The Russian Origins of the First World War by Sean Mcmeekin

The Russian Origins of the First World War by Sean Mcmeekin

In a major reinterpretation, Sean McMeekin rejects the standard notion of the war's beginning as either a Germano-Austrian pre-emptive strike or a miscalculation. The key to the outbreak of violence, he argues, lies in St. Petersburg. Russian statesmen unleashed the war through policy decisions based on imperial ambitions in the Near East.

Going against a century of received wisdom, Bilkent University professor McMeekin offers a dramatic new interpretation of WWI..Rifling the archives, analyzing battle plans, and sifting through the machinations of high diplomacy, McMeekin reveals the grand ambitions of czarist Russia, which wanted control of the Black Sea straits to guarantee all-weather access to foreign markets. Maneuvering France and England into a war against Germany presented the best chance to acquire this longed-for prize. No empire had more to gain from the coming conflict, and none pushed harder to ensure its arrival. Once unleashed, however, the conflagration leapt out of control, and imperial Russia herself ranked among its countless victims. Publishers Weekly 20110926 Casting a contrarian eye on the first major conflict of the twentieth century, Sean McMeekin finds the roots of WWI inside Russia, whose leaders deliberately sought--for their own ends--to expand a brawl that the Germans wanted to keep local. The author tracks the fallout of these antique plots right down to the present geopolitical landscape. Barnes & Noble Review 20120113 An entirely new take on the origins of World War I comes as a surprise. If war guilt is to be assigned, this book argues, it should go not only (or even primarily) to Germany--the long-accepted culprit--but also to Russia...Bold reading between the lines of history. -- Robert Legvold Foreign Affairs 20120101 As Sean McMeekin argues in this bold and brilliant revisionist study, Russia was as much to blame as Germany for the outbreak of the war. Using a wide range of archival sources, including long-neglected tsarist documents, he argues that the Russians had ambitions of their own (the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, no less) and that they were ready for a war once they had secured a favorable alliance with the British and the French. -- Orlando Figes Sunday Times 20120101 The book is a refreshing challenge to longstanding assumptions and shifted perspectives are always good. -- Miriam Cosic The Australian 20120303

Sean McMeekin is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University in Turkey.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780674062108
ISBN 10	0674062108
Title	The Russian Origins of the First World War
Author	Sean Mcmeekin
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Harvard University Press
Year published	2011-11-30
Number of pages	344
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.