One of my favorite books is Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower: The World Before the War, 1890-1914, her 1966 prequel to her famous 1962 bestseller about the coming of World War I in the summer of 1914, The Guns of August (which JFK advised his staff to read during the Cuban Missile Crisis).
40 yrs ago i disliked her comment on new england meeting houses, but was younger then and as today a fool. (still think she was wrong 'bout meeting houses.
I remember the stream of biographies, then I read The Distant Mirror, about the 14th century, which had a lot about elite males' interest in fancy clothing. In the latter, she noted that a mass cultural obsession with death began 40-50 years AFTER the Black Death, not immediately. I've long wondered if our Western cultural collapse and lack of confidence had a similar delay after the trauma of the World Wars.
I don't know if you're intentionally posting this as a sequel to the Tower of Babel post, but it certainly works well that way.
As I mentioned in the comments in the earlier post, western societies, in successive waves of hubris over the past couple of centuries, have been trying again and again to revive the utopian Babel project. Tuchman's proud tower was one such manifestation.
I've enjoyed several of Tuchman's books; they were the first history books that really got me into thinking about how differently people in past cultures thought in comparison to contemporary assumptions.
Finally, I agree that being a late Victorian or Edwardian toff would have been quite the life. This is something Downton Abbey got exactly right: the series opened on the day after the Titanic sank in 1912, which is just right if you're aiming to launch your plot at the very moment the whole world order shuddered and began cracking up.
I’ve read both and I prefer The Guns of August too.
The opening scene of a royal funeral where she observes that it was “sunset on history’s clock” and the era was going out in blaze of splendour that would never be seen again: perfectly captured the time just before WW1 destroyed so much.
I've known since high school that World War One was a catastrophe for civilization. The more I've learned about history and much else since then the more I've realized how catastrophic, tragic, and horrifying it was. And it was useless.
The question of what caused the 1914-18 war is one of the most-studied subjects in all historiography. A slew of new scholarship came out in the 2010s for the centennial, much of it quite reasonable.
There are a lot of proposed answers for the War-Origin Question (Kriegsschuldfrage) that seem plausible. There is surely no one single answer -- the simplistic myth of unique German guilt being demolished by scholarship in the 1920s already. But I worry that the cult of the 1939-45 war exerts a negative influence on the whole subject ("even") in the 21st century, clouding the thinking on the 1914-18 war.
Personally, I blame "Apis," the head of Serbian military intelligence who organized the conspiracy the assassinate the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand.
More broadly, none of the generals or politicians seemed to grasp the "efficient markets theory" of how the coalitions would be assembled and thus how long the war would take. Since neither side wanted to lose, both sides had an incentive to bring in more allies up to the 50-50 point. But once you went much past that point, you'd have to share the spoils of victory more broadly, so neither side had much incentive to assemble a truly overwhelming coalition. So, the two sides wound up extremely well-balanced and thus the war dragged on much longer than anybody had expected.
That was a great "own goal" by Serbia. They'd have been in a better position if they'd just waited out Franz Josef, as FF was a peacenik who might not have held the Hapsburg empire together. The rest of Yugoslavia was certainly no prize and not worth what they suffered in the war.
I read all of Tuchman's books when they came out but also have read other books that explain in depth what was happening in the Balkans. Agree that Tuchman seems somewhat oblivious to the big picture. I fear that folks are overly enamoured by her flowery style. The strong opinions in this link ring true to me. Steve, would like your opinion of the comments in this link.
I devoured The Guns in the summer of 1974. Much of it was over my head, but it was like being led into the secrets of sex, and later into The Proud Tower, by a bewitching and insatiable courtesan. Bureaucratically, the system was a multiply themed all-you-can-eat buffet held together by incestuous rivalries, and Tuchman is at her best in detailing its preposterous ambitions to somehow stay open. In retrospect, my guide glossed over the bigger picture and simplest motivation: Germany's spiffy new education and industry kept eating away at England's share of global trade. The sting of their loss, their collective spite and recognition that colonials must not gather and that Germany must be kept away from Russia at any price is central to the disaster playing out 100 years later. They'd rather summon Satan and unleash hell than admit their mediocrity.
that last paragraph be pretty damn deep.
40 yrs ago i disliked her comment on new england meeting houses, but was younger then and as today a fool. (still think she was wrong 'bout meeting houses.
I remember the stream of biographies, then I read The Distant Mirror, about the 14th century, which had a lot about elite males' interest in fancy clothing. In the latter, she noted that a mass cultural obsession with death began 40-50 years AFTER the Black Death, not immediately. I've long wondered if our Western cultural collapse and lack of confidence had a similar delay after the trauma of the World Wars.
I don't know if you're intentionally posting this as a sequel to the Tower of Babel post, but it certainly works well that way.
As I mentioned in the comments in the earlier post, western societies, in successive waves of hubris over the past couple of centuries, have been trying again and again to revive the utopian Babel project. Tuchman's proud tower was one such manifestation.
I've enjoyed several of Tuchman's books; they were the first history books that really got me into thinking about how differently people in past cultures thought in comparison to contemporary assumptions.
Finally, I agree that being a late Victorian or Edwardian toff would have been quite the life. This is something Downton Abbey got exactly right: the series opened on the day after the Titanic sank in 1912, which is just right if you're aiming to launch your plot at the very moment the whole world order shuddered and began cracking up.
The title always reminded me of Paradise Lost, where Abdiel turns his back to Satan's doomed angels, "those proud towers to swift destruction doomed."
I still prefer The Guns of August -- The Proud Tower can't match the intensity of that single month.
I’ve read both and I prefer The Guns of August too.
The opening scene of a royal funeral where she observes that it was “sunset on history’s clock” and the era was going out in blaze of splendour that would never be seen again: perfectly captured the time just before WW1 destroyed so much.
She was a good writer.
In France they called it La Belle Époque, and that was an accurate label.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_%C3%89poque
I've known since high school that World War One was a catastrophe for civilization. The more I've learned about history and much else since then the more I've realized how catastrophic, tragic, and horrifying it was. And it was useless.
The question of what caused the 1914-18 war is one of the most-studied subjects in all historiography. A slew of new scholarship came out in the 2010s for the centennial, much of it quite reasonable.
There are a lot of proposed answers for the War-Origin Question (Kriegsschuldfrage) that seem plausible. There is surely no one single answer -- the simplistic myth of unique German guilt being demolished by scholarship in the 1920s already. But I worry that the cult of the 1939-45 war exerts a negative influence on the whole subject ("even") in the 21st century, clouding the thinking on the 1914-18 war.
Personally, I blame "Apis," the head of Serbian military intelligence who organized the conspiracy the assassinate the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand.
More broadly, none of the generals or politicians seemed to grasp the "efficient markets theory" of how the coalitions would be assembled and thus how long the war would take. Since neither side wanted to lose, both sides had an incentive to bring in more allies up to the 50-50 point. But once you went much past that point, you'd have to share the spoils of victory more broadly, so neither side had much incentive to assemble a truly overwhelming coalition. So, the two sides wound up extremely well-balanced and thus the war dragged on much longer than anybody had expected.
I'm not sure about that. Frankly most of the minor allies probably hurt their side more than they helped.
That was a great "own goal" by Serbia. They'd have been in a better position if they'd just waited out Franz Josef, as FF was a peacenik who might not have held the Hapsburg empire together. The rest of Yugoslavia was certainly no prize and not worth what they suffered in the war.
I think something like it was inevitable.
The existing European system, established at Vienna, was showing massive strain after a century of the most rapid technological progress in history.
One of my favourite 19th century aristo-quotes is Lord Salisbury: "Change? why change.... aren't things bad enough already?"
Tuchman is full of crap
https://20committee.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/that-terrible-tuchman-woman/
I read all of Tuchman's books when they came out but also have read other books that explain in depth what was happening in the Balkans. Agree that Tuchman seems somewhat oblivious to the big picture. I fear that folks are overly enamoured by her flowery style. The strong opinions in this link ring true to me. Steve, would like your opinion of the comments in this link.
Excellent, thank you for that book recommendation. I will certainly give it a try.
I devoured The Guns in the summer of 1974. Much of it was over my head, but it was like being led into the secrets of sex, and later into The Proud Tower, by a bewitching and insatiable courtesan. Bureaucratically, the system was a multiply themed all-you-can-eat buffet held together by incestuous rivalries, and Tuchman is at her best in detailing its preposterous ambitions to somehow stay open. In retrospect, my guide glossed over the bigger picture and simplest motivation: Germany's spiffy new education and industry kept eating away at England's share of global trade. The sting of their loss, their collective spite and recognition that colonials must not gather and that Germany must be kept away from Russia at any price is central to the disaster playing out 100 years later. They'd rather summon Satan and unleash hell than admit their mediocrity.
The Proud Tower is a good book to be read in sequence with Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals. Which is preferable, rule by heredity or by ideas?