Summary of Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 On June 22, 1897, London celebrated the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne. The sun emerged patriotically from an overcast sky just after the Queen's carriage left Buckingham Palace.
#2 Victoria's empire was not known for its modesty. The overseas cables had been kept clear of traffic until the Queen pressed an electric button linked to the Central Telegraph Office. From there, as the various lancers, hussars, camel troopers, turbaned Sikhs, and Borneo Dayak police marched through the city, her greeting flashed in Morse code to every part of the empire.
#3 The British army, in peacetime as well as during wartime, was led by the cavalry. It was a small select aristocracy born booted and spurred to ride, who thought of everyone else as a large dim mass born saddled and bridled to be ridden.
#4 John French was a lieutenant in the 19th Regiment of Hussars in 1874. He was promoted to captain soon after, and then married two years later. He seemed genuinely fond of his new wife, although he would still embark on an endless string of love affairs.

Sujets

• Histoire
• World War I
• Military
• History
• Première Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 17 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822514478
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16 Insights from Chapter 17 Insights from Chapter 18 Insights from Chapter 19 Insights from Chapter 20 Insights from Chapter 21 Insights from Chapter 22 Insights from Chapter 23
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

On June 22, 1897, London celebrated the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne. The sun emerged patriotically from an overcast sky just after the Queen's carriage left Buckingham Palace.

#2

Victoria's empire was not known for its modesty. The overseas cables had been kept clear of traffic until the Queen pressed an electric button linked to the Central Telegraph Office. From there, as the various lancers, hussars, camel troopers, turbaned Sikhs, and Borneo Dayak police marched through the city, her greeting flashed in Morse code to every part of the empire.

#3

The British army, in peacetime as well as during wartime, was led by the cavalry. It was a small select aristocracy born booted and spurred to ride, who thought of everyone else as a large dim mass born saddled and bridled to be ridden.

#4

John French was a lieutenant in the 19th Regiment of Hussars in 1874. He was promoted to captain soon after, and then married two years later. He seemed genuinely fond of his new wife, although he would still embark on an endless string of love affairs.

#5

In the army in which French was making his career, an important military virtue was sportsmanship. War was similar to soccer, and the army fought for the good of its country as the team played for the honor of its school.

#6

In John French’s England, the boulevards along which Victoria’s Jubilee parade marched were splendid, but large stretches of London and other cities were less glorious, for little of the wealth the country drew from its colonies ever reached the poor.

#7

Charlotte Despard, a woman who was raised by relatives after her parents died, married a man who supported home rule for Ireland and other progressive causes, and they traveled extensively together for 20 years. She wrote seven enormous novels, which were the Victorian equivalent of today's formula romances.

#8

The Duchess of Albany, who was hired to help with the Nine Elms Flower Mission, a project in which wealthy women brought baskets of flowers from their gardens to Nine Elms, the poorest corner of London, surprised everyone by making Battersea her main focus.

#9

Charlotte Despard was a British socialist who converted to Roman Catholicism, and she developed a passion for theosophy, a mystical faith that includes elements of Buddhism, Hinduism, and the occult. She was elected to a Poor Law Board, and she fought to expose a corrupt manager who was selling food from the workhouse kitchen while the women were on a bread and water diet.

#10

The warmth and loyalty between Despard and French was never broken, despite their very different views of the world. They remained close for many years, through a colonial conflict about to break out and a global war that would leave more than 700,000 of their countrymen dead.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The war began with the British invasion of the Sudan in 1898, led by legendary Major General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Winston Churchill, a correspondent for the London Morning Post, was there to witness it.

#2

The Battle of Omdurman, in which the British Empire fought the Sudanese, was a historic slaughter. The British lost only 48 dead, while the Sudanese lost 10,800 dead.

#3

The next war was clearly going to be quite far from Europe. For even as Kitchener’s Maxims were swiftly mowing down the Sudanese, Britain’s relentless imperial march was running into unexpected problems at the other end of the African continent.

#4

In 1886, at the small town of Johannesburg, an itinerant prospector stumbled upon a rock that turned out to be an outcrop of the world's largest underground deposit of gold ore. The Transvaal controlled it all, and Britain wanted it to join the empire.

#5

Milner was the ideal colonial civil servant, equal parts technocrat and prophet of empire. He was hired to bring the arrogant Boers into the empire where they obviously belonged.

#6

Milner, while waiting for war, allowed himself a few relaxations. He took solace in the arrival of Rudyard Kipling, a writer who had come to relish feeling part of a small elite of bold, resourceful Britons.

#7

The Boer War was Britain’s first war in nearly half a century, and the public was excited about it. They expected it to be gloriously won by Christmas. But the war failed to unroll like the good hunt it was supposed to be.

#8

The British cavalry charge against the Boer stronghold of Kimberley was a success, and it was celebrated by the stock market. However, it wasn’t a classic dash that overran terrified enemy soldiers; rather, it was between two groups of dust-blinded Boer troops who were unharmed by it.

#9

The Boer War was not just a victory for the British, but for Rudyard Kipling, who was praised everywhere he went. He was the civilian celebrity that every nation needs to honor its warriors.
Insights from Chapter 3

#1

In Britain, the first son would inherit the title and usually the land, while a younger brother often went into the army. In South Africa, Edward's father, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, the Marquess of Salisbury, suggested that his son’s wife accompany him to South Africa.

#2

Violet was a woman of style, wit, and elegance. She and Edward had known each other less than six months before they married, but to both it seemed the perfect match. However, the first problems to appear were the religious differences between Violet and her husband.

#3

The war in South Africa was different from other colonial conflicts for many people in Britain, who thought their country should not be fighting at all.

#4

The Boer War was a very unpopular war in England, and many antiwar socialists spoke out against it. The war was also opposed by many in Ireland, who saw the Boers as Davids ground down by the English Goliath.

#5

The war in South Africa was not over, as the British continued to burn farms and kill Boer prisoners. They also had to deal with the more than 100,000 civilians left homeless after the British burned down their farms.

#6

In 1901, a visitor arrived to see Milner, bearing a letter of introduction from a member of his family in England. She was the founder of a group called the South African Women and Children's Distress Fund, and she had already joined with others in speaking against the war at public meetings in Britain.

#7

In South Africa, Emily Hobhouse found herself. She learned how to make her way around a country at war, and she slept in a missionary’s home, railway cars, and a tent in one of the concentration camps.

#8

After the war, Hobhouse returned to England and continued to speak out against the camps. She had shown that she had the courage to defy public opinion in wartime, and she would not hesitate to do so again.

#9

The new country taking shape in South Africa needed the best rulers. Milner recruited from England a dozen or so bright, eager aides to help him run the unified territory.

#10

After the war, Milner returned to England and helped establish insane asylums and leper colonies. He also drew up regulations covering everything from taxation to the light corporal punishment that could be applied to unruly workers.