Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi
cordially invites you to a
Public Lecture
on
‘World War One: Rethinking the Centenary’
by
Prof. John Horne
Former Professor of Modern European History, Trinity College Dublin
on FridayTuesday, 15 November 2016 at 11.00 a.m.
Auditorium, Library Building,
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
Abstract
Mid-way through the centenary is a good moment to examine how we view World War One and how perspectives have changed over the intervening century. The central paradox is that a war which was instantly recognized as a global event – and which unleashed forces that shaped the world we still inhabit – has been largely understood and commemorated through the lens of national histories. That is understandable in that one of the war’s results was to confirm the nation as the dominant state form in Europe. But it has left out of account much of the rest of the globe, to which nation-hood only came later, and has also made it difficult to explain the transnational dynamics that were at the core of the war in Europe and elsewhere. Since the end of the Cold War, historians (especially those working in cultural history) have taken the lead in trying to write first a European and then a global history of a world war. This lecture looks back at the changing understandings of the war since it occurred in the light of this new approach.
Mid-way through the centenary is a good moment to examine how we view World War One and how perspectives have changed over the intervening century. The central paradox is that a war which was instantly recognized as a global event – and which unleashed forces that shaped the world we still inhabit – has been largely understood and commemorated through the lens of national histories. That is understandable in that one of the war’s results was to confirm the nation as the dominant state form in Europe. But it has left out of account much of the rest of the globe, to which nation-hood only came later, and has also made it difficult to explain the transnational dynamics that were at the core of the war in Europe and elsewhere. Since the end of the Cold War, historians (especially those working in cultural history) have taken the lead in trying to write first a European and then a global history of a world war. This lecture looks back at the changing understandings of the war since it occurred in the light of this new approach.
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