The war that ended peace The road to 1914

Margaret MacMillan, 1943-

Book - 2013

Presents a narrative portrait of Europe in the years leading up to World War I that illuminates the political, cultural, and economic factors and contributing personalities that shaped major events.

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Subjects
Published
New York : Random House 2013.
Language
English
Main Author
Margaret MacMillan, 1943- (author)
Edition
First U.S. edition
Physical Description
xxxv, 739 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [651]-706) and index.
ISBN
9781400068555
  • War or peace?
  • Europe in 1900
  • Great Britain and splendid isolation
  • "Woe to the country that has a child for king!" : Wilhelm II and Germany
  • Weltpolitik : Germany's place on the world stage
  • Dreadnought : the Anglo-German naval rivalry
  • Unlikely friends : the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain
  • The bear and the whale : Russia and Great Britain
  • The loyalty of the Nibelungs : the dual alliance of Austria-Hungary and Germany
  • What were they thinking? : hopes, fears, ideas, and unspoken assumptions
  • Dreaming of peace
  • Thinking about war
  • Making the plans
  • The crises start : Germany, France, and Morocco
  • The Bosnian crisis : confrontation. between Russia and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans
  • 1911 : the year of discords : Morocco again
  • The first Balkan Wars
  • Preparing for war or peace : Europe's last months of peace
  • Assassination at Sarajevo
  • The end of the Concert of Europe : Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia
  • turning out the lights : Europe's last week of peace
  • The War.
Review by Choice Review

MacMillan (international history, Oxford), author of the outstanding Paris, 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (CH, Apr'03, 40-4847) about the Treaty of Versailles, has written a serious work about the history of Europe leading up to the outbreak of WW I in 1914. She chooses to view WW I from the perspective of the great power conflict over crises in Morocco, the Balkan wars, the Russo-Japanese War, and, more importantly, the serious naval conflict between Great Britain and Germany. While MacMillan acknowledges that trade issues, colonialism, nationalism, and militarism also caused tensions, she makes clear that the Alliance System of the Entente Powers versus the Central Powers was more imprisoning than helpful in the buildup to war. However, key to the march to war was the recalcitrance of Austria-Hungary to settle the Serbian post-Sarajevo crisis of July 1914 without drawing in Germany; Russia's early mobilization in committed support of Serbia; and the mistaken belief by statesmen in Great Britain and France that Germany would somehow pull back from the brink when faced with Belgian resistance and the prospect of a two-front war. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Historians of the period and students of the history of 20th-century Europe. A. M. Mayer College of Staten Island

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review

Thousands of miles to go? A World War I history (or two) can be an ideal companion. IN MY HOME STATE, California, we listen to audiobooks mostly while driving. When stuck in freeway traffic, I sometimes wonder whether the guy in my rearview mirror is secretly absorbed in "Harry Potter," or if the smiling woman in the next lane is hearing Mr. Darcy woo Elizabeth Bennet. When it comes to immersing yourself in the First World War by audio, however, you'll need more than a short commute. The war was very long, the books about it tend to be very long, and about this cataclysm that so thoroughly changed our world for the worse, surely you don't want to listen to merely one book? So I suggest you reserve this listening for some road trip of epic length, like that drive you've always wanted to take from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, or from Rotterdam to Vladivostok. Here are some suggestions for the journey: Prelude to Catastrophe Start with one or two of the very good books about how this war began. After all, part of the tragedy is that it didn't have to happen. In the early summer of 1914, Europe was happily at peace. No country openly claimed another's territory. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Czar Nicholas II of Russia had been on yachting holidays together. Ties between Germany and Britain were particularly close: Wilhelm had been at the deathbed of his grandmother Queen Victoria; more than 50,000 Germans were working in London or other British cities; and Germany was Britain's largest trading partner. In late June, British cruisers and battleships visited Germany's annual Elbe Regatta, where the Kaiser donned his uniform as an honorary British admiral. When the Royal Navy warships sailed for home, their commander sent a signal to his German counterpart: FRIENDS IN PAST AND FRIENDS FOREVER. And yet weeks later the Continent was in flames, and the slaughter on such a scale that 27,000 French soldiers were killed in a single day. The veteran journalist and military historian Max Hastings describes the day, Aug. 22, in his vivid "Catastrophe 1914": A great mass of French troops were disoriented in a heavy fog, then suddenly found themselves in the sights of German howitzers on a hilltop as the fog cleared. Gallant French charges, spurred on by drums and bugles, were useless in the face of machine-gun fire, and the cavalrymen's horses only made their riders more conspicuous. "The dead lay stacked like folding chairs," Hastings writes, "overlapping each other where they fell." Similar disaster struck colonial troops from Senegal and North Africa, one regiment led by a French officer who had advocated the use of "these primitives, for whom life counts so little and whose young blood flows so ardently, as if eager to be shed." It is hard to imagine a more engrossing panorama of this momentous year, although the audio rendition by the actor and former BBC news reader Simon Vance is slightly too tense and breathless for my taste. In his introduction, Hastings pays generous tribute to someone who covered much the same ground more than 50 years ago, Barbara Tuchman in "The Guns of August." Documents found since then have made Tuchman's diplomatic history slightly dated, but her portrait of foolhardiness and delusion as Europe slipped into war is unsurpassed. What were the Russians thinking, for example, when Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, who had never commanded men in battle, was appointed commander in chief? Considered in the grand duke's favor, however, was his magisterial height of 6 feet 6 inches, with "boots as tall as a horse's belly." The railway cars that housed his headquarters were built for ordinary mortals, and pieces of white paper were pasted over all doors to remind Nikolai to duck. In a later essay about the writing of history, Tuchman named this as her favorite visual detail in the book: "I was so charmed by the white paper fringe that I constructed a whole paragraph describing Russian headquarters at Baranovici in order to slip it in." (The grand duke, incidentally, let it be known that after-dinner conversation among members of the headquarters staff should be on topics not concerned with the war.) Anywhere you look, in these early months of fighting, there was madness in abundance. What were French generals thinking when they sent millions of infantrymen wearing bright red pantaloons, bright blue jackets and bright red caps off to face German snipers? What were the Germans thinking when they outfitted their soldiers with spiked helmets made not of metal but of leather? At a mere 15 CDs, the audio version of Tuchman makes a smaller pile than the 20 discs for Hastings. But it will still get you 19 hours and quite a few hundred miles along that drive. The narrator, Wanda McCaddon - who re- cords under the name Nadia May - is spirited but not melodramatic. Still, as a longtime admirer of Hichman, who was a native New Yorker, I confess that I wanted her reader to have an American accent rather than McCaddon's British one, elegant though it is. Margaret MacMillan's "The War That Ended Peace," with a sonorous but rather slow 32-hour narration by Richard Burnip, covers a longer time period than do Hastings and Tuchman, the entire decade and a half before the conflict began. MacMillan is an old-fashioned historian in the way she puts great stress on personal responsibility - but this is an appropriate perspective, I think, for a time when Europe's three remaining emperors wielded such enormous power. "Any explanation of how the Great War came must balance the great currents of the past with the human beings who bobbed along in them but who sometimes changed the direction of the flow." MacMillan's thumbnail portraits of some of those bobbing in the currents are a delight, and she happens to be the great-granddaughter of one of them, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. WHOSE FAULT WAS THE WAR? There is enough blame for all to share: When leaders confidently ordered their armies to mobilize, neither side foresaw just how catastrophic the carnage would be. After it was over, the victorious Allies of course blamed Germany, exacting big reparations in the Versailles peace settlement. Then from the 1930s onward, revulsion at the war's vast toll led both historians and popular culture to pin responsibility on the Allies as well. Archival finds by the German scholar Fritz Fischer in the 1960s, however, led him to fault German expansionism. In recent years, the pendulum has swung in some new directions. David Fromkin's "Europe's Last Summer" focuses on Austria-Hungary's role (its artillery and Danube gunboats did, after all, fire the war's first shots); Christopher Clark's widely praised "The Sleepwalkers" puts considerable onus on Serbia as a rogue state with irredentist dreams; and Niall Ferguson's "The Pity of War" provocatively blames Britain for entering the conflict, even though it had not been attacked, and thereby turning a Continental war into a worldwide one. (Audio is not a good way to take in Ferguson's book, however, because of its many charts and graphs.) Now Sean McMeekin's "July 1914" points a finger at Russia and its waffling czar, its ambition to control the Bosporus, and its generals who wanted to avenge their humiliating defeat by Japan in 1905. Concentrating on the period before the actual fighting, McMeekin lacks some of the color - and horror - of Hastings and Hichman. The audio narration by Steve Coulter is matter-of-fact and bereft of theatrics, but perhaps that is suitable for a book primarily about diplomatic maneuvering. Armageddon in Full By now, at the midpoint of your drive - Panama? The Urals? - it's time to move beyond 1914 and into the nearly four years of fighting that followed. John Keegan's authoritative "The First World War" is a solid, balanced and reliable account by a man who spent his life writing military history (Keegan died in 2012) and teaching it to officer cadets at Sandhurst, the British equivalent of West Point. The book is enriched by his deep knowledge of wars past. For example, he compares the "novelty" of telephone lines allowing a World War I general to have his headquarters behind the front to Wellington's having to ride in sight of the enemy at Waterloo in order to know what was going on, as well as to the way technology in the Persian Gulf war of 1991 (which Keegan covered for The Daily Telegraph) allowed commanders to orchestrate land, sea and airstrikes from a great distance. Simon Prebble gives "The First World War" a brisk, fast-paced reading. However, the Keegan book I would recommend you listen to first is "The Face of Battle," his study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. These three crucial battles in British history were centuries apart but took place remarkably close to one another, in what today is northern France and Belgium. His evocation of the Somme, in 1916 - a vast bloodletting that was a victory for neither side - is particularly powerful. Surprisingly for someone on the political right who was a hawk about wars in his own time, Keegan is extremely sensitive to class privileges, pointing out that even today we know more about how some British regiments fared at the Somme than others, because those with less wealthy officers could not afford to commission detailed regimental histories. Compared with some of these behemoths, Norman Stone's compact, almost aphoristic "World War One: A Short History" is as a skiff to a battleship; you can almost listen to its some 150 pages of text - Prebble reading again - on a drive to pick up the groceries. But do you really want such a short account of such a long war? A more interesting book of Stone's is "The Eastern Front 1914-1917." No aspect of the war is more haunting than the meeting on these battlefields between the two regimes with double-headed eagles on their coats of arms, Imperial Russia and Austria-Hungary. Russian officers were promoted largely by seniority and connections at court; in Austria-Hungary, three-quarters of the officers were German speakers, but only one in four of the enlisted men, from a bewildering array of ethnic groups, even understood the language. Russia's illiterate peasant soldiers frequently chopped down roadside telegraph poles for cooking fuel. Exasperated signalers then had to send orders by radio, but had few code books, and so broadcast "in the clear" - to the delight of their enemies. Men died by the millions, and in the Carpathian Mountains, wolves gnawed on the bodies of the wounded. This clash of rickety empires epitomizes the senselessness of the war that left behind what Winston Churchill called a "crippled, broken world." That folly should underline a lesson we have painfully learned anew in recent years: Wars are seldom won as quickly as everyone expects, and almost always create far more problems than they solve. CATASTROPHE 1914 Europe Goes to War By Max Hastings Read by Simon Vance Blackstone Audio THE GUNS OF AUGUST By Barbara W. Tuchman Read by Nadia May Blackstone Audio THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE The Road to 1914 By Margaret MacMillan Read by Richard Burnip Random House Audio THE PITY OF WAR Explaining World War I By Niall Ferguson Read by Graeme Malcolm Audible Studios JULY 1914 Countdown to War By Sean McMeekin Read by Steve Coulter Audible Studios THE FIRST WORLD WAR By John Keegan Read by Simon Prebble Random House Audio THE FACE OF BATTLE By John Keegan Read by Simon Vance Blackstone Audio WORLD WAR ONE A Short History By Norman Stone Read by Simon Prebble Audible Studios ADAM HOCHSCHILD'S most recent book is "To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918," available in both print and audio formats.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 5, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review

Anytime something turns 100, the commemorations and look-backs are sure to come rolling in. Take WWI, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of its declaration come summer of 2014. Nevertheless, that war, as with most wars, was a long chain of events that culminated in disaster. MacMillan's charting of those events comprises the bulk of this hefty text. She showcases how numerous royals, politicians, industrialists, colonial advocates, and military minds groped in the dark toward a showdown in which each nation's respective valor could be tested. The trouble with a book like this is that everything can be lent a veneer of inevitability, but history rarely works in such a linear manner. But MacMillan, famous for her scholarship on the peace concluding WWI, avoids this trap. She shows, again and again, that events could have run in any number of different directions. What resulted was a blunder on the part of plenty of blood-stained hands all around that was far from inevitable.--Orbesen, James Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Macmillan, professor of international history at Oxford, follows her Paris 1919 with another richly textured narrative about WWI, this time addressing the war's build-up. She asks, "What made 1914 different?" and wonders why Europe "walk[ed] over the cliff" given the continent's relatively longstanding peace. She begins by addressing Germany's misfortune in having "a child for King"; Wilhelm II sought to secure Germany's-and his own-world power status by inaugurating a naval race with Britain. Britain responded by making "unlikely friends" with France and Russia. Germany in turn cultivated relations with a near-moribund Austria-Hungary. Macmillan tells this familiar story with panache. A major contribution, however, is her presentation of its subtext, as Europe's claims to be the world's most advanced civilization "were being challenged from without and undermined from within." Exertions for peace were overshadowed by acceptance of war as "a tool that could be used" against enemies made increasingly threatening by alliance systems. The nations' war plans shared a "deeply rooted faith in the offensive" and a near-irrational belief in the possibility of a short war. Macmillan eloquently shows that "turning out the lights" was not inevitable, but a consequence of years of decisions and reactions: a slow-motion train wreck few wanted but none could avoid. Agent: Christy Fletcher, C. Fletcher & Company LLC. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

The question of the causes of the Great War has occupied historians for decades and promises to continue to intrigue. MacMillan (history, Univ. of Toronto), prize winner for Paris 1919, reviews the dynamic tensions in Europe prior to 1914. She reminds readers that the leaders of several European nations were dealing with such issues as fears of revolution at home and abroad while maneuvering for an advantage in the military sphere. The series of crises in the Balkans may have convinced political and military minds that any impending conflict would be of short duration. So, as MacMillan notes, the war was perceived as one that would have almost a cleansing effect on the European world. It turned out much differently. This book adds to a growing corpus exploring the war's roots, including Michael S. Neiberg's Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I, Frank C. Zagare's The Games of July: Explaining the Great War, and William Mulligan's The Origins of the First World War. MacMillan, who edited Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 for the Library of America, writes in a style reminiscent of Tuchman. VERDICT This is a first-rate study, necessary for all World War I collections. Highly recommended.-Ed Goedeken, (EG) Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Award-winning academic MacMillan (International History/Oxford Univ.; Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History, 2009, etc.) takes on the origins of World War I. Rather than allocating blame for the war or asking why it came about, the author asks instead, "[W]hy did the long peace not continue?...One way of getting at an answer is to see how Europe's options had narrowed down in the decades before 1914." She begins with the confident Europe celebrated in the Paris Exposition of 1900 and shows how national rivalries gradually eroded the comity of nations to the point where a brilliant civilization chose to tear itself to pieces. Inflexible military planning; "defensive" pacts that appeared offensive to rivals; national fears, honor and prestige; the characters and capabilities of national leaders; consideration of war as a means of suppressing internal divisions; and, finally, "mistakes, muddle or simply poor timing" all played a part in steering Europe from considering a general war unthinkable to considering it inevitable. Not everyone agreed; MacMillan turns periodically, if too briefly, to the peace movements led by Alfred Nobel, Bertha von Suttner and the Socialist International, but in the end, nationalism overwhelmed these altruistic impulses. There is much emphasis on the great men of the time, the bombastic and erratic kaiser and other leaders of the great powers, whose well-described personalities, prejudices and temperaments affected events in a way that is difficult to imagine today. Exhaustive in its coverage of diplomatic maneuvering and the internal political considerations of the various nations, the book includes comprehensive discussions of such motivating issues as Germany's fears of being surrounded, Austria-Hungary's fears of falling apart and Russia's humiliation after losing a war with Japan. The author's presentation is so thorough that it is often easy to lose sight of her theme. While MacMillan's prose is mostly lively, it lacks a narrative flair that could help carry readers through this monumental work.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Chapter 1 Europe in 1900 On April 14, 1900, Emile Loubet, the President of France, talked approvingly about justice and human kindness as he opened the Paris Universal Exposition. There was little kindness to be found in the press comments at the time. The exhibitions were not ready; the site was a dusty mess of building works; and almost everyone hated the giant statue over the entrance of a woman modeled on the actress Sarah Bernhardt and dressed in a fashionable evening dress. Yet the Exposition went on to be a triumph, with over 50 million visitors. In style and content the Exposition partly celebrated the glories of the past and each nation displayed its national treasures--whether paintings, sculptures, rare books or scrolls--and its national activities. So where the Canadian pavilion had piles of furs, the Finnish showed lots of wood, and the Portuguese decorated their pavilion with ornamental fish. Many of the European pavilions mimicked great Gothic or Renaissance buildings, although little Switzerland built a chalet. The Chinese copied a part of the Forbidden City in Beijing and Siam (today Thailand) put up a pagoda. The Ottoman Empire, that dwindling but still great state which stretched from the Balkans in southern Europe through Turkey to the Arab Middle East, chose a pavilion which was a jumble of styles, much like its own peoples who included Christians, Muslims and Jews and many different ethnicities. With colored tiles and bricks, arches, towers, Gothic windows, elements of mosques, of the Grand Bazaar from Constantinople (now Istanbul), it was fitting that the overall result still somehow resembled the Hagia Sophia, once a great Christian church that became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest. Germany's pavilion was surmounted by a statue of a herald blowing a trumpet, suitable, perhaps, for the newest of the great European powers. Inside was an exact reproduction of Frederick the Great's library; tactfully the Germans did not focus on his military victories, many of them over France. The western facade hinted, though, at a new rivalry, the one which was developing between Germany and the world's greatest naval power, Great Britain: a panel showed a stormy sea with sirens calling and had a motto rumored to be written by Germany's ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, himself: "Fortune's star invites the courageous man to pull up the anchor and throw himself into the conquest of the waves." Elsewhere at the Exposition were reminders of the rapidly burgeoning power of a country that had only come into existence in 1871; the Palace of Electricity contained a giant crane from Germany which could lift 25,000 kilos. Austria-Hungary, Germany's closest friend in Europe, had two separate pavilions, one for each half of what had come to be known as the Dual Monarchy. The Austrian one was a triumph of Art Nouveau, the new style which had been catching on in Europe. Marble cherubs and dolphins played around its fountains, giant statues held up its staircases and every inch of its walls appeared to be covered by gold leaf, precious stones, happy or sad masks, or garlands. A grand reception room was set aside for members of the Habsburg family which had presided for centuries over the great empire stretching from the center of Europe down to the Alps and Adriatic, and the exhibits showed off the work of Poles, Czechs, and South Slavs from the Dalmatian coast, only some of the Dual Monarchy's many peoples. Next to the Austrian pavilion and separating it from that of Hungary stood a smaller one, representing the little province of Bosnia, still technically part of the Ottoman Empire but administered since 1878 from Vienna. The Bosnian pavilion, with its lovely decorations by craftsmen from its capital of Sarajevo, looked, said the guide published by Hachette, like a young girl being brought out into the world for the first time by her parents.1 (And they were not particularly happy ones at that.) The mood of the Hungarian pavilion was strongly nationalistic. (Austrian critics said sourly that the folk art on display was vulgar and its colors too bright.) The exhibits also included a reconstruction of the great citadel of Comorn (Komáron) in the north which stood in the way of the Ottomans in the sixteenth century as they stretched northwards into Europe. Much more recently, in 1848, it had been held by Hungarian nationalists in the revolt against the Habsburgs but had fallen to Austrian forces in 1849. Another room was dedicated to the Hussars, famous for their bravery in the wars against the Ottomans. The exhibits paid less attention though to the millions of non-Hungarian peoples, Croatians or Rumanians, for example, who lived within Hungary's borders. Italy, like Germany a new country and a great power more by courtesy than in reality, had built what looked like a vast, richly decorated cathedral. On its golden dome stood a giant eagle, its wings outstretched in triumph. Inside it was filled with art from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but the glories of the past could weigh heavily on a poor young country. Britain, by contrast, chose to be low key even though it still dominated much of the world's trade and manufacturing and had the world's biggest navy and largest empire. Its exhibit was housed in a cozy country house designed by rising young architect Edwin Lutyens in the half-timbered Tudor style and consisted mainly of English paintings from the eighteenth century. Some private British owners had refused to lend their works because Britain's relations with France, traditionally difficult, were particularly strained in 1900.2 Russia had pride of place at the Exposition as France's favored ally. The Russian exhibits were huge and scattered in several different locations, ranging from a massive palace in the style of the Kremlin dedicated to Siberia to a richly decorated pavilion named in honor of the Tsar's mother, Empress Marie. Visitors could admire, among much else, a map of France made in precious stones which the Tsar, Nicholas II, had sent as a present to the French and marvel at the sheer extent of the Romanovs' possessions. The French themselves did not have their own pavilion; the whole Exposition was after all designed to be a monument to French civilization, French power, French industry and agriculture, and French colonies, and room after room in the different special exhibits was devoted to French achievements. The French section of the Palais des Beaux-Arts was, said the guide, naturally a model of good taste and luxury. The Exposition marked the reassertion by France that it was still a great power, even though only thirty years previously it had been utterly defeated as it had tried to prevent Germany coming into existence. The Universal Exposition was nevertheless, the French declared, a "symbol of harmony and peace" for all of humanity. Although the more than forty countries exhibiting in Paris were mainly European, the United States, China, and several Latin American countries also had pavilions. As a reminder though of where power still lay, a large part of the Exposition was given over to colonies where the European powers showed off their possessions. The crowds could marvel at exotic plants and beasts, walk by replicas of African villages, watch craftsmen from French Indochina at their work, or shop in North African souks. "Supple dancing girls," said an American observer severely, "perform the worst forms of bodily contortions known to the followers of Terpsichore."3 Visitors came away with a comfortable assurance that their civilization was superior and that its benefits were being spread around the globe. The Exposition seemed a suitable way to mark the end of a century which had started with revolutions and wars but which now stood for progress, peace and prosperity. Europe had not been entirely free of wars in the nineteenth century but they had been nothing to compare with the long struggles of the eighteenth century or the wars of the French Revolution and later those of Napoleon which had drawn in almost every European power. The wars of the nineteenth century had generally been short--like the one between Prussia and the Austrian Empire which had lasted for seven weeks--or colonial wars fought far from European soil. (The Europeans should have paid more attention to the American Civil War which not only lasted for four years but which gave an early warning that modern technology and the humble barbed wire and spades were shifting the advantage in war to the defense.) While the Crimean War in the middle of the century had involved four European powers, it was the exception. In the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian, or the Russo-Turkish the other powers had wisely stayed out of the conflict and had done what they could to build peace again. In certain circumstances war was still seen as a reasonable choice for nations if they could see no other way to obtain their goals. Prussia was not prepared to share control of the German states with Austria and Austria was determined not to concede. The war that followed settled the issue in Prussia's favor. Resorting to war was costly but not excessively so. Wars were limited both in time and in their scope. Professional armies fought each other and damage to civilians and to property was minimal, certainly in light of what was to come. It was still possible to attack and win decisive victories. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, though, like the American Civil War, hinted that armed conflict was changing: with conscription, armies were bigger, and better and more accurate weapons and increased firepower meant that the forces of the Prussians and their German allies suffered large casualties in the opening attacks on the French. And the surrender of the French army at Sedan did not end the fighting. Instead the French people, or large sections of it, chose to fight on in a people's war. Yet even that had finally ended. France and the new Germany had made peace and their relations had gradually mended. In 1900 the Berlin business community sent a message for the opening of the Exposition to the Paris Chamber of Commerce, wishing success to "this great undertaking, which is destined to bring the civilized nations of the world nearer to one another in the labours common to them all."4 The large numbers of German visitors who were expected to go to Paris would, so many in Germany hoped, help to build better relations between the peoples of their two countries. All the peoples of the earth have worked on the Exposition, said the special Hachette guide: "they have accumulated their marvels and their treasures for us to reveal unknown arts, overlooked discoveries and to compete with us in a peaceful way where Progress will not slacken in her conquests." The themes of progress and the future ran throughout the Exposition, from the new moving pavements to the cinema in the round. At one of the pavilions, the Château d'Eau, with its cascading waterfalls, shooting fountains, and colored lights playing on the waters, the centerpiece in a giant basin was an allegorical group which represented Humanity led by Progress advancing towards the Future and overthrowing the rather odd couple of Routine and Hatred. The Exposition was a showcase for individual countries but it was also a monument to the most recent extraordinary achievements of Western civilization, in industry, commerce, science, technology, and the arts. You could see the new X-ray machines or be overwhelmed, as Henry James was, by the Hall of Dynamos, but the most exciting discovery of all was electricity. The Italian Futurist artist Giacomo Balla later called his daughters Luce and Elettricità in memory of what he saw at the Paris Exposition. (A third daughter was Elica--Propellor--after the modern machinery he also admired.) Camille Saint-Saëns wrote a special cantata in praise of electricity for the Exposition: Le Feu céleste with orchestra, soloists and choir was performed at a free concert. The Palace of Electricity was ablaze with 5,000 light bulbs and high on the summit of its roof stood the Fairy of Electricity in her chariot drawn by a horse and dragon. And there were dozens more palaces and pavilions devoted to the important activities of modern society, among them machinery, mining and metallurgy, chemical industries, public transportation, hygiene, and agriculture. There was still more, much more. The second modern Olympic Games took place nearby in the Bois de Boulogne as part of the Exposition. Sports included fencing (where the French did very well), tennis (a British triumph), athletics (American dominated), cycling and croquet. At the Exposition Annexe in Vincennes you could examine the new motorcars and watch balloon races. Raoul Grimoin-Sanson, one of the earliest film directors, went up in his own balloon to film the Exposition from above. As the Hachette guide said, the Exposition was "the magnificent result, the extraordinary culmination of the whole century--the most fertile in discoveries, the most prodigious in sciences, which has revolutionized the economic order of the Universe." In light of what was to come in the twentieth century such boasting and such complacency seem pitiful to us, but in 1900 Europeans had good reason to feel pleased with the recent past and confident about the future. The thirty years since 1870 had brought an explosion in production and wealth and a transformation in society and the way people lived. Thanks to better and cheaper food, improvements in hygiene, and dramatic advances in medicine, Europeans were living longer and healthier lives. Although Europe's population went up by perhaps as much as 100 million to a total of 400 million, it was able to absorb the growth thanks to increased output in its own industry and agriculture and imports from around the world. (And emigration acted as a safety valve to avoid an even more dramatic increase--some 25 million Europeans left in the last two decades of the century for new opportunities in the United States alone and millions more went to Australia or Canada or Argentina.) Europe's cities and towns grew as people moved from the countryside in increasing numbers in search of better opportunities in factories, shops and offices. On the eve of the French Revolution in 1789, Paris had some 600,000 inhabitants; by the time of the Exposition, 4 million. Budapest, the capital of Hungary, showed the most dramatic increase: in 1867 it had 280,000 inhabitants and by the time of the Great War, 933,000. As the numbers of Europeans making a living from agriculture went down, the industrial working classes and the middle classes grew. Workers organized themselves into unions, which were legal in most countries by the end of the century; in France the number of workers in unions went up fivefold in the fifteen years before 1900 and was to reach 1 million just before the Great War. In recognition of the increasing importance of the class, the Exposition had exhibits of model houses for workers and organizations for their moral and intellectual development. Excerpted from The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.