Winner of the 2008 Duke d'Arenberg History Prize for the best book
of a general nature, intended for a wide public, on the history and
culture of the European continent.
At once a book about Oxford and Heidelberg universities and about
the character of European society on the eve of World War I, "Our
Friend "The Enemy"" challenges the idea that pre-1914 Europe was
bound to collapse. Weber brings Britain and Germany's preeminent
universities and playgrounds for political and social elites back
to life to reconsider whether any truth is left in the old contrast
between British liberalism and German illiberalism. Contesting the
idea that fundamental Anglo-German differences existed, he also
questions new interpretations that use a cultural history brush to
paint pre-1914 Britain in just as gloomy a light as Imperial
Germany. Rather, he argues that militarist nationalism and European
transnationalism were not mutually exclusive concepts, that reform
usually triumphed over stasis, and that prewar Europe was more
stable than commonly argued. Finally, he demonstrates that the
belief that Europeans were eagerly awaiting a cataclysmic remaking
of the world they were inhabiting is a result of a tendency to read
pre-1914 history backwards as the prehistory of the two world wars.
General
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