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Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, by Mark Mazower
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"A useful, important book that reminds us, at the right time, how hard [European unity] has been, and how much care must be taken to avoid the terrible old temptations." --Los Angeles Times
Dark Continent provides an alternative history of the twentieth century, one in which the triumph of democracy was anything but a forgone conclusion and fascism and communism provided rival political solutions that battled and sometimes triumphed in an effort to determine the course the continent would take.
Mark Mazower strips away myths that have comforted us since World War II, revealing Europe as an entity constantly engaged in a bloody project of self-invention.��Here is a history not of inevitable victories and forward marches, but of narrow squeaks and unexpected twists, where townships boast a bronze of Mussolini on horseback one moment, only to melt it down and recast it as a pair of noble partisans the next.��Unflinching, intelligent, Dark Continent provides a provocative vision of Europe's past, present, and future-and confirms Mark Mazower as a historian of valuable gifts.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
- Sales Rank: #550422 in eBooks
- Published on: 2009-05-20
- Released on: 2009-05-20
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
As the European Union introduces a common currency to world financial markets, Mark Mazower's Dark Continent critically examines the notion of "Europe." The Euro notwithstanding, Mazower argues that the "'Europe' of the European Union may be a promise or a delusion, but it is not a reality." Renouncing the notion of an essential "Europe," Mazower instead explores the conflicts which dominated the continent in the 20th century and the social value systems which informed them.
Mazower orders his examination chronologically, commencing with the collapse of Europe's continental empires following World War I and the initial European experiments in democracy and national self-determination which followed. He continues with analyses of state interventions in family health and the importance of healthy progeny, the financial crisis of the 1920s, the Hitler regime, the transformed democracy that emerged following World War II, the gradual erosion of the social state in the 1980s, and, finally, the collapse of communism. He consistently displays a firm grip of European history, directing his argument to readers with a foundational knowledge of the events that shaped 20th century Europe rather than historical novices unfamiliar with the period. Provocatively insightful, Dark Continent makes a convincing argument for a European 21st century characterized by continuity and harmony through divergence. "If Europeans can give up their desperate desire to find a single, workable definition of themselves," Mazower concludes, "they may come to terms more easily with the diversity and dissension which will be as much their future as their past." --Bertina Loeffler
From Publishers Weekly
Mazower (Inside Hitler's Greece) shapes his well-written history of Europe's 20th century as a struggle among liberal democracy, communism and fascism. Avoiding the pitfalls of Marxist interpretation on the one hand and capitalist triumphalism on the other, he shows how the failure of liberal democracy after WWI led to the experiment with fascism, which was defeated (principally by the Communists) at an enormous cost. In the first half of this century, he writes, between 60 million and 70 million Europeans died violently in wars or civil unrest, but the figure for the period after the defeat of fascism is under one million. Mazower takes this as evidence that the Cold War was a social and economic, rather than a military, conflict. While this may be true of the Cold War in Europe, the assertion fails to take into account the proxy wars fought by the superpowers in Asia, Africa and Latin America. But this omission doesn't detract from the overall excellence of Mazower's work. The defeat of fascism and the fall of communism have left the field to liberal democracy, which is now faced with the problem it failed to solve in the beginning of the century: how to create a workable relationship between capitalism and representative government. Mazower argues that Europeans can best work this out if they realize that their national differences are greater than any common culture and that Europe has enjoyed its greatest period of peace and prosperity precisely during the period in which it has lost its primacy in world affairs. Maps. Tables not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A masterful account of Europe's cursed century. When the smoke cleared from the ruins of the Second World War, many observers assumed that Europe as it had been known for centuries had come to an end. From the physical destruction of cities to the moral catastrophe of fascism and Nazism, it seemed as though those on the Continent had committed a collective suicide. A new type of warcoldhovered on the horizon, leading some to envision the planets complete and final destruction. But as British historian Mazower (Univ. of Sussex; Inside Hitler's Greece, 1993) makes clear, things werent always like this. The century had begun with high hopes, dashed by the bloody conflict of the Great War. Moreover, Europe's reconstruction and the relatively peaceful close of the Cold War give reason for hope. More insightfully, Mazower stresses that the very concept of ``Europe'' has metamorphosed with startling rapidity over the last hundred years. And this ability to change may well prove to be the continent's saving grace, he avers. The book is organized around the major three-way ideological struggle of the century: that between liberal democracy, fascism, and communism. Both fascism and communism claimed not only to be on the side of history, but also to be offering an end to it. Liberal democracy, the most modest of ideologies, appears to have weathered the storm best. Yet Mazower refuses to offer such platitudes as that liberal democracy ``won'' the Cold War or that weve therefore arrived at historys ``end.'' Instead, as he explains in an epilogue, the task of ``making Europe'' continues to this day. Well written, with an excellent grasp of sources in several languages, this is a landmark study for the general reader. (10 maps) -- Copyright �1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Thoughtful
By R. Albin
This insightful overview of modern European history was apparently written in the early 1990s and is probably a response to some of the triumphalism that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of Mazower's basic points is that European history does not show a teleological progression to the triumph of democracy and liberal capitalism. Mazower opens with the large scale failures in Central and Eastern Europe of the democratic settlements of the Paris Peace Conference. He writes insightfully of the contradictions imposed by the ethnic heterogeneity of Eastern Europe, ideas of community minority rights, the concept of nation-states, and the failures of the League of Nations system to guard minority rights. These strains were paralleled by and exacerbated by the great crisis of liberal capitalism whose most dramatic manifestation was the Great Depression. Against this background, Mazower stresses the major alternatives to traditional liberalism capitalism and democracy, communism and German fascism, were not aberrations but derived from deeply rooted alternative versions of social organization.
Prefiguring his excellent book on the Nazi Empire, Mazower provides a particularly good analysis of the Nazi state and Empire as an alternative path of European history. He stresses also that the Nazis were defeated in large part by the exertions of the Soviet Union, a somewhat ironic outcome in which communism came to the rescue of liberal democracy. Mazower follows with a nice analysis of the opening of the Cold War and the postwar boom, something that occurred in all European states, including those in Eastern Europe under Soviet domination. This boom resulted partly from greater state involvement in the economy and was accompanied by expanding social services that brought considerable social peace. Others, like Tony Judt in his excellent book Postwar, have made this point as well. Mazower concludes with some nice analysis of the problems encountered by European states in the relative stagnant periods of the 1970s and 1980s, and the fall of the Soviet Union. Again, this is a careful analysis that attacks conventional triumphalism.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Read it at least twice
By Jose Hanson
I agree with an earlier reviewer that this is the best history of 20th Century Europe ever. Keen insights and fresh ideas leap off every page.
But it needs to be repeated: the Dark Continent is not an introduction to the subject. Unless you have a good knowledge of Europe and its history, this is not yet the book for you. Someday maybe, but for now save your money.
Some found Mazower's style dry and difficult. I started reading it in a coffee bar and got half-way through before I realized the time. That doesn't happen very often. To me, the writing is clear and fast-moving, and the threads are easy to follow.
Imperialism, colonialism, class, nation, prejudice, fascism, communism, democracy, apathy, capitalism, genocide, left, right, in-between, all are described in a calm, intelligent manner, which is perhaps why some see Mazower as being soft on Stalin or Hitler. You won't find hysteria or hyperbole, but then the facts speak for themselves without the need for comments by the author. Think about it: 60-million people were killed in "civilized" Europe in the first half of the 20th Century. With a story like that, a historian doesn't need to raise his voice to get the readers attention.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A Masterpiece of Coherent History
By John Mccarthy
This is the most coherent presentation of 20th century European history that I have ever read.
The reason that I say this is because it explains more clearly that I have ever read elsewhere the causal connections that integrate what happened in Europe between 1914 and 1998 (the year that Dark Continent was published).
Mark Mazower, the brilliant author of this book, basically sees this entire period through a lens that is primarily, but not exclusively, socio-economic. In his view, to which I am persuaded, socio-economic factors, both good and bad, were for the most part, the driving and controlling factors behind all the mega-events of 20th century Europe.
Consider each of them: World War I, the defeat of Germany, its economic and political collapse, the world wide depression, the rise of communism, fascism and Nazism, World War II, the Cold War, the Balance of Power, the economic socialization of Western Europe, the collapse of the Russian empire, worldwide decolonization, the rise of individualism. What a panoply of cataclysmic events, yet they all had their roots in socio-economic factors. One might say that all of these major movements and events were the result of rising and falling expectations. And, to some extent, all of them were poisoned by utopianisms of various shades and colors.
I recommend this book. It is a gem.
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