WORLD HISTORY FROM 1914 TO 1950

DAVID THOMSON WORLD HISTORY From 1914 to 1950 This book has been written on two main assumptions. One is that a history of the world, in any period, need concern itself only with those events, movements, men, and ideas which have importance for the course of 'world history'. It is, therefore, no part of its purpose to give a continuous account of the history of any one nation, or even of any continent, between 1914 and 1950. Other works on a larger and more appropriate scale have done that already; and in the Introduction I have given reasons for supposing that, in this period, a collection of the separate and continuous histories of the six continents would not be 'wold history' at all. The second assumption has been that the world historian ought to keep his feet on the earth. I have not conceived the purpose of contemporary history to be to serve as a finger of Providence, Pointing towards some desirable or ineluctable solution for contemporary problems; and I have tried to avoid the occupational disease liable to afflict many writers on world affairs, which leads to indulgence in poetic imagery and intoxication with cosmic processes. Somewhere between safe generalizations about what has happened and very unsafe generalizations about why it has happened, there is perhaps room for generalizations about how it happened. This I have taken as my second test of relevance. But I know that it is only moderately safe, and in conjunction with my first test of relevance has led to the exclusion of much that some may reasonably expect to find in a book bearing this title. David Thomson became Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1957. He has been a University Lecturer in History in the University of Cambridge. He was Visiting Professor in Public Law and Government at Columbia University in New York. Dr. Thomson has written eight books on history and political science, including Europe since Napoleon, Personality in Politics, Democracy in France, England in the Nineteenth Century, Two Frenchmen : Pierre Laval and Charles de Gaulle and World History. His articles have appeared in both scholarly and popular journals in Great Britain and the United States.

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