Pam C. (PamC) reviewed From Conquest to Collapse: European Empires from 1815 to 1960 on + 117 more book reviews
The complete title of this book is From Conquest to Collapse, European Empires from 1815 - 1960. The book synopsis reads:
The history of 19th and 20th century Europe can be seen as the history of empires. Almost every facet of European life was inexorably linked to the establishment and growth of its nations' far-flung possessions. For the Western countries, bitter colonial wars wrought changes of unparalleled historical scope. From distant battlefields came the stimulus and support for the furious expansion of Edropean industry and commerce; out of new colonial relationships emerged the national identities of both governing and governed; and from initial successful conquests rose tensions that would propel much of the world into successive conflicts of escalating destruction.
Now the highly respected British historian V.G. Kiernan presents the wide-ranging, yet fully comprehensible study needed to illuminate this turbulent and complex chapter of Europe's military history. Beginning with the post-Napoleanic era and continuing right up to recent conflicts in Southeast Asia and Africa, Kiernan provides a persuasive analysis of the complex web of colonial politics. With the British in Imperial India and rebellious South Africa, the French in war-torn Algeria and Indochina, the Russians in a perennially volatile Afghanistan, we come to understand not only the military hows and whys but the deeper, more troubling, human questions involved in these epic clashes of peoples and cultures.
From Conquest to Collapse is a comprehensive, cogent account of the dramatic rise of European empries, their impact on both conquerers and conquered, and the wars of liberation that signaled the end of an epoch. V. G. Kiernan combines the trenchant understanding of a military scholar with the keenly modern insights of a social historian to chronicle anew the rise and fall of an age whose tumultuous legacy we still witness today.
The history of 19th and 20th century Europe can be seen as the history of empires. Almost every facet of European life was inexorably linked to the establishment and growth of its nations' far-flung possessions. For the Western countries, bitter colonial wars wrought changes of unparalleled historical scope. From distant battlefields came the stimulus and support for the furious expansion of Edropean industry and commerce; out of new colonial relationships emerged the national identities of both governing and governed; and from initial successful conquests rose tensions that would propel much of the world into successive conflicts of escalating destruction.
Now the highly respected British historian V.G. Kiernan presents the wide-ranging, yet fully comprehensible study needed to illuminate this turbulent and complex chapter of Europe's military history. Beginning with the post-Napoleanic era and continuing right up to recent conflicts in Southeast Asia and Africa, Kiernan provides a persuasive analysis of the complex web of colonial politics. With the British in Imperial India and rebellious South Africa, the French in war-torn Algeria and Indochina, the Russians in a perennially volatile Afghanistan, we come to understand not only the military hows and whys but the deeper, more troubling, human questions involved in these epic clashes of peoples and cultures.
From Conquest to Collapse is a comprehensive, cogent account of the dramatic rise of European empries, their impact on both conquerers and conquered, and the wars of liberation that signaled the end of an epoch. V. G. Kiernan combines the trenchant understanding of a military scholar with the keenly modern insights of a social historian to chronicle anew the rise and fall of an age whose tumultuous legacy we still witness today.
