![]() ![]() You come away with a good understanding of the instability and tension of the pre-war international scene, despite the Great Powers attempts to manage things by forming alliances. Thus, the decision-makers were sleepwalkers, “watchful but unseeing.”Ĭlark’s book has many strengths. War resulted from chains of decisions made by people who knew what they were doing, but who may not have grasped the full implications of their decisions. ![]() ![]() Additionally, Clark makes it clear that war was not the inevitable outcome of forces beyond human control. His purpose is not to find the “smoking gun.” Instead, he says, there were many smoking guns held by many people. No one person or country is to blame for war’s outbreak, Clark argues. ![]() He presents a complex story where decision-makers acted on their perceptions of the state’s interests, often in the context of imperfect information, mistrust, and fear. This summer marks the centennial of the First World War, what historian Fritz Stern called, “the first calamity of the twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang.” In The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012), Christopher Clark, professor of modern European history at the University of Cambridge, analyzes the political and diplomatic events that led to the July crisis and subsequent declarations of war. ![]()
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