Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, from 1453 to the Present

First off, this is a brilliant book, and one that will be -- for the majority of those interested in history -- an eye-opener. If you like A. J. P. Taylor, the Namier of the foreign policy essays of the '30s (not "Namierite" particularism), Burckhardt (the Burckhardt of the Lectures, not of the :Renaissance in Italy") and Kissinger (as in "Diplomacy"), you will find much to admire in this book. If you are unfamiliar with that kind of historical writing, you will, I think, have a lot to gain from reading this.Forget for a moment the Germany-as-fulcrum-of-European-history part, which I think is really a kind of obvious "thesis". I don't see that as the main point of the book. Rather, what Simms does here is re-envision European (and to some extent all Western) history through the exclusive lens of war, state actors and balance-of-power politics. You read him and understand the view that most of what we are taught to consider the motive forces of history -- domestic politics, economics, "culture", governments competent or not, oppressive or progressive -- all this falls away. All that matters is the eternal struggle by "states" to maintain themselves, which almost means to aggrandize themselves (since a state must ascend to avoid decline). The European continent is constantly at war or preparing for the next war. Little else matters, since in Simms' view both elites and common people are motivated to support or change their government (and their form of government -- to choose either the authoritarian/meritocratic model of Prussia and Catherinian Russia, or the more open, commercial, parliamentary model of the UK). If a government chooses to attempt to alleviate the lot of the poor, that is driven by the need to improve the quality of the soldiering pool, not by any internal political pressure from below. The Puritan revolution in England in the 1640's? That was all about the Stuart's refusal to support Protestant princes in Germany. The French Revolution? Look to the decision of the French "political nation" that the Bourbons were no longer capable of choosing or executing a "grand strategy" that would maintain France's place as a great power. The American revolution? Look to colonists' fear that the UK government was not going to let them expand into the Northwest Territories after the end of the Seven Years War. And so on. This is more than a set of contentions, it is a full-fledged explanatory theory. It puts foreign policy -- and particularly foreign policy successes and failures -- at the center of European history. It leaves out most of the rest, except insofar as other domestic events are driven by foreign policy events.So, highly recommended. Very clearly written and few words are wasted. This is history on a grand scale -- as the somewhat frequent references to "grand strategy" make clear. One will find much to agree with; one will, I think, want to supplement it with other varieties of history; but this is a rare thing, a completely achieved success.A few thoughts and queries, however. First, given Simms' view of the motivating forces of history, it is unclear what the significance of Germany is over this long period. In other words, if "states" have an internal logic of their own that requires foreign policy success through war, then if central Europe had been a coherent state (Germany) before 1870, there still would have been an endless struggle for mastery. As indeed occurred once Germany WAS unified. So I dont quite see how the Halford Mackinder stuff about historical geography and landmasses really drives or affects the argument; the story Simms tells is not, I think, a way to vindicate that worldview, but rather expresses its own worldview, the worldview of the war-and-foreign-policy-drive-everything and states-are-almost-conscious-actors worldview.Second, Simms makes his point through an assumption that nation-states "act" in a coherent, indeed conscious way. The "political nation" of France consciously loses faith in the Bourbon dynasty because of foreign policy issues. Well, maybe. But -- why then did the French "political nation" reacted differently to royal failure in 1789 -- when there was no pressing foreign threat to France itself -- than to the degringolade of Louis XIV's regime in 1709-10, when the military situation on the frontiers was so bad that Louis had to melt down the royal plate to keep an army in the field. Perhaps there was something that changed culturally in the 80 intervening years? A subpoint here is that Simms' evidence for "why" alliances were formed, wars started and regimes were changed typically consists of a quote or two (I don't blame him for this, he could hardly have covered so much territory if he stopped to debate each issue along the way). For example, when Louis XV's army wins the battle of Fontenoy and Simms wants to show that this affected everything else, he quotes the famous comment that Fontenoy so burnished the prestige of the Bourbons that it gave the ancien regime "another 50 years". In short, there is a certain amount of history-by-aphorism going on.Simms' approach reminds me of the irremediable deficiencies of all histories. (Not to be pretentious.) If you take a "historical forces" approach, you confer agency on actors that do not possess it (classes, for example). If you take a diplomatic/military/foreign-affairs approach, as Simms does, you ignore cultural changes, religion and make economics and trade the handmaiden of the "struggle for mastery" rather than an independent force. If you take a cultural approach, you rely on a few statements by culturally great men and ignore the hard reality of war, mass poverty and weak or strong government. In short, each of these (and other) approaches need the corrective of the others. The great merit of Simms' book is to give us a brilliant, synthesized, coherent overview of the approach that is perhaps, of all the alternatives, the most rigorous (in the sense of grounded in material fact) and least appreciated by the majority of American students of history.

Europe is a fast-paced, comprehensive, chronological retelling of the political history of Europe from around the Fall of Constantinople to around 2010.The emphasis for the author is how everything hinges or pivots on the concern of Central Europe or Germany. For the most part, I think he proves his point but I can’t help but feel he was using a Procrustean Bed and that his arbitrary start in 1453 removes other variables from the equation.The book is unable to go into much details at times (though he is adept at hitting on an immense amount of highlights notwithstanding) although the details increase as we move forward.His decision to spend an inordinate amount of time in the very recent past is infelicitous because we do not yet have the benefit of time and perspective to properly analyze. He would have been better served ending it earlier in the 20th century and putting more depth in earlier history which got short shrift.Most of the enjoyment was in the earlier centuries where I was able

Brendan Simms' book is an interpretation of modern European history and its chronological starting point is the fall of Byzantium. His thesis is that the Germans are the fulcrum of world history and that the last five-hundred years of Europe's history revolve around either attempts to create a universal monarchy based in Central Europe or strenuous efforts to prevent such a thing from being coming into being. The book is thus "old-fashioned" history, concerned with dynastic rivalry (the Hapsburgs vs. everyone else, especially) and, later, Great Power shenanigans both in Europe and overseas. There is relatively little cultural or economic history, such as has dominated European historiography for generations, and he does not waste time dealing with "the status of women" or "respect for minorities." This is realpolitik.Impressive as it is, the book is not a uniform success. Simms has his hobby-horse and rides it relentlessly. Whatever happens, anywhere, happens because of a contest for the European "Heartland." In this regard, the book, well-researched as it is, constitutes a series of footnotes to Halford Mackinder and his historical mega-theories. ("Whoever controls the world-island," etc.) This sort of grand theorizing is pretty moldy today but early in the last century it was regarded as quite profound. (Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler were two other historians of the "Rise and Fall" school, just as Marx was before them and Paul Kennedy and Jared Diamond are today's keepers of the flame.) It all makes for lofty pronouncements and the occasional sententious PBS mini-series and the sort of people who fall for this sort of thing are usually the same ones who insist that the Roman Empire "fell" because the ancient Romans began using lead water-pipes. In other words -- mostly moonshine.The first third of the book will confuse most people and the final third will bore them. This is not necessarily the author's fault. It is very difficult for even trained, professional historians to clearly understand the Empire. It is nearly hopeless for the "Guns, Germs and Steel" or Will Durant crowd to attempt. They will try to conceive late medieval politics through the nation-state model and so end up utterly baffled. Simms' basic thesis -- that the Empire was the cockpit of European politics -- is potentially sound enough. But, the Empire was such a godawful political and religious ball of yarn and punched so far below its weight that it was repeatedly reduced to somebody else's battlefield.Simms is strong in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the reader will feel more at home here too. Nation-states have emerged as the actors in world-politics and Bismarck always makes for good copy. The most important event in European history between Waterloo and August 1914 was the creation of the German Empire and Simms gives this series of events full credit.Simms also does an unusually good job of relating non-European developments to his concentration on mittleuropa. Great power rivalry in North America is nicely tied in with Pitt's overall strategy for containing France in the Empire and the Low Countries. But, none of this is news to historians -- although Simms does yeoman's work in providing a good summary.The last part of the book is just a recapitulation of headlines during the postwar period. Germany, naturally enough, is the cockpit of the East-West rivalry according to Sims and for the era 1939-1955 he is a darn good guide. Where he falls down is with the post-USSR world in which each paragraph might as well begin, "And then, the next day, this is what happened." Anyone who was alive and conversant with public affairs will find little new in the last fifty or so pages of the book.But, it is great to read 'history" again -- an account of the doings of the Great Powers and the importance of politics in human affairs. True, we do not learn much about the patriarchy of, say, rural Bulgaria in the nineteenth-century and how it oppressed milk-maids, and we don't hear much about capitalist exploitation of iron and steel workers in the Saar. This book is unabashed in its insistence that politics matters and that great power politics matters most of all. After all the retrospective sociology, masquerading as history, that has inundated us for generations, Simms' book is a fount of useful information and narrative.Simms has given us a solid and utterly useful tome. If he becomes a bit of a Johnny-One-Note, most of us can probably live with it. He has something important to say and even if we dissent from some of it we all will come away from this book better informed and with some questions to ponder.

I’ve read a lot, and in more depth about seminal moments in European history but to have it set out chronologically and to have a lot of those “gaps” filled in really helped me to understand not just the history of the continent but also the present, and dare I say an ominous look into the future. The petty power struggles over the centuries have left millions dead and wreaked havoc across the globe. Yet with all these lessons laid out before us we still cannot seem to learn how to live in peace with one another as our leaders continue the power struggles of their predecessors. Mental

This was never going to be an easy subject. This is not a light read but it is very well done. It differs from Norman Davies erudite tome (Europe. A history - also highly recommended) in its focus on the politics and competition between nations - particularly for territorial expansion and the inevitable conflict that it would bring. Simms handling of how Europe latterly got its act together lead me to conclude that Brexit seems an even dafter and wrong-headed piece of self-harm.

Arrived promptly and as described by the seller. The book itself is an interesting and well written. A fine overview on the subject.

Broad-sweeping, ambitious but ultimately satisfying. Professor Simms does a remarkable job in giving a broad survey of more than 500 years of European history while somehow still managing to hew close to his thesis of the central importance of Germany. Recommended.

Incisive, informative and very readable