The beginning of the 20th century saw a reinterpretation of the concept of the accident. While accidents had traditionally been considered as inevitable, modern societies debated about their management and prevention. The emergence of the modern state led to an unprecedented capability to deal with accidents. The state formed institutions, practices and legal concepts that considerably changed everyday life. The contributions in this volume explore social, cultural, political, administrative and medical responses to accidents in modern states. The case studies include British, French, German, Italian, Chinese and Chilean experiences and thus provide different national perspectives on the governance of risks.

Peter Itzen (Dr. phil.), born 1975, is a historian and teaches at the University of Freiburg and at the Birklehof, a boarding school in the Black Forest. Hitherto, he has been principal investigator at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies. His main research topics are the history of religion in the 20th century, modern British history and the social history of risks in the 19th and 20th century. Birgit Metzger has a degree in cultural studies and completed her PhD with a thesis on forest dieback as a political issue in West Germany in the 1980s. She worked as a lecturer in contemporary European history at the Saarland University and is currently a postdoc at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study. Anne Rasmussen is a professor of the history of science at the University of Strasbourg and a member of the research unit SAGE (Societies, Actors and Government in Europe) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. She is a fellow in the joint research programme of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study. She is also a member of the steering committee of the international research centre at the Historial of the Great War in Péronne, France. Her research interests centre on the social and cultural history of biomedical sciences and health in the 19th and 20th century and her current project explores the links between World War I, medicine and public health. She is member of Steering Committee, International research center, Historial de la Grande Guerre (Museum of the Great War)