Europe Transformed:1878-1919 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 291 leaving the reader to judge which arguments are the most persuasive. Particularly thought-provoking are the papers of Michael Tatu, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and William Rogers. The participants seem to agree, however, that the moment of decision has arrived for the United States to opt either for intervention or negotiation. Europe Transformed:1878—1919. By Norman Stone. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984. Reviewed by Steven C. Soper, MA. candidate, SAIS. This broad study of European history from the Great Depression to the Great War is, in certain respects, an audacious work. Stone pays unusual attention to the general trends, changes, and crises that were taking place in Europe during this period, and dedicates only one of the book's five parts—albeit the longest and central one—to standard, individual country analyses. In the earlier thematic chapters on Europe before World War I, he darts from Jules Ferry to Frère-Osban, and from Joseph Chamberlain to Bismarck and Francesco Crispí, sometimes in a single paragraph. Notwithstanding an occasional exaggeration or oversimplification, however, the result is fresh, witty, and provocative history. The concluding parts of the book on "War and Revolution, 1914—1918" and European cultural developments at the turn of the century are less ambitious, but effective and insightful all the same. The title of the book has a dual meaning: The period 1878 to 1919 witnessed not only Europe's social, economic, and demographic transformation —rapid urbanization, emigration, education reforms, the decline of traditional aristocracies, the erosion of agrarian social bases—but it also saw a widespread alliance of liberal and conservative forces against nascent socialist movements, a practice given the pejorative name "transformism" in Italy but evident throughout Europe as well. The book's other principal subject is really an extension to the rest of Europe of the theme in George Dangerfield's classic book, The Strange Death ofLiberal England—that is, the breakdown of parliamentary government. Stone therefore attributes the origins of World War I not only to the changing international order and the rise of imperialist nationalism, but also to a changing internal order; any number of men of the right, throughout Europe, might have uttered the famous words of the pan-German leader Heinrich Class: "I long for the holy, redeeming war." Stone's comparative style is not without its risks and problems, and in certain places he generalizes to such a degree that the trees get lost for the forest. This is generally not the case, however, and his book makes a valuable contribution to the historiography of the period. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism. By K. Steven Vincent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Reviewed by Steven C. Soper, MA. candidate, SAIS. Considering how seriously France takes its intellectuals, it should not be very surprising to hear Francois Mitterrand trace his ideological roots back to the ...