The Proud Tower by Barbara W. Tuchman

 The Proud Tower by Barbara W. Tuchman

Not just History, but Literature at its Best

Popular narrations of History invariably tend to simplify the causes of cataclysmic events. We are often told that the Great War was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. What was the powder keg underlying the trigger? Martin Gilbert (First World War) cites Serbian nationalism, as the root cause. Serbians scattered in different places of the vast and unwieldy Austro-Hungarian Empire desirous of uniting with Serbia were stirring the violent broth that led to the assassination- the proverbial final straw that broke the back of the Empire’s tolerance. Serbia was attacked, and the German Kaiser, always fishing for trouble, joined in, to spread the repercussions further than imagined.

Tuchman spreads the canvas wider still to examine the growing rumblings of social change that engulfed Europe in the years 1890-1914. Here is narration of History as Biography: Salisbury in Britain, Reed in the United States, Alfred Dreyfus in France, the dubious peace dove Tsar Nicholas II in Russia, and Richard Strauss in Germany were pivotal individuals whose careers as either flagbearers or victims of status quo prepared the ground for the greatest conflagration that History was to witness. The ‘liberation philosophies’ that catalyzed social change were Anarchism, Socialism and Syndicalism (See Roads to Freedom, by Bertrand Russell), the latter as upheld by that idealist Joures. The book and its wide sweep ends with the assassination of Joures. This last event reflects the triumph of Nationalism over Socialist Internationalism, as the workers- all members of the Socialist Parties in their respective countries, march off to wage war in the defense of their respective national borders.  

Today as countries in Western Europe fight a proxy war with Russia, using Ukraine as the fall guy, it is time to examine, Tuchman-style, the roots of Russophobia, which in the first place led an expanded NATO to search for a new adversary, in the face of the collapse of Warsaw Pact.

Tuchman’s book is not just History, but Literature at its best.