Boek
In 1899 an International Peace Conference convened in The Hague. The representatives of the world's most militarised states, for whom the ability to wage war was absolutely central to their prestige, came together to debate the possibility of disarmament, the banning of certain weapons and the crafting of rules of war. History has not been kind to that conference: within twenty years Europe and much of the rest of the world was drowned in blood by those same powers for whom 'the monopoly of violence' was so crucial. And less than twenty years after the First World War ended, an even more savage war without limits of any kind took the lives of fifty million people. Yet since 1945, the European states which had glamourised their military elites, and made going to war the highest expression of patriotism, have renounced violence as a way of settling their disputes. War is now unthinkable, from Dublin to the edge of the Balkans. Violence has been eclipsed as a tool of statesmen. This astonishing reverse is the subject of James Sheehan's book. It is the story of war and peace in twentieth-century Europe, and how the first came to be dominated by the second. European states are now shaped by 'civilian' values and institutions. «
Boeklezers.nl is een netwerk voor sociaal lezen. Wij helpen lezers nieuwe boeken en schrijvers ontdekken, en brengen lezers met elkaar en schrijvers in contact. Meer lezen »
Er zijn nog geen recensies voor dit boek.