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    Stealing Horses to Great Applause

    The Origins of the First World War Reconsidered

    Author Paul W. Schroeder
    Introduction by Perry Anderson
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    Hardcover
    $39.95 US
    Verso Books | Verso
    On sale Feb 18, 2025 | 384 Pages | 9781804295793
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    Stand-out theoretical and empirical explanation of the origins of the First World War by one of the great historians of international diplomacy

    Stealing Horses to Great Applause 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    Stealing Horses to Great Applause includes appraisals of Niall Ferguson and A. J. P. Taylor, and an extensive unpublished final paper rethinking the First World War as "the last 18th-century war."

    With an introduction by Perry Anderson.
    Introduction, Perry Anderson

    PART I
    1. World War I as Galloping Gertie: A Reply to Joachim Remak
    2. International Politics, Peace and War, 1815–1914
    3. Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War
    4. Stealing Horses to Great Applause: Austria-Hungary’s Decision in 1914 in Systemic Perspective
    5. World War I and the Vienna System: The Last Eighteenth-Century War and the First Modern Peace

    PART II
    6. Romania and the Great Powers before 1914
    7. Prudence vs Recklessness: Assessing Responsibility for World War I

    PART III
    8. World War I: A Tragedy, not a Pity
    9. A. J. P. Taylor’s International System

    Acknowledgments
    Index
    Paul W. Schroeder is the author of, among other things, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 in the Oxford History of Modern Europe. He taught history and political science at the University of Illinois for many years and died in 2020 at the age of ninety-three.
    Paul W. Schroeder View titles by Paul W. Schroeder

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    Stand-out theoretical and empirical explanation of the origins of the First World War by one of the great historians of international diplomacy

    Stealing Horses to Great Applause 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 to Great Applause includes appraisals of Niall Ferguson and A. J. P. Taylor, and an extensive unpublished final paper rethinking the First World War as "the last 18th-century war."

    With an introduction by Perry Anderson.

    Table of Contents

    Introduction, Perry Anderson

    PART I
    1. World War I as Galloping Gertie: A Reply to Joachim Remak
    2. International Politics, Peace and War, 1815–1914
    3. Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War
    4. Stealing Horses to Great Applause: Austria-Hungary’s Decision in 1914 in Systemic Perspective
    5. World War I and the Vienna System: The Last Eighteenth-Century War and the First Modern Peace

    PART II
    6. Romania and the Great Powers before 1914
    7. Prudence vs Recklessness: Assessing Responsibility for World War I

    PART III
    8. World War I: A Tragedy, not a Pity
    9. A. J. P. Taylor’s International System

    Acknowledgments
    Index

    Author

    Paul W. Schroeder is the author of, among other things, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 in the Oxford History of Modern Europe. He taught history and political science at the University of Illinois for many years and died in 2020 at the age of ninety-three.
    Paul W. Schroeder View titles by Paul W. Schroeder

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