This was a fascinating first hour at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in which Charles Emmerson looked at the world before the First World War in 1913. It was clearly a subject which had widespread appeal as the event (11am Sat 10th August) was sold out on the first day that bookings opened and every seat was taken.
Emmerson, who came top of his class at Oxford where he studied Modern History, has always been fascinated, as he explained, about what the world looked like before the First World War started. He had examined the period as the last summer of peace before the conflict with the drum beat of war always in the background. He suggested that, at the time, thinking was governed by the old upstairs-downstairs order of society with the view being very much of the single family, the small village, or small section of a town; it was perhaps a very parochial vision of the world.
He said it was brought back to him by his own search for relatives in the Aberfeldy area before the family moved to Australia in the 1850s. He described finding only memorials to those who had fallen in the wars and for those who fell in the First War the losses were so great it must have had a devastating effect on the area.
He asked the audience to imagine looking down a prism at the time and to consider whether the First World War actually needed to happen - and therefore if the Second World War might too, never have happened. But at the time the rise of Germany, the war hunger of the Kaiser, all seem reasons today, but at the time in 1913 things might have appeared very different; the Kaiser, King George V and the Tsar all met for a royal wedding in Berlin and seemed to behaving in a congenial manner towards each other - added to which there had been no major European war for a hundred years and many thought war was simply not going to happen. At the time it is interesting that Beethoven was by far the most popular composer in Europe. German domination seemed to have reached all fields.
But people at the time were already thinking of globalisation; good hotels, across Europe, boasted the best French waiter service and the whole world appeared to be covered by 'playgrounds' such as Bermuda, Greece, Japan and the Philippines - it was becoming a 'global world' with the under sea cables connecting continents so that the world appeared to some 'to be one'.
The advent of the motor car associated with consumerism led to a rapid expanding of the industrial base across the world with the consequences we see today. But at the time Europe was seen very much as 'the centre of the universe'. With the war this was to change.
Emmerson explained that he visited twenty three cities in total, from London, where he started, to Paris, Berlin, Vienna and St Petersburg but adding some less prominent ones such as Jerusalem, Tehran, Constantinople, Detroit and Mexico City. In each he assessed the situation in 1913 in the immediate pre-war year and read some of his impressions to the audience.
He described pre-war St Petersburg in 1913, with some people seeing a revolution as an emerging threat, while others felt that the threat of a revolution was receding. He did say that with royal forty two gun salutes and church bells ringing to celebrate for the Tsar who was surrounded by all his supporters, the possibility of revolution must have seemed unlikely, however, by then the seeds of the 1917 revolution had been planted.
Across the Atlantic and away from the uncertainties of Europe the explosion of mass consumption was erupting. Emmerson read out his description of the 900 page Sears mail order catalogue which covered almost every possible item a person might want. But he suggested that the real 'father of the modern economy' was Henry Ford with his ruthless exploitation of the automobile market.
The third location Emmerson took us to was Jerusalem which is a city where so many nations have interests. He described how a newly arrived senior diplomat found he was immediately being called on by representatives of many nations and many religious sects. After a tiring day the weary diplomat said, "oh my, Jerusalem is a beautiful city - if only I did not have so many 'friends' !"
There were many questions, but Emmerson stressed that with there having been no war for over a hundred years it took just a small push to launch states into a conflict. He pointed out that Britain did not actually need to go to war but there seemed to be no one who could actually stop the slide into conflict. There was perhaps a lack up experience, of understanding what a modern European war would be like. The only experience had been of wars in Africa and Asia and this failed in any way to show what lay ahead in the way of discomfort and suffering.
This was a splendid introduction to a most carefully researched and well written account of the world as it was in 1913. Emmerson has painted a clear picture of the world immediately prior to the start of the First World War, which led to so many changes in Europe and in the rest of the world. For those who love history, this is a book not to be missed.