H-Diplo Roundtable Review

Cambridge:Harvard University Press. 2014. ISBN: 9780674729711 (hardcover, $45.00/£29.95/€35.00)

Modern European history was under the anniversary spotlight in 2014-2015. The centenary of the beginning of the First World War brought forth a steady stream of commemorations and publications. Standing out was Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers, a global bestseller, whose controversial reinterpretation of the crisis of July 1914 and of the responsibility for its violent outcome ignited a widespread academic and public debate.1 Overshadowed by the anniversary of the Great War’s outbreak was the bicentenary of another great war’s conclusion, two hundred years after the end of the Napoleonic wars. In this relatively subdued realm, most of the attention was devoted to the final instance of armed conflict, with official commemorations of, books about, large-scale reenactments of, and multimedia exhibitions displaying the Battle of Waterloo.