ISBN: Ostalo
Godina izdanja: 1954
Jezik: Engleski
Autor: Strani

U dobrom stanju

World History from 1914 to 1950.

By David Thomson.

London, Oxford University Press, 1954. x+246pp. Index.

(The Home University Library of Modem Knowledge. Ed. by Gilbert Murray, O.M., and Sir George Clark.)



There was a time, not very long ago, when dons at our senior universities used to frown on their colleagues who dared to write small books on large stretches of history, most severely if that history were recent. Dr David Thomson`s latest book should make everyone glad that that time is past. It is a model of its kind —a kind still rare in this country, though common enough in France.



It is not a text-book so much as an essay in historical perspective. Dr Thomson is robust in his judgements and nicely wary in their phrasing. Of the post-1918 peacemakers he writes: ‘. . . the makers of the settlement achieved more than should have seemed probable when they first met’ {p. 83); and of the 1929-39 decade: . . The most striking feature of world history during this decade is the inter-penetration of the ideas of nationalism and socialism’ (p. 141). He sees the second world war as ‘one of the greatest failures of human intelligence and organization in world history’ (p. 164), and he dares say that ‘if the first world war had killed dynastic imperialism, it was probable that the second was a death-blow to colonial imperialism` (p. 177).

J. Hampden Jackson