Resize Text: David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Modern Warfare. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
James J. Sheehan, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
Although the subject of warfare during the Napoleonic era has not exactly suffered from inattention, David Bell believes that the reading public needs yet another account. He turns out to be right. In The First Total War, he has produced a masterful volume, written with panache and brimming with insights.
Bell, a historian who teaches at Johns Hopkins, began work on his book at the end of the 1990s, a decade fairly bristling with big ideas. History had ended. A unipolar era was at hand. Globalization promised to transform the international order, bringing in its wake both prosperity and peace. The United States stood astride the world, its status as sole superpower and indispensable nation acknowledged by all.
As Bell immersed himself in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe, he witnessed the demolition of these late twentieth-century illusions, which then gave way to early twenty-first century anxiety and confusion. In the wake of 9/11, a radically different—yet no less illusory—set of big ideas emerged. Through the concerted exercise of American power, President George W. Bush vowed to eliminate tyranny and make an end to evil ...
James Sheehan’s Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? nicely complements Bell’s account, describing the evolution of European attitudes toward war across the nearly two centuries since Napoleon left the scene. Everything about this book is admirable apart from its quirky title, which, to readers of a certain age, will conjure up images of stringy-haired folkies earnestly strumming their guitars. A more apt title might have been: Rejecting Armageddon.
Long after Bonaparte’s demise, his ghost continued to haunt Europe. Major powers and lesser powers alike persuaded themselves that defending against the next Napoleon required the maintenance of a mass army. The chief function of the modern nation-state that emerged in the nineteenth century was to prepare for war. Lecturing at the University of Berlin late in that century, the historian Heinrich von Treitschke made the essential point: “The protection of its citizens with weapons remains the state’s first and most essential task.” Treitschke was not expressing a peculiarly German view; this perspective pervaded Europe.
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book, The Limits of Power, will appear in August.
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