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The Expansion of Europe The Culmination of Modern History By: Ramsay Muir (1872-1941) |
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THE CULMINATION OF MODERN HISTORY
BY RAMSAY MUIR
PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER SECOND EDITION TO MY MOTHER PREFACE
The purpose of this book is twofold. We realise to day, as never before, that the fortunes of the world, and
of every individual in it, are deeply affected by the problems of
world politics and by the imperial expansion and the imperial rivalries
of the greater states of Western civilisation. But when men who have
given no special attention to the history of these questions try to
form a sound judgment on them, they find themselves handicapped by the
lack of any brief and clear resume of the subject. I have tried, in
this book, to provide such a summary, in the form of a broad survey,
unencumbered with detail, but becoming fuller as it comes nearer to our
own time. That is my first purpose. In fulfilling it I have had to
cover much well trodden ground. But I hope I have avoided the aridity
of a mere compendium of facts. My second purpose is rather more ambitious. In the course of my
narrative I have tried to deal with ideas rather than with mere facts.
I have tried to bring out the political ideas which are implicit in, or
which result from, the conquest of the world by Western civilisation;
and to show how the ideas of the West have affected the outer world,
how far they have been modified to meet its needs, and how they have
developed in the process. In particular I have endeavoured to direct
attention to the significant new political form which we have seen
coming into existence, and of which the British Empire is the oldest
and the most highly developed example the world state, embracing
peoples of many different types, with a Western nation state as its
nucleus. The study of this new form seems to me to be a neglected
branch of political science, and one of vital importance. Whether or
not it is to be a lasting form, time alone will show. Finally I have
tried to display, in this long imperialist conflict, the strife of two
rival conceptions of empire: the old, sterile, and ugly conception
which thinks of empire as mere domination, ruthlessly pursued for the
sole advantage of the master, and which seems to me to be most fully
exemplified by Germany; and the nobler conception which regards empire
as a trusteeship, and which is to be seen gradually emerging and
struggling towards victory over the more brutal view, more clearly and
in more varied forms in the story of the British Empire than in perhaps
any other part of human history. That is why I have given a perhaps
disproportionate attention to the British Empire. The war is
determining, among other great issues, which of these conceptions is to
dominate the future. In its first form this book was completed in the autumn of 1916; and it
contained, as I am bound to confess, some rather acidulated sentences
in the passages which deal with the attitude of America towards
European problems. These sentences were due to the deep disappointment
which most Englishmen and most Frenchmen felt with the attitude of
aloofness which America seemed to have adopted towards the greatest
struggle for freedom and justice ever waged in history. It was an
indescribable satisfaction to be forced by events to recognise that I
was wrong, and that these passages of my book ought not to have been
written as I wrote them. There is a sort of solemn joy in feeling that
America, France, and Britain, the three nations which have contributed
more than all the rest of the world put together to the establishment
of liberty and justice on the earth, are now comrades in arms, fighting
a supreme battle for these great causes. May this comradeship never be
broken. May it bring about such a decision of the present conflict as
will open a new era in the history of the world a world now unified,
as never before, by the final victory of Western civilisation which it
is the purpose of this book to describe. Besides rewriting and expanding the passages on America, I have seized
the opportunity of this new issue to alter and enlarge certain other
sections of the book, notably the chapter on the vital period
1878 1900, which was too slightly dealt with in the original edition... Continue reading book >>
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History |
Politics |
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