David Fromkin (1932–2017)

In this relatively modest book, "The King and the Cowboy", David Fromkin sets out to make the point that Theodore Roosevelt and England's King Edward VII developed a secret partnership which redefined the alliances of the major European powers just prior to World War I. There appears to be some merit to that claim, but the details of the working relationship appear far from conspiratorial.

On the other hand, one part I appreciated in the book was the biographical sketches of the royal families of the 19th Century. European royalty were closely related at the time, in ways I often overlook. Fromkin provides a good description of the relationship of the royals of the time, including England's Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales and future Kind Edward VII, Wilhelm II, Nicholas II, etc., along with a brief bio of Theodore Roosevelt. Fromkin also described the changing alliances of the time, and the reasons and power struggles behind the changing alliances, all important considerations in understanding the background of pre-WWI Europe.… (más)

This book describes the dissolution of the Ottoman empire in and after the first world war, with a very strong emphasis on British politics. It is, in fact, misleading to call this a "definitive account" of the creation of the modern Middle East, as the back cover does. It can hardly be very definitive when the Turkish, Arab, Persian, German, Russian, French and American sides of the story, all taken together, receive less than half as much as space as the British one does. There's no doubt that Britain was the leading political power in the world before world war I, but especially in the beginning of the book the author drags into the narrative far too many unimportant British persons whose views didn't have any consequences worthy of mention and weren't particularly interesting to begin with. I skipped many sections of the book just out of boredom.

Nevertheless, it is certainly interesting to compare the imperial world-views of British leaders before the war to the humbled perspective they were forced to adopt after the war. It's hard to believe that a century ago leaders could still understand politics only from the narrow conceptions of colonial empire: a zero-sum game where only territorial possession mattered. The Ottoman empire was weak, so the British and the French thought it should be divided between them even though neither had any knowledge of the lands they wanted to divide. The contrast with the post-war worldview is quite striking, as the author also points out. In that sense it certainly seems to be true that this book describes a watershed moment.

The second half of the book, which describes events after the war, is more interesting than the first. British leaders eventually had to face the limits of their own power. They were instrumental in founding the countries of the Middle East in the settlement of 1922 before leaving the region for good. But the age of empires was coming to an end and the age of national self-determination was about to begin. It is a bit peculiar that Woodrow Wilson, who certainly did much more than any British politician to inaugurate this new age, is here written off as a naive buffoon who didn't have any idea what he was doing at the peace conference which ended the war. In any case, I think this book is too long and it's perspective is centered far too much on Britain. But it still has its moments, and there may not be any other book which tells the same story in this much detail.… (más)

“de geschiedenis van de moderne wereld is te zien als het verhaal over de vele beschavingen die in het jaar 1000 nog bloeiden en die in de daaropvolgende duizend jaar op één na allemaal ter ziele gingen. (…) alleen het nageslacht van het Romeinse Rijk wist zich te handhaven, door eerst een nieuwe beschaving tot stand te brengen en daarna nog een. Wat volgt is daarom alleen hun verhaal”.
50 jaar geleden kon je met zo’n statement misschien nog weg komen, vandaag is het schandalig dat zoiets nog zwart op wit gedrukt wordt. Dit boek is niet alleen kortzichtig eurocentristisch (eigenlijk vooral chauvinistisch Amerikaans), het is ook oppervlakkig, badinerend, gebaseerd op verouderde literatuur, en in het laatste hoofdstuk begaat de auteur zelfs de grootste fout die een historicus kan maken, namelijk in de toekomst kijken en concrete voorspellingen doen. Vermijden, dit boek!… (más)