The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not InevitableIn The Lost History of 1914, Jack Beatty examines the First World War and its causes, testing against fresh evidence the long-dominant assumption that it was inevitable. 'Most books set in 1914 map the path leading to war,' Beatty writes, 'this one maps the multiple paths that led away from it.' Radically challenging the standard account of the war's outbreak, Beatty presents the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand not as the catalyst of a war that would have broken out in any event over some other crisis, but rather as 'its all-but unique precipitant'. Chronicling largely forgotten events faced by each of the belligerent countries in the months before the war started in August, Beatty shows how any one of them - a possible military coup in Germany; the threat to Britain of civil war in Ireland; the murder trial of the wife of the likely next premier of France, who sought détente with Germany - might have derailed the arrival of war. Europe's ruling classes, Beatty shows, were so haunted by fear of those below that they mistook democratisation for revolution, and were tempted to 'escape forward' into war to head it off. Beatty's deeply insightful book - as elegantly written as it is thought-provoking and probing - lights a lost world about to blow itself up in what George Kennan called 'the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century'. The Lost History of 1914 is a highly original and challenging work of history. |
Contents
Introduction | |
Saber Rule | |
Sea of Tears | |
Ulster Will Fight | |
The president and the Bandit | |
Franz Ferdinand Lives A Counterfactual | |
The Wages of Imperialism | |
The Victory of the Spade | |
Home Fronts I | |
By the Same Author | |
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A. J. P. Taylor Agadir alliance ally AlsaceLorraine ambassador American April arms army Asquith assassination attack Austria AustriaHungary battle Berlin Bethmann Hollweg Bismarck Britain British cabinet Cambridge University Press Carson chancellor Churchill Churchill’s Clemenceau crisis Curragh Curragh Incident death defeat diplomatic Durnovo emperor Empire Europe European fighting force Foreign Policy Forstner France France’s Francis Joseph Franz Ferdinand French German Germany’s guns Habsburg Henriette Henriette Caillaux historian History home rule Hoover Huerta Imperial Ireland Irish Izvolski Jaurès John Joseph Caillaux Journal July kaiser Katz Kokovtsov Liberals London Madame Caillaux Madero March Memoirs Mexican Revolution Mexico military mobilization monarchy Morocco Nationalist Nicholas officers Pancho Villa Paris party peace peasant political president prime minister Princeton Rasputin Raymond Poincaré Redmond Reichstag Richard Ned Lebow Russia Sarajevo Sazonov Schlieffen Schlieffen Plan Serbia Social Democrats Socialist soldiers Stolypin troops tsar Ulster Veracruz victory Vienna war’s Wilhelm Woodrow Wilson World wrote York Zabern