Acknowledgements

Our list of people who have been wonderfully helpful, punctual and conscientious starts with the editorial team. Alison Jones was an enthusiastic publisher when presented with the idea for this volume back in the Spring of 2004 and she has retained the same level of enthusiasm and commitment ever since. It was a pleasure to work with her and her companion in the Palgrave Macmillan offices, Ruth Lefèvre, with whom we have exchanged literally thousands of e-mails on pleasant and not so pleasant subjects throughout the past few years. We know now how important it is to be able to rely on an able publishing team to embark on this kind of long-term endeavour. This also includes people behind the scenes such as Senior Production Editor Phillipa Davidson-Blake and many others whose names we do not know, despite their vital contribution.

The five associate editors who joined us after the initial phase of the project underscore another fundamental requirement of such a project: the pleasure and usefulness of working with colleagues who want to achieve the same goal, and who provide their knowledge, time, wit and energy to do so. Jane Carruthers, Donna Gabaccia, Rana Mitter, Mariano Plotkin and Patrick Verley made us feel part of a community while the seven of us built up the list of entries, looked for contributors and edited the essays received.

Making a dictionary also involves crucial practical tasks: Brian Morrison was a very effective and diplomatic copy editor, who had the additional challenge of mending the English of two non- native speakers in addition to the usual painstaking attention that is expected of copy editors. Piroska Csùri, Karina Iacono and Rosemary Williams translated several pieces from Spanish or French with grace and accuracy, while Susan Curran elaborated the indexes without which no dictionary can exist. Phil Isenberg, Marie-Françoise Cachin and other, anonymous translators also offered their services to our contributors on specific entries. There are many other contributions that need to be acknowledged here, among which we need to single out the input by Michael Geyer and Marilyn Lake, who should have been associate editors and had to withdraw for personal reasons.

A very important moment in the making of this Dictionary was the inspirational three-day workshop we were able to organize in the Spring of 2005 with the members of the editorial team. This meeting was funded by the Rockefeller Archives Center in North Tarrytown, New York State, where Norine Hochman, Camilla Harris, Kenneth Rose and Darwin Stapleton were perfect hosts and hostesses.

Throughout the process, a large number of colleagues and friends, some we knew and some we have never met, provided advice, warnings, suggestions, comments or support. They are, in alphabetical order, Arturo Almandoz, Dennis Altman, Chris Arup, Douglas Baynton, Volker Berghahn, Stève Bernardin, Thomas Bender, Denis Bocquet, Paul Boyer, John Braithwaite, Judith Brown, John Chalcraft, Juan Cole, Miriam Cooke, Jasmien van Daele, Michèle Dagenais, Shao Dan, Marie-Laure Djelic, Peter Drahos, Ellen Carol DuBois, Timothy Farnham, Olivier Feiertag, Michael Geyer, Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Pascal Griset, Aaron Gillette, Kristin Hoganson, Marta Hanson, Roger Hart, Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur, John Heilbron, Madeleine Herren, Anthony Hopkins, Braj Kachru, James Kloppenberg, Martti Koskenniemi, Joseph Kinner, Jürgen Kocka, Marilyn Lake, Bruce Lawrence, Mark Levene, Walter K. Lew, Sergio Luzzatto, Gregg Mitman, Verónica Montecinos, Joe Nasr, Holger Nehring, David O’Brien, Scott O’Bryan, Johannes Paulmann, Rosalind Petchesky, Gyury Pétéri, Anne Rasmussen, Annelise Riles, Harriet Ritvo, Daniel Rodgers, Emily Rosenberg, Helen Rozwadowski, Leila Rupp, Johan Schot, Christiane Sibille, Kathryn Sklar, Carlotta Sorba, Darwin Stapleton, George Thomas, Charles Tilly, Humphrey Tonkin, Christian Topalov, Ludovic Tournès, Chantal and Eric Verdeil, Kenneth Weisbrode, Blaise Wilfert, Daniel Wilson and Rumi Yasutake. Some of them are also contributors to this volume, and it is to our contributors in general that we feel most obliged. They coped with our nagging, with our extravagant edits and with our demands for punctuality.

Thanks to their labour of love, we have learned so much. Just to write it down at the opening of this volume seems to us an inadequate way to say ‘thank you’ for all they have done for us. The list of their names, a few pages back, is the rollcall of those who have made our project a reality.