A History of the University in Europe Vol. III: Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945)

A History of the University in Europe. Vol. III: Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945). Edited by WALTER RÜEGG (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2004; pp. xxvi + 746. £90). IN 1982 the Conference of European University Rectors commissioned a four-volume history of European universities, with the idea that putting the history of universities in its social context would illuminate contemporary problems. The medieval and early modern volumes appeared in 1992 and 1996; this third volume covers a shorter period, but one in which the character of the modern research university was formed. The book's long gestation is reflected in its authorship: the contributors are mainly drawn from the generation which pioneered scholarly university history in the 1970s and 1980s, and only three of the sixteen were born later than 1945; some of the chapters appear to have been submitted some time ago, one of them...