The Annales School of historiography developed in the first half of the twentieth century in France and is widely influential to the study of history to this day. It focuses on a long-term and comprehensive analysis of historical trends, particularly social and economic history, with a view to finding simple solutions to historical conundrums.

These two historical theories are each predicated on the West viewing the East through the lenses of racism and supposedly inherent Western superiority. Eurocentric interpretations of history give inordinate focus to European events, traditions, and interpretations of society in a global context, and Orientalist works eroticize the East and portray it as backwards and/or exotic.

The ideology of Jacobitism was first and foremost centered on returning the male Stuart line to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. While this touched on issues of religion (all the Stuart pretenders were Catholic and England and Scotland were officially Protestant) and saw its greatest support in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, Jacobitism's only real unifying element was loyalty to the Stuart line.

Absolutism, as exemplified by rulers such as Louis XIV of France, was a movement toward political centralization in Europe. As trade from overseas imperial holdings and expensive, gunpowder dependent-armies grew in importance, they increasingly transferred an edge to the crown in the old feudal struggles. Absolute rulers curbed the rights and privileges granted to smaller feudal nobles, and as a result contributed to the general breakdown of local variation and the rise of nationalism within Europe.

Romanticism, as an literary movement, emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was primarily focused on celebrating human emotions and the qualities of human nature. Early Romantic poets, most notably William Wordsworth, also emphasized a return to the common speech of lower-class people, as opposed to higher-flown "poetic" or courtly language. Romanticism sought to take the emphasis away from logic and scientific inquiry, and focus instead on the natural beauty of humanity and the world.

Slavs were one of the dominant ethnic groups in Eastern and Southern Europe and were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian empire throughout much of the nineteenth century. The rising influence of nationalism in this time period led to the Slavic people campaigning for self-government. Ultimately, however, two competing schools of thought emerged: Austro-Slavism, which sought to have the Slavic people protected by the might of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Pan-Slavism, which sought an independent Slavic state under the protection of the Russian Empire.

The Hegelian Dialectic says that in every time period there is a competing thesis and antithesis, and that these two forces eventually merge to form a “synthesis.” This “synthesis” is then carried forward to the next time period and the process begins again. Karl Marx, in his Communist Manifesto, attempted to apply the Hegelian Dialectic to the struggle between the economic classes in the nineteenth century. For Marx, the competing thesis and antithesis were capitalism and communism.

Existentialism arose originally as an offshoot of the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Existentialism holds that the universe as a whole is meaningless, and that the responsibility rests with the individual for giving meaning to his or her life and the world around him or her. Existentialism was advocated for and popularized by figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus in the mid-twentieth century. Sartre was among the most notable advocates of existentialism as a movement, in part because his works included both creative treatments of the philosophical tennets of the movement (in novels and plays) and academic explanations of these ideas.

The Hegelian Dialectic, developed by German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, states that in every historical time period there is a prevailing thesis and an opposing antithesis that compete for control and that eventually merge to form a “synthesis.” According to Hegel, this “synthesis” is then carried forwards as the dominant “thesis”  (paradigm) of the next time period, where the process repeats itself. The Hegelian Dialectic has been massively influential in the fields of philosophy and cultural criticism.

In the years leading up to World War II, the militarization of Germany in conjunction with Hitler’s expansionist and racist rhetoric caused alarm throughout the nations of Europe. On the other hand, most governments were also heavily opposed to preemptively striking against Hitler and wanted to avoid war at all costs. The policy of appeasement conceded that it was better to give in to Hitler’s simpler demands if it preserved Europe's tenuous peace. The hands-off approach of appeasement led to the annexation of the Sudetenland (a German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia). Neville Chamberlain was the British Prime Minister at the time, and who was among the strongest advocates of the policy. Seeing that appeasement had failed as a policy, Chamberlain resigned his office shortly after the beginning of the war.