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  • 1913:An Interview with Charles Emmerson
  • Donald A. Yerxa

WE HAVE BEEN FEATURING SOME OF THE NEW BOOKS ON World War I coming off the presses as we approach the centenary of that conflict. In this issue we publish senior editor Donald A. Yerxa's brief interview with Charles Emmerson, author of 1913: In Search of the World before the Great War (Public Affairs, 2013), which provides an arresting portrait of a world that in many ways was unaware of the catastrophe that loomed on the horizon.

Donald A. Yerxa:

Would you provide our readers with a brief summary of what you are doing in 1913?

Charles Emmerson:

I think there's a received view we have of the world before the Great War: a sepia-tone world of uniforms and marching bands, irretrievably archaic, heading blindly into to the horrors of the First World War. I wanted to challenge that, and see the world of 1913 through the eyes of those who lived at the time. This was, I contend, a world far more dynamic, modern, global—and interesting—than we generally know. At the heart of the book are twenty cities: the glittering European capitals at the height of their worldwide power, the striving cities of North America, the metropolises of Asia, and the colonial outposts of the imperial world. These cities provide 1913 with a sense of physical place and a global reach.

Yerxa:

You argue that 1913 was "a year of possibility not predestination." What portrait of the world in 1913 emerges when you liberate it from the shadows of 1914?

Emmerson:

I think the first thing that happens is that you realize just how many people did not think cataclysmic war was imminent in 1913. The future was still open. To be sure, war was part of the atmosphere of Europe in those years: in war literature, in nationalist propaganda, in war scares, and in war in the Balkans. But there were countervailing arguments against the possibility of war that, these days, we tend to forget. There was the argument of global economic integration, driven by high finance. There was an active peace movement; there were social ties across the continent; there was a sense of cultural Europeanism and of socialist internationalism. Just as at any time, there was not a single narrative that dominated European society and culture.

Outside Europe, in America, Asia, and Africa, other stories crowded the headlines. In the United States a new president, the first born in the South since the Civil War, was trying to weld a nation together and facing up to the challenge of how to match American interests and American principles in Mexico. In South Africa, an Indian-born lawyer, Gandhi, was challenging laws that discriminated against Indians, while, at the same time, apartheid for black South Africans became further and further entrenched. In China, a few years after the Chinese Empire had fallen apart, a republic was rising, poised between chaos and reform, between a pathway to authoritarianism and one that might lead to democracy.


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Automobiles crowd the busy streets of Berlin, February 1913. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Yerxa:

Is it fair to say that the "prelude to war narrative" has made 1913 something of a "lost world"? Do we tend to think of it as a time of relative innocence before the cataclysm and disenchantment of the Great War changed things forever?

Emmerson:

The "prelude to war narrative" risks squeezing out the character of 1913, and placing the prewar years into a straitjacket of historical inevitability. In retrospect, it is hard not to see the world of 1913 as somehow innocent. Though there were quite a few who realized the awesome destructive potential of new armaments, very few could envisage the horrible slaughter of the Great War or its political and economic consequences. Stefan Zweig referred to his coming of age in Vienna before the war as a "golden age of security".

Yerxa:

You note that the world in 1913 was more integrated and internationalized than we recall. Could you speak to that briefly?

Emmerson:

Politically, a handful of empires dominated the globe, while a...

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