George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: A Preview
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010The Wavering Road to World War I
We still struggle to integrate the results of World War I into so many areas of our lives. The Balfour Agreement encouraged Jews to emigrate to Palestine. The current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan point to the fall of the British and Ottoman Empires. The ‘Great War’ turned petroleum into a strategic commodity and presaged how important globalization would become. If we catalog all international situations currently in play, we can trace most back to the period surrounding World War I. During the entire period ~1870-1920 many vectors of history veered to the directions we now head. Of the 6500+ years of history I now study, I can declare, without equivocation, that the period leading up to World War I the most complex period of all.
Many issues led up to WWI, but one that piques my interest in this book deals with three monarchies central to the conflict. One can easily see through brif investigation that these systems of government had become inadequate and obsolete.
the author’s account observes a profound anachronism at play: that these three monarchs, in what they didn’t realize were the waning days of the institution of monarchy, handled foreign diplomacy as if it were a family business.
Europe plunged over the precipice of war in August 1914, revealing in stark terms the inability of royal familial ties to control and contain national disagreements; as the author has it, the fact that Wilhelm, Nicholas, and George were out of touch with actual politics could not have been more apparent.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400043638?ie=UTF8&tag=mundaneastrol-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1400043638">George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I</a><img src=” target=”_blank”>Amazon.com: George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I
What readers of Ramble should know is that the period included the transition from one Neptune-Pluto wave to another 1399Neptune-Pluto1892 to 1893Neptune-Pluto2384, a once in ~495 year event, while two major outer planet transits also appeared in the same period. The outer planet transits for sure mirror the complexity of the times.
Throughout 1399Neptune-Pluto1892 populations looked to monarchies to lead them through history. Few may have suspected that the title ‘monarch’ did not necessarily confer intellect or ability. In http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345349571?ie=UTF8&tag=mundaneastrol-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0345349571">A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=mundaneastrol-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0345349571" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> ” target=”_blank”>Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barabara Tuchman’s excellent tome, a theme of leaders’ incompetence appears continually. Between then and the book’s period governments had improved, but the reliance on monarchy and dynasty continued to stifle governments meeting the needs of the time.
I leave with a quote , but based on the reviews, I recommend adding this to your collection.
The real tragedy was that neither George, Nicholas nor Wilhelm was built to adapt to a changing world; their time was evaporating. “As great mass movements took hold of Europe,” Ms. Carter observes, “the courts and their kings cleaved to the past, set up high walls of etiquette to keep the world out and defined themselves through form, dress and precedence.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/books/24book.html?ref=books” target=”_blank”>Books of the Times: As War Loomed, 3 Leaders Wandered Lost
