Superb Old-Fashioned Fare
HEILBRUNN, JACOB
Superb Old-Fashioned Fare A History of Europe By J. M. Roberts Allen Lane. 628 pp. $34.95. Reviewed by Jacob Heilbrunn Associate editor, "New Republic" Europe, Bismarck once...
...But he concludes on a somber note: "Europe's work is done...
...Roberts has produced a superb work of enviable sweep and clarity...
...Poland," Roberts reminds us, "led Eastern Europe to freedom...
...He does not believe that Europe's taking the lead was the result of a master plan...
...It was a massive military, economic and social enterprise on a scale unprecedented in history...
...In Politics, Aristotle remarks that Europeans "are full of spirit, but wanting in intelligence and skill...
...Rome, though, was not simply a bigger Greece...
...World War II began over Poland...
...The politicians creating the new European Union would surely dispute that judgment...
...The biggest imperial headache was governing India...
...The historian can afford to envision its future with frigid tranquillity...
...The Greeks regarded not only the Persians but also the Europeans to the north as a distinct and barbaric race...
...Not until the Mongols came on the scene was there a rival in size and scope, and the Khanates, lacking a strong central authority, were nowhere near as organized...
...China went onbeing an obj ect of European adulation until well into the 18th century...
...The rise of the Bolshevik dictatorship, coupled with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had served as abulwark against Russian expansionism to the south, radically altered the traditional terms of international relations...
...As always in international politics, new contenders were nipping at the heels of the British...
...Kaiser Wilhelm is not transformed into a closet peacenik, nor Louis XVI into a model monarch...
...No visitor could possibly fail to be impressed by the refinement of Asian cultures compared with Europe's ungainly efforts...
...He provides solid, old-fashioned historical fare...
...Although it has been overshadowed by World War II, the Great War's political effects and destructiveness should not be underestimated...
...To anyone familiar with the numerous shapes Europe has taken, the latest version should not come as a shock...
...The consciousness of the British in India," Roberts maintains, "was from this time suffused by the memory that Indians had once proved almost fatally untrustworthy...
...When Europe slid into World War I, German bellicosity was a prime, if not the only, culprit...
...The Mongols, among other Asiatic interlopers, spelled trouble for Europe...
...The earliest confrontation took place between the Greeks and the Persians, ending with Persia's defeat in the battle of Marathon in 490 BCE...
...The Bolshevik Revolution is unthinkable without the extreme chaos unleashed inside Russia by the War...
...The Nazis later profited handsomely from the Communist threat in the East...
...it did not really end until 1989 when Poland wriggled free from Soviet rule...
...To top it off, the British made the mistake of allowing Indians to study at Oxford and Cambridge...
...Once the Peloponnesian War broke out, and the Athenians managed to do themselves in with the Sicilian expedition, Aristotle's comment could be applied to the Greeks themselves...
...One of the perennial themes of European history has been the clash between East and West...
...Following the collapse and breakup of Germany, the Soviets controlled Central Europe...
...There is some truth to the famous observation of a Roman poet, "Captive Greece took her wild captor captive...
...Instead, he traces the various permutations it has undergone over the centuries, from the days of ancient Greece to its latest incarnation in the form of the European Union...
...In the author's view, the demise of British rule in India started with the 1857 revolt of the sepoys —Indian Muslims who thought, falsely, that their gun cartridges had been smeared with pig fat...
...as Roberts astutely points out, "the major Roman contribution to civilization was the empire itself...
...The truth was that the East Europeans themselves were not exactly happy about being sacrificed in the name of realism...
...Unlike Norman Davies, whose bigoted, Polonophilic Europe: A History (1996) has stirred up much controversy, Roberts does not seek to shock and astonish with his findings...
...But this was a rather self-satisfied, smug Kissingerian view of high politics...
...This is not, it must be emphasized, how the British expected things to turn out when Germany was unified by Bismarck in 1871 at Versailles...
...For Roberts, the European age begins with economic modernization in the 18th century...
...As Roberts notes, however, the Germans had become too powerful: "The central fact of 1871 was that a new German empire replaced France as the major European land power west of Russia...
...The battle between East and West, or at least the boundary questions, appeared to be settled...
...J. M. Roberts, the recently retired Warden of Merton College, Oxford, appears to agree...
...John Stuart Mill and Mazzini," Roberts writes, "were to have a huge influence in India...
...Ancient Greece's replacement, the Roman Empire, was quite different...
...On the contrary, he says "it was indeed a continuing and very visible characteristic of the European economic reconstruction of the world that it was so unplanned and casual...
...One of the things that Roberts' book does so well is make us conscious of Europe's malleability...
...Reviewed by Jacob Heilbrunn Associate editor, "New Republic" Europe, Bismarck once dismissively declared, "is a mere geographic notion...
...After the Spanish and French bids for hegemony failed, England started ruling the waves...
...Westerners are not accustomed to thinking of Europeans as inferior to other civilizations, yet the truth is that it took some time for them to get going...
...That point was amply illustrated a few years ago by an exhibition entitled Circa 1492: Artin the Age of Exploration at the National Gallery of Art in Washington...
...No icons are toppled here, no judgments upended, no secret pasts unearthed...
...The savage nations of the globe," wrote Gibbon, "are the common enemies of civilized society...
...American policymakers could only watch in amazement as the Warsaw Pact peacefully dissolved itself...
...In thisnewworkheeschews presenting a single, prefabricated Europe...
...like the Austrian monarchy, the ancien régime probably could have muddled along for several more decades...
...was satisfied with its sphere of influence in Central America, but the chief British rival on the Continent was the newly united Germany...
...Roberts notes, for instance, that East Asian countries "could often demonstrate cultural and artistic achievement on a scale psychologically intimidating to Europeans...
...Yet another "Europe" was making its debut on the international stage...
...The U.S...
...This was no accident...
...Conventional wisdom in Britain held that unification was good, because balance of power politics would prevail and the Germans would keep the pesky French in check...
Vol. 80 • December 1997 • No. 19
