History: A feted historian tries to explain the unprecedented violence of the first half of the 20th century, writes Misha Glenny
Reading the acknowledgements in The War of the World, Niall Ferguson's latest doorstopper, I was overcome by a sense of relief. On the first page, the feted historian recognises that "at least a dozen students have helped with the research during vacations", and a page later he slips in that a number of the fixers (about another 12) who worked on the TV series of the book had also contributed to the book. And this is before we get onto all the stuff about what an addictive place Harvard is, or three cheers for the Hoover Institution (not to mention its caverns of cash) and personal thanks to the Queen for a look into her archives.
So my relief was triggered by the knowledge that the author is not just Niall Ferguson, the mortal, but Niall Ferguson, the great throbbing nerve centre of a complex machine which is partly fuelled by the munificence, tolerance and support of many individuals and institutions with the goal of ensuring the brain's smooth running. Of course, my thinly-disguised envy has been compounded by the fact that every time I've seen Niall Ferguson in the flesh, he looks as though he could be a senior prefect at my 16-year-old's school. And he's a bloody Tory too. Top that for irritating because I can't.
So does the machine deliver? Well it sets itself a huge challenge and expectations are running high, reinforced by the author's own description of the latest project as the Everest of his career (what in God's name does he tackle next - the moon?).
The lofty aim of this intellectual mountaineer is to explain why the first half of the 20th century was as violent as it was. Why humanity descended into such an unprecedented festival of mutual butchery at the very moment when technology seemed to offer levels of prosperity never experienced before. He begins with the uncontroversial but important reminder that the world before 1914 had reached a significant degree of globalisation, in large part thanks to the commercial drive of the British Empire. In consequence, rates of economic growth were on the increase in many places as was a new speed of cultural mingling.
The bulk of the book is the story of how the world (and Europe in particular) wrecked the opportunities which the first "globalisation" offered in an orgy of destruction that Ferguson identifies as running from 1914 through to the end of the Korean War in 1953. It is this period that he calls the War of the World.
In a commendably crisp introduction, Ferguson sets out what he considers the three prerequisites for a descent into violence: a breakdown in ethnic or communal relations; economic volatility (as opposed to mere decline); and crumbling empires. The rest of the book acts as the empirical proof for this thesis.
I have to confess I found this neither staggeringly controversial nor revelatory. Sometimes the facts are if not subordinated to the thesis then certainly squashed in to fit a little uncomfortably. Two such examples caught my eye early in the book. In describing the formation of the first nationalist German party in the Czech lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1904 (the party described Czechs as "half-humans"), he points out that this was in response to the creation of a Czech National Socialist Party in 1898. The anachronistic implication, of course, is that this latter party was a bunch of proto-fascist Czechs. Ferguson must surely know but most of his readers will not know that the Czech National Socialists were a centre-right party that certainly supported an independent Czechoslovakia but did not include ethnic antagonism in its programme.
A little later he justifies the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo 1914 by describing Serbia as a "rogue state", because 11 years earlier a military conspiracy had committed regicide in the country. A week is a long time in politics, 11 years an eternity especially in a small Balkan country that, unlike its imperial foe, had several decades of parliamentary democracy under its belt. I think I'm almost as fond of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as Ferguson but this is taking that affection too far.
I point this out to highlight the achievement of this book. One encounters these little irritations here and there but is otherwise swept along by the author's superb clarity of expression and the persuasive verve of his style. The book is simply a great read. Ferguson meshes political and economic interpretations of history with psychological and literary ones with an unparalleled ability. He uses literature, often excoriated by historians, as a method of catching a specific, fading cultural moment that, once caught, subtly alters one's whole appreciation of broader historical forces. His sensuous description of Shanghai in the 1920s at the beginning of one chapter is very short but an absolute delight - the book is filled with similar excursions, none of them gratuitous.
For an erstwhile Thatcherite who is hailed as a great intellectual pivot of the right both in Britain and the United States, Ferguson is surprisingly liberal in his attitudes. In particular, he demonstrates real sympathy for persecuted minorities and disgust at majorities who wield populism or the state to gain advantage on either the domestic or international stages. Ferguson's half-adopted home, the US, comes in for a fair battering now and then for its tendency to ride roughshod over those who don't fit into its plans.
But despite the extraordinary research that went into this book, the real question hanging over it like a dark shadow is contemporary. "A hundred years ago," Ferguson writes in an epilogue designed to answer this very question, "globalisation was celebrated in not dissimilar ways [as by today's economic optimists] as goods, capital and labour flowed freely from England to the ends of the earth . . . Could a similar fate befall the second age of globalisation in which we live?"
And one of the things that you cannot help but like about Ferguson, is that he doesn't dodge the tough issues. "We shall avoid another century of conflict only if we understand the forces that caused the last one," he answers himself, "the dark forces that conjure up ethnic conflict and imperial rivalry out of economic crisis, and in doing so negate our common humanity. They are forces that stir within us still." Hmmm . . . not looking too good, then.
Misha Glenny is a specialist on Eastern and Southeastern Europe. His books include The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999
The War of the World television series based on this book, which began this week on Channel 4, continues for the next five weeks on Mondays at 8pm
The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred. By Niall Ferguson, Allen Lane, 745pp. £25