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Palgrave Macmillan has just published a groundbreaking collective volume that expands and deepens our understanding of one of the most traumatic and complex phenomena of 20th-century Europe: violence during civil wars. Under the title Patterns of Violence Behind the Lines in Europe’s Civil Wars, this book, edited by Francisco J. Leira-Castiñeira (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) and John Sakkas (University of the Aegean), offers a rich comparative perspective on the patterns of violence suffered by civilians during internal conflicts in countries such as Russia, Ireland, France, and Spain.

Most studies on armed conflict tend to focus on the battlefield, on military clashes, and on combatants. This book, however, offers an urgent and alternative perspective: it explores what happens in the rearguard, where the line between civilian and military breaks down, and where violence is often exercised with equal or even greater intensity—frequently out of sight and with no limits.

This volume approaches political violence from a multidimensional perspective, examining both victims and perpetrators. Who exercises violence when the state collapses? What mechanisms justify repression, punishment, or the annihilation of the “other”? What role do gender, political identity, or territorial control play?

The book is structured in two complementary sections:

• The first part analyses how violence was produced and exercised in the rearguard during civil wars. This section investigates the logic behind extrajudicial punishments, looting, denunciations, local purges, and targeted assassinations—forms of violence often absent from official narratives.

• The second part focuses on violence by and against women, a dimension frequently overlooked. Through case studies, it shows how women were not only passive victims, but also participants, informants, or combatants. This approach allows for a critical rethinking of gender-based violence in war contexts.

Patterns of Violence Behind the Lines in Europe’s Civil Wars is not only a book about the past. In today’s world—marked by internal conflicts, state repression, and political polarisation—it offers crucial tools to understand the social and psychological dynamics of civil violence. Its comparative and transnational approach encourages us to view Europe not as a collection of isolated national stories, but as a space shaped by shared experiences — and common traumas.

For scholars of contemporary history, violence studies, political sociology, or gender, this volume offers a powerful combination of empirical depth, analytical clarity, and narrative sensitivity that makes it an essential reference.