cover image 1916: A Global History

1916: A Global History

Keith Jeffery. Bloomsbury, $30 (448p) ISBN 978-1-62040-269-6

Jeffery (MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909–1949), of Queen’s University–Belfast, shifts the focus of the Great War’s pivotal year, 1916, away from the conventional milieu of the Western Front, instead depicting the global dimensions of the metastasizing conflict. Jeffery moves from region to region, event to event, to demonstrate “the astonishing range, variety, and interconnectedness of the wartime experience.” Interconnectedness is a crucial point for him; the human element is his focus. Jeffery establishes the integration of “local loyalties, differences, and antagonisms” into the framework of a worldwide crisis of legitimacy. The war stressed systems on one hand and loyalties on the other. By 1916 the able-bodied adults of whole populations were being mobilized for a conflict with seemingly inexhaustible demands, yet no apparent end was in sight. Taxes, supply shortages, conscription, and casualties generated and exacerbated national, ethnic, social, and economic fault lines from the British Isles to Asian Russia. Yet from state and public perspectives alike, the efforts and sacrifices legitimated violent repression of domestic dissent and extinguished halfhearted efforts to secure a compromise peace. “Mobilizing ideologies in support of war aims” sustained the conflict but generated “bitter antagonisms and unrealized ambitions” whose present-day traces, Jeffery concludes, remain surprisingly vital. Agent: A.M. Heath & Company Ltd. (U.K.). (Jan.)