A.
A01=Paul W. Schroeder
Anderson
Austria
Author_Paul W. Schroeder
Britain
Category=DNL
Category=JPS
Category=NHWR5
Christopher
Clark
Ended
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
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Europe
Evans
Ferguson
forthcoming
France
Germany
historiography
Ian
J.
John
Keegan
Kennedy
Kershaw
Macmillan
Margaret
Mark
Mazower
Meaning
military
P
Paul
Peace
Perry
Power
Pursuit
Richard
Russia
Second
sleepwalkers
Taylor
technology
Product details
- ISBN 9781836745563
- Weight: 305g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 16 Jun 2026
- Publisher: Verso Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Stealing Horses to Great Applause is arguably the finest consideration yet of the origins of the First World War. Breaking with accounts focusing on the actions of a single state or the final countdown to hostilities, Paul W. Schroeder analyzes the systemic crisis that engulfed the Great Powers in 1914. Increasingly, they had become more interested in colonial expansion abroad ('stealing horses to great applause', in the old Spanish adage) than in the traditional conventions of European peacemaking. They forgot the rule that a balance of power required the preservation of all its essential actors, including the weakest of them, Austria-Hungary. This the British too failed to heed. The Central Powers may have started the war, but that does not mean they in any real sense caused it.
Stealing Horses includes appraisals of Niall Ferguson and A. J. P. Taylor as well as an extensive unpublished final work rethinking the First World War as 'the last eighteenth-century war'.
With an introduction by Perry Anderson.
Stealing Horses includes appraisals of Niall Ferguson and A. J. P. Taylor as well as an extensive unpublished final work rethinking the First World War as 'the last eighteenth-century war'.
With an introduction by Perry Anderson.
PAUL W. SCHROEDER (1927-2020) is the author of, among other things, The Trans-formation of European Politics, 1763-1848 and America's Fatal Leap, 1991-2016. He taught history and political science at the University of Illinois for many years.
