The history of Europe cannot be written without taking into account both the Islamic presence on the soil of Europe from the Arab invasion of Spain in 711 onwards, and the impact of that contact with Islam on the attitudes of the inhabitants of those countries not invaded by the Muslims. This paper seeks to challenge the view that the history of medieval Europe (and by extension more recent history, in areas under or close to Ottoman rule) can be written solely as the rise of the Christian west: the intermingling of Jews, Christians and Muslims on European soil proved very fertile. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

For almost 600 years Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in the Ottoman Empire. Certainly, even before the region fell victim to nationalism, the Ottoman Empire did not live in an atmosphere of pure and undisturbed harmony. But Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together for centuries without experiencing conflict as the predominant factor of their existence. The status and fate of the individual religious groups living in the Ottoman Empire has been the object of nationalistic interpretation of the past. Much less has been thought and written about the functioning of such a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state. This paper will try to rectify that. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The historiography of Islam is complex and the relationship between doctrine and behaviour is largely governed by this complexity. This is discussed in relation to some of the geographical variants in Islamic activity. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We are living in a period of great changes in public attitudes, particularly in Eastern Europe. These changes affect our mental attitudes, employment patterns and economic prospects. These and other aspects of modern life are reviewed. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Can governments trust the universities to be ‘market responsive’? What changes in the relationship between government and higher education are emerging in Europe? In what way do they differ from the assumptions which until recently underpinned similar policy in Britain? Different political values lead to different arrangements. This article examines some of the contemporary issues posed by strengthening of mechanisms of accountability and the implications their reinforcement has for participation in institutional decision making. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper gives an anthropological comment on what has been called the ‘audit explosion’, the proliferation of procedures for evaluating performance. In higher education the subject of audit (in this sense) is not so much the education of the students as the institutional provision for their education. British universities, as institutions, are increasingly subject to national scrutiny for teaching, research and administrative competence. In the wake of this scrutiny comes a new cultural apparatus of expectations and technologies. While the metaphor of financial auditing points to the important values of accountability, audit does more than monitor—it has a life of its own that jeopardizes the life it audits. The runaway character of assessment practices is analysed in terms of cultural practice. Higher education is intimately bound up with the origins of such practices, and is not just the latter day target of them. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The European economic space has evolved from several previous arrangements and has now expanded to include social, cultural and political dimensions. This is a service to the people of Europe and engenders international stability, but do the people want it? © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.