2006)

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Reflection Questions

• What does it mean to say that the present reshapes our understanding of the past?

• Can there ever be a “definitive” history, or are all histories provisional?

• How should historians respond to moments when events seem to reorder the past?

Tags

European History; Historiography; Intellectual History; Modern Europe; Roderick Beaton