I read tis a fair while ago because I had enjoyed greatly his "The Wages of Destruction" about how Nazi Germany funded it's war. America, says Tooze, was still a local conservative state when asked to take on the role of global hegemon, and lacked the institutions to do so. Well maybe, but it is not enough to unify the book and the result is just a morass of detail, a sort of Downton Abbey of a book meandering on forever.
This democratic framing seems to me bit of a projection because these were times of clear imperium, despite any gestures toward democracy. It's like saying the spirit of Wilsonianism was the main thrust of the war, despite being coherently constructed in its final days. The British empire reached its territorial height after WWI despite being weakened, and the war was essentially a conflict over who would lead the world-system more so than an ideological one. Germany feared a two-front war, not because it was surrounded by democracies, but because it felt was being entrapped within this imperial system and wanted to dominate. But I haven't read the book, so would love to read it sometime.
Tooze begins his narrative midstream in 1916, obviating any need to explain the origins of the First World War. Clearly, no version of that explanation accommodates the view that the Entente were united and moved by their cherished belief in democracy. Lingering French resentment about Alsace-Lorraine, British fright at Germany's naval expansion, and Russian pan-Slavism, form the obvious background to the Anglo-French-Russian alliance - all brought to the boil by febrile inter-imperial competition for a dwindling number of territories.
If we look at what the Entente did during the war and at its conclusion, rather than what they liked to say about themselves, it's not especially inspiring. Murderous sanctions, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a penal peace for Germany, America's ongoing occupation of a number of Latin American countries, the Mandates system. A young E.H. Carr, part of the British delegation at Versailles, was so disgusted by the hypocrisy he witnessed that he was transformed from a committed liberal to one of the century's great anti-liberals.
I read tis a fair while ago because I had enjoyed greatly his "The Wages of Destruction" about how Nazi Germany funded it's war. America, says Tooze, was still a local conservative state when asked to take on the role of global hegemon, and lacked the institutions to do so. Well maybe, but it is not enough to unify the book and the result is just a morass of detail, a sort of Downton Abbey of a book meandering on forever.
This democratic framing seems to me bit of a projection because these were times of clear imperium, despite any gestures toward democracy. It's like saying the spirit of Wilsonianism was the main thrust of the war, despite being coherently constructed in its final days. The British empire reached its territorial height after WWI despite being weakened, and the war was essentially a conflict over who would lead the world-system more so than an ideological one. Germany feared a two-front war, not because it was surrounded by democracies, but because it felt was being entrapped within this imperial system and wanted to dominate. But I haven't read the book, so would love to read it sometime.
Tooze begins his narrative midstream in 1916, obviating any need to explain the origins of the First World War. Clearly, no version of that explanation accommodates the view that the Entente were united and moved by their cherished belief in democracy. Lingering French resentment about Alsace-Lorraine, British fright at Germany's naval expansion, and Russian pan-Slavism, form the obvious background to the Anglo-French-Russian alliance - all brought to the boil by febrile inter-imperial competition for a dwindling number of territories.
If we look at what the Entente did during the war and at its conclusion, rather than what they liked to say about themselves, it's not especially inspiring. Murderous sanctions, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a penal peace for Germany, America's ongoing occupation of a number of Latin American countries, the Mandates system. A young E.H. Carr, part of the British delegation at Versailles, was so disgusted by the hypocrisy he witnessed that he was transformed from a committed liberal to one of the century's great anti-liberals.