The Pursuit of Power

Starred review from October 3, 2016
Evans, a professor emeritus of history at Cambridge University who is best known for his three-volume history of Nazi Germany, enhances his reputation with this analysis of Europe during the century leading to the Great War. He concentrates on the now-unfashionable issue of power: who had it, who wanted it, and how it was achieved and retained. Evans doesn’t simply focus on war and diplomacy—he defines power broadly to include advances in medicine and technological sources of literal power, from steam to electricity. As the integrated developments of personal freedom, mastery over nature, and the rise of nationalism nurtured one another, Europe became the focus of “a process of globalization” in which capital, goods, people, and ideas flowed “from continent to continent.” This was an “age of emotion” characterized by a passion for knowledge and the pursuit of happiness in an increasingly secularized and gendered environment. Governments and societies responded to the resulting “challenge of democracy” by barreling forward until the catastrophe of 1914, which “was a surprise to almost everyone”—and perhaps should not have been. Evans demonstrates expertise of a broad spectrum of specialized sources and synthesizes his research into a work “designed to be read through from start to finish.”