New Books
- Oil Empire: Visions of Propsperity in Austrian Galicia
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Austrian Empire ranked third among the world's oil-producing states (surpassed only by the United States and Russia) and accounted for 5 percent of global oil production. By 1918, the Central Powers did not have enough oil to maintain a modern military. How and why did the promise of oil fail Galicia (the province producing the oil) and the Empire? In a brilliantly conceived work, Alison Frank traces the interaction of technology, nationalist rhetoric, social tensions, provincial politics, and entrepreneurial vision in shaping the Galician oil industry. She portrays this often-overlooked oil boom's transformation of the environment, and its reorientation of religious and social divisions that had defined a previously agrarian population, as surprising alliances among traditional foes sprang up among workers and entrepreneurs at the workplace and in the pubs and brothels of new oil towns. Frank sets this complex story in a context of international finance, technological exchange, and Habsburg history as a sobering counterpoint to traditional modernization narratives. As the oil ran out, the economy, the population, and the environment returned largely to their former state, reminding us that there is nothing ineluctable about the consequences of industrial development.
Alison Frank is assistant professor of history at Harvard University and a faculty associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
- Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century
International trade at unprecedented levels, millions of people migrating yearly in search of jobs, the world's economies more open to one another than ever before. . . . Such was the global economy in 1900. Then as now, many people considered globalization to be inevitable and irreversible. Yet the entire edifice collapsed in a few months in 1914. Globalization is a choice, not a fact. It is a result of policy decisions and the politics that shape them. Jeffry A. Frieden's insightful history explores the golden age of globalization during the early years of the twentieth century, its swift collapse in the crises of 1914-45, the divisions of the cold war world, and the turn again toward global integration at the end of the century. His history is full of character and event, as entertaining as it is enlightening. It deepens our understanding of the century just past and sheds light on our current situation.
Jeffry A. Frieden is the Stanfield Professor of International Peace at Harvard University. He specializes in the politics of international monetary and financial relations. He is a faculty associate and an Executive Committee member of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
- Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors
Contemporary America, with its unparalleled armaments and ambition, seems to many commentators a new empire. Others angrily reject the designation. What stakes would being an empire have for our identity at home and our role abroad? In Among Empires, a preeminent American historian addresses these issues in light of the history of empires since antiquity. Gathering a remarkable array of evidence—from Roman, Ottoman, Moghul, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and British experiences—Maier outlines the essentials of empire throughout history. He then explores the exercise of U.S. power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, carefully analyzing its economic and strategic sources and the nation's relationship to predecessors and rivals.
Charles S. Maier is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University. He is a faculty associate and an Executive Committee member of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.s