1917: War, Peace, and Revolution

by David Stevenson

Overview

1917 was a year of calamitous events, and one of pivotal importance in the development of the First World War. In 1917: War, Peace, and Revolution, leading historian of World War One, David Stevenson, examines this crucial year in context and illuminates the century that followed. He shows how in this one year the war was transformed, but also what drove the conflict onwards and how it continued to escalate.

Two developments in particular—the Russian Revolution and American intervention—had worldwide repercussions. Offering a close examination of the key decisions, Stevenson considers Germany's campaign of 'unrestricted' submarine warfare, America's declaration of war in response, and Britain's frustration of German strategy by adopting the convoy system, as well as why (paradoxically) the military and political stalemate in Europe persisted.

Focusing on the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, on the disastrous spring offensive that plunged the French army into mutiny, on the summer attacks that undermined the moderate Provisional Government in Russia and exposed Italy to national humiliation at Caporetto, and on the British decision for the ill-fated Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), 1917 offers a truly international understanding of events. The failed attempts to end the war by negotiation further clarify the underlying forces that kept it going.

David Stevenson also analyses the global consequences of the year's developments, showing how countries such as Brazil and China joined the belligerents, Britain offered 'responsible government' to India, and the Allies promised a Jewish national home in Palestine. Blending political and military history, and moving from capital to capital and between the cabinet chamber and the battle front, the book highlights the often tumultuous debates through which leaders entered and escalated the war, and the paradox that continued fighting could be justified as the shortest road towards regaining peace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198702399
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	655,604
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

David Stevenson holds the Stevenson Chair of International History at the London School of Economics & Political Science, where he has twice been Head of Department and teaches and lectures on the history of international relations. He is the author or editor of seven books about the origins, course, and consequences of the First World War. His publications include Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904-1914 (OUP, 1996), 1914-1918: the History of the First World War (Penguin, 2004), With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 (Penguin, 2011), and Arms Races in International Politics: from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century (OUP, 2016), co-edited with Thomas Mahnken and Joseph Maiolo.

Table of Contents

Preface and AcknowledgementsList of Principal PersonalitiesIntroductionI. Atlantic Prologue1. Unleashing the U-Boats2. Enter America3. Britain Adopts ConvoysII. Continental Impasse4. Tsar Nicholas Abdicates5. France Attacks6. The Kerensky Offensive7. The Road to Passchendaele8. Collapse at Caporetto9. Peace Moves and their RejectionIII. Global Repercussions10. The Spread of Intervention: Greece, Brazil, Siam, China11. Responsible Government for India12. A Jewish National HomeIV. ConclusionTowards 1918: Lenin's Revolution, the Ludendorff Offensives, and Wilson's Fourteen PointsNotesBibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/23/2017
Stevenson (Arms Races in International Politics), chair in international history at the London School of Economics, adds a distinguished volume to his half-dozen major works on WWI. He focuses on the war’s forgotten year, when the nations of Europe desperately sought to escape the “war trap” they had dug since 1914. Stevenson presents this process as a study in contingencies: the hows and whys of decisions over whether “to intervene, to repudiate compromise, and to attack.” Each nation’s responsible decision-making parties were held in high regard, yet though their decisions weren’t uniformly disastrous, Stevenson writes, none fulfilled expectations. As the year opened the war “remained Germany’s to lose.” One Entente army after another “wasted itself in vain offensives”: France in Champagne, Britain in Flanders, and Italy on the Isonzo, while Russia’s post-czarist Provisional Government sought to prove it still deserved Allied support. But between January and November, unrestricted submarine warfare brought the U.S. into the conflict. The Bolshevik revolution then transformed Russia into a denier of Europe’s prewar order. Initiatives for a compromise peace collapsed and the war’s consequences spread far beyond Europe. Stevenson’s comprehensively researched and perceptively reasoned analysis stands apart from similar histories by showing that the conflict’s outcome was determined “not through blind impersonal forces but through deliberate will.” Illus. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"1917 is a sound, learned work of breadth and insight, a study of the year 1917 as a microcosm of the war itself." — Wm. Roger Louis, Wall Street Journal

"Stevenson's comprehensively researched and perceptively reasoned analysis stands apart from similar histories by showing that the conflict's outcome was determined 'not through blind impersonal forces but through deliberate will." — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"1917 is a triumph by a masterly historian, and one of the most important books to have been published during the centenary years of the First World War." — Gary Sheffield, BBC History Magazine

"1917 will be of great interest to those readers who wish to better understand the broader implications of strategic and diplomatic decisions during the penultimate year of the conflict. It is in that field that Stevenson is an unrivalled master and his comprehensively researched book on 1917 will be welcomed by many." — Robert Gerwarth, Literary Review

"A welcome addition to the literature that challenges the all-too-safe and pernicious stereotypes of the history of the First World War that unfortunately still dominate popular culture." — Peter Morgan, Military History Magazine

"1917: War, Peace, and Revolution represents a thoughtful synthesis of relevant secondary literature and published primary and archival sources. Its narrative is enriched by an invaluable bibliography, maps and photographs spread throughout the text, and helpful lists of abbreviations and principal personalities. It is a seminal work that will engage and inform students, scholars, and general readers alike." — Gregory J. Dehler, Michigan War Studies Review

"David Stevenson's book is a cool and original account of the heat of war in 1917. It surpasses previous studies in terms of its global range and its archival depth. Here is a history of decision-making by the sleepwalkers who kept on their murky path into war three years after its outbreak, and of those few - including Lenin - who found a way out of the slaughterhouse. Stevenson's is history as tragedy, with hubris bringing down those who thought they could master the destructive forces of the Great War." — Jay Winter, Yale University

"The European nations had dug themselves by 1917 into a war trap seemingly without exit - this is the starting point of David Stevenson's new book. The events of 1917, war, peace, and revolution, the struggle to get out of the war, get here a thorough reassessment. The book is an example for the combination of competent analysis with a gripping narrative and clear judgement." — Holger Afflerbach, University of Leeds

From the Publisher

2017-10-17
Thoroughgoing study of the year that gave at least a hint of promise that World War I would indeed be the war to end all wars.By 1917, writes Stevenson (International History/London School of Economics; With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918, 2011, etc.), the fighting on the western front had bogged down into mutual slaughter. In the battles surrounding Verdun alone, for instance, there were well over 1 million casualties, and the generals kept throwing bodies at the other line without a hope of winning. Even so, the German kaiser and British prime minister, among others, kept at it. Two signal events occurred to shake things up in 1917: the Russian Revolution occurred, soon to remove Russia from the fight, and the United States entered the conflict, pouring men and materiel into combat and ending the stalemate. Before this happened, however, the Central Powers and Allies were desperately seeking ways out of what Stevenson calls the "war trap"—"on one level the story of 1917 is of their efforts to escape it." But there was no real way out, leading to "the collapse of initiatives for a compromise peace" and the slaughters at Verdun, Caporetto, Passchendaele, and elsewhere. Ironies were attendant; by Stevenson's account, the U.S. might have done better to continue supplying the Allies with war goods than enter the fight itself, since the war industry lifted the country out of recession into an economic boom, and things might have turned out very differently in the Middle East had German overtures to the Zionist leaders been successful. American entry—which Woodrow Wilson took pains to say was to help France, not Britain—intensified at least some of the slaughter, too, since the German army was determined to break the European Allies before American troops could enter the theater.Stevenson examines the deeper implications of strategic and diplomatic decisions during the penultimate year of the conflict, casting a new light on events. Of considerable interest to students of the war and its tortuous aftermath.

Kirkus Reviews