Stealing Horses to Great Applause: The Origins of the First World War Reconsidered

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 Stealing Horses includes appraisals of Niall Ferguson and A. J. P. Taylor, and an extensive unpublished final paper re-thinking the First World War as 'the last 18th-century war'.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.

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

About the Author :
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.

Review :
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 How had the world by 1914 become susceptible to a disastrous systemic breakdown? The one American historian who rose to this analytical challenge was Paul Schroeder. These historical insights have an obvious urgency today Probably the foremost expert on the history of international politics in the world A powerful intellect, a meticulous and innovative researcher who transformed his field Perhaps the most distinguished diplomatic historian of his generation. He thought hard about the fundamental issues he was concerned with. What he had to say was always stimulating, always worth reading Few knew old Europe as intimately as Schroeder did. His cogent argument concerning the centrality of international relations is one which historians of all stripes ignore at their peril A kaleidoscopic set of essays on the European state system in the century leading up to and during the Great War. written with calm and analytical rigor.