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Stealing Horses presents arguably the finest considerations yet of the origins of the First World War. Breaking with accounts which focus on the actions of a single state or the final countdown to hostilities, Paul W. Schroeder describes the systemic crisis engulfing the Great Powers. They were more interested in colonial plunder overseas ('stealing horses to great applause', in the old Spanish adage) than the traditional statecraft of European peace-making. Preserving the balance of power required preserving all the essential actors in it, including a tottering Austria-Hungary. This the British in particular failed to recognise. The Central Powers may have started the War but that does not mean they in any real sense caused it. In the end Schroeder recalls the verdict of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: 'All are punished'.Stealing Horses includes appraisals of Niall Ferguson and A. J. P. Taylor, and an extensive unpublished final paper re-thinking the First World War as 'the last 18th-century war'.With an Introduction by Perry Anderson.
Paul W. Schroeder was professor of history and political science at the University of Illinois. His works included Austria, Great Britain and the Crimean War: The Destruction of the European Concert and The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848. He died in 2020 at the age of 93. Verso is publishing two volumes of his writings, America Abroad and Stealing Horses to Great Applause.
Introduction, Perry AndersonPART I1. World War I as Galloping Gertie: A Reply to Joachim Remak2. International Politics, Peace and War, 1815-19143. Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War4. Stealing Horses to Great Applause: Austria-Hungary's Decision in 1914 in Systemic Perspective5. World War I and the Vienna System: The Last Eighteenth-Century War and the First Modern PeacePART II6. Romania and the Great Powers before 19147. Prudence vs Recklessness: Assessing Responsibility for World War IPART III8. World War I: A Tragedy, not a Pity9. A. J. P. Taylor's International SystemAcknowledgmentsIndex
A historian of remarkable chronological breadth and a fiercely independent mind. Great historians have a life, and they have an afterlife. Paul W. Schroeder's may just have begun