Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11142 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-24
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Synopsis
"Dark Continent" is a searching history of Europe's most brutal century. Stripping away the comforting myths and illusions that we have grown up with since the Second World War, Mark Mazower presents an unflinching account of a continent locked in a finely balanced struggle between tolerance and racial extermination, imperial ambition and national self-determination, liberty and the tyrannies of Right and Left.

Excerpted from Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century by Mark Mazower. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Europe may seem to be a continent of old states and peoples, yet it is in many respects very new, inventing and reinventing itself over this century through often convulsive political transformation. Some nations - such as Prussia - have been wiped off the map in living memory; others - like Austria or Macedonia - are less than three generations old. When my grandmother was born in Warsaw, it was part of the Tsarist empire, Trieste belonged to the Habsburgs and Salonika to the Ottomans. The Germans ruled Poles, the English Ireland, France Algeria. The closest much of Europe came to the democratic nation-state which has become the norm today were the monarchies of the Balkans. Nowhere did adults of both sexes have the vote, and there were few countries where parliaments prevailed over kings. In short, modern democracy, like the nation-state it is so closely associated with, is basically the product of the protracted domestic and international experimentation which followed the collapse of the old European order in 1914.

The First World War mobilized sixty-five million men, killed over eight million and left another twenty-one million wounded; it swept away four of the continent's ancient empires and turned Europe into what Czech politician Thomas Masaryk described as `a laboratory atop a vast graveyard'. `The World War', wrote Russian artist El Lissitsky, `requires us to test all values.' Amid the ruins of the ancien regime - with the Kaiser exiled, the Tsar and his family shot - politicians promised the masses, enfranchised and mobilized as never before, a fairer society and a state of their own. The liberal Woodrow Wilson offered a world `safe for democracy'; Lenin a communal society emancipated from want and free of the exploitative hierarchies of the past. Hitler envisaged a warrior race, purged of alien elements, fulfilling its imperial destiny through the purity of its blood and the unity of its purpose. Each of these three rival ideologies - liberal democracy, communism, and fascism - saw itself destined to remake society, the continent and the world in a New Order for mankind. The unremitting struggle between them to define modern Europe lasted most of this century.

Customer Reviews

A fascinating and informative look at post-WWI Europe
In this fascinating history, author Mark Mazower traces this history of Europe from the end of the First World War, through to when the book was written in 1998. This is not a list of dates and battles, but so much more than that. The author traces the evolution of Europe's thought, and as such culture. It begins with the 1920s' embrace of democracy and the rise of the minorities issue, continues with the 1930s' rejection of democracy, the rise and fall of the extreme Right in the 1940s, the evolution of the two halves of divided Europe, and on to Europe's post-Communist development.

I have read many, many history books; most being the standard list of names and dates, battles and elections. But every once in a while I encounter a fascinating book that goes into depth explaining how things developed and why. This book is definitely one of the latter. I especially enjoyed the inter-war period, which explained so much that was unclear to me; things like the development of the race issue, and the reasons behind the ethnic troubles that rocked so many middle and eastern European countries in that era.

This book gave me a lot of food for thought. If you like a book that makes you think, then I highly recommend that you get this one. It is a fascinating and highly informative look at post World War One Europe.

brillaint and thought provoking
this book does lead you to wanting to know and find out more, including economic theories and practices. and yes, it is on the undergraduate reading list.......
the difficulties expressed by some of the reviews in regard to the last 20 years is a problem of these matters being viewed as contempory rather than historical, as they are so very recent. we may need to be further on in time before recent events can be analysed as easily as events at the beginning of last century

Europe painted black
This is an excellent book, well worth the time. On the other hand, it is not a good introduction to 20th C. European history, it is too polemical (my copy has a blurb recommending it as survey reading for undergraduates, something which it definitely is not - the ideal reader should already have a good idea of European history before tackling this).

Bad points:

I nearly took a star off (or even two stars off) for the sentence in chapter 8 which attempts to allocate (at least part of) the blame for the Stalinisation of postwar eastern Europe to the west.

He generally seems to go easy on the excesses of communism, and Stalinism in particular: yes, there is plenty of condemnation, but also a slight impression of omelettes and broken eggs.

The discussion of the post-war west degenerates into a rant in places, where the first half of the book is a much more considered and convincing polemic. Something a little less intemperate would have made a more effective point.

It is difficult to say for certain in a book that attempts to cover so much in 400 pages, but I get the impression that Mazower's grasp of economics and economic history is not on par with his social or political history (that omelette again).

The analytic epilogue is weak.

Good points: the (resolutely pessimistic) argument for most of its course is well argued and provoking.

The discussion of the fall of communism, if isolated from the discussion of the West that came before is very good.

The central argument, which ties up with an analysis of the disaster of the collapse of Yugoslavia (where Mazower is on home ground) as the last working out of WWI is elegant and provoking.