![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLast week, John Quiggin engaged in a bit of alternate history writing at Crooked Timber. There, he imagined a war equivalent to the First World War starting in 1911, one that ended in a v victory of the Central Powers and could even conceivably be blamed on the Entente powers.
I'm not necessarily convinced by the exercise. As commenters note, you may need deeper reasons for Britain and France to adopt more aggressive policies towards Germany, particularly (on Britain's part) to justify invading Belgium. The explanation as to why the war starts in the first place does not ring true to me. Likewise, it does not make intuitive sense to make that a war waged by Britain and France in 1911, three years before 1914, against a relatively weaker Germany, would end worse for the two powers in any case.
What say you?
Looking back at the Great War raises lots of questions. Was it, as most observers concluded in the aftermath of the war, the inevitable product of a clash of rival imperialisms, or of rising class tensions. Or should we prefer the views of the revisionists who stress the war guilt of the Entente powers, and particularly of France? Or was it, perhaps, a tragic and avoidable accident?
Starting with the now-dominant revisionist case, there’s no doubt that French aggression against Morocco, going back to the first Moroccan crisis of 1905-06, was the proximate cause of the war. Not content with the effective control over Moroccan affairs gained in that episode, France used the rebellion against the Sultan to establish a formal “protectorate”. The contemptuous dismissal of the Algeciras conference agreement as a “scrap of paper” presaged the entire French war strategy. Most notable was Joffre’s invasion of Belgium (doubtfully accepted as necessary by Poincare, who had just displaced Joseph Caillaux as Prime Minister). The postwar emergence of an anti-Semitic dictatorship, headed by Marshal Petain, is seen as representing an inherent French tendency to authoritarianism and aggression, reflected in everything from the Bonapartes to l’affaire Dreyfus
The other Entente powers come off little better on this account. Lloyd George was already the dominant figure in the British government and signalled his aggressive intent with the Mansion House speech. The fall of Herbert Asquith as a result of a sex scandal propelled Lloyd George into the Prime Ministership at a crucial moment. His ascension ensured that there would be no negotiated peace. The Entente with the Czarist empire adds weight to the indictment. The aim of encircling and crushing the nascent democracies of the German-speaking world could scarcely be more obvious.
But it is the documents unearthed from wartime archives that are seen by revisionists as sealing the case. The Sykes-Picot agreement, carving up the Middle East, the Constantinople Agreement handing the centre of the Islamic world to Russia, and the offers to Italy under the Treaty of London make the case for Entente war guilt seem unarguable.
I'm not necessarily convinced by the exercise. As commenters note, you may need deeper reasons for Britain and France to adopt more aggressive policies towards Germany, particularly (on Britain's part) to justify invading Belgium. The explanation as to why the war starts in the first place does not ring true to me. Likewise, it does not make intuitive sense to make that a war waged by Britain and France in 1911, three years before 1914, against a relatively weaker Germany, would end worse for the two powers in any case.
What say you?
