The Wars before the Great War: Conflict and International Politics before the Outbreak of the First World War

Description

Between 1911 and 1914, the conflicts between Italy and the Ottoman Empire, together with the Balkan wars that followed, transformed European politics. With contributions from leading, international historians, this volume offers a comprehensive account of the wars before the Great War and surveys the impact of these conflicts on European diplomacy, military planning, popular opinion and their role in undermining international stability in the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. Placing these conflicts at the centre of European history, the authors provide fresh insights on the origins of World War I, emphasizing the importance of developments on the European periphery in driving change across the continent. Nation and empire, great powers and small states, Christian and Muslim, violent and peaceful, civilized and barbaric - the book evaluates core issues which defined European politics to show how they were encapsulated in the wars before the Great War.

Dominik Geppert is Professor of Modern History at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn. His main fields of research are international history and intellectual history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as British and German contemporary history. He is the author of Pressekriege. OEffentlichkeit und Diplomatie in den deutsch-britischen Beziehungen, 1896-1912 (2007). His most recent book, Ein Europa, das es nicht gibt. Die fatale Sprengkraft des Euro (2013), puts the current European crisis in historical perspective. William Mulligan is senior lecturer in history at University College Dublin. He previously taught at the University of Glasgow and has held fellowships at Institutes of Advanced Study in Princeton and Berlin. He is the author of The Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, 2010) and The Great War for Peace (2014). Andreas Rose teaches Modern History at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn. His work focuses on international history, naval as well as military history and the history of ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is author of Zwischen Empire und Kontinent. Britische Aussenpolitik vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (2011), Deutsche Aussenpolitik in der AEra Bismarck (2013) and Die Aussenpolitik des wilhelminischen Kaiserreichs (2013). He is currently working on liberal-conservatism in the 1970s and 1980s.

'Each chapter provides detailed footnotes and is very clearly organized and written (goals stated, assumptions outlined, and conclusions reached). Such clarity makes this book ideal for undergraduate history students ... Highly recommended.' Choice 'These essays will prove valuable reading for the serious student of the Great War and European military and diplomatic institutions in the early twentieth century.' NYMAS Review '... the range of historical scholarship, presented with a consistence of clarity and quality rarely seen in edited volumes of this length, distinguishes The Wars before the Great War as essential reading for anybody wishing to cultivate a more comprehensive understating of the origins of the First World War.' Samuel Foster, European History Quarterly