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    Stealing Horses to Great Applause

    The Origins of the First World War Reconsidered

    Author Paul W. Schroeder
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    Paperback
    $26.95 US
    Verso Books | Verso
    5.07"W x 7.8"H x 0.94"D   | 11 oz | 48 per carton
    On sale Jun 16, 2026 | 384 Pages | 9781836745563
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    ‘How had the world by 1914 become susceptible to a disastrous systemic breakdown? The one American historian who rose to this analytical challenge was Paul Schroeder. These historical insights have an obvious urgency today’

    Nicholas Mulder, Financial Times

    Stealing Horses to Great Applause is arguably the finest consideration yet of the origins of the First World War. Breaking with accounts focusing on the actions of a single state or the final countdown to hostilities, Paul W. Schroeder analyzes the systemic crisis that engulfed the Great Powers in 1914. Increasingly, they had become more interested in colonial expansion abroad (‘stealing horses to great applause’, in the old Spanish adage) than in the traditional conventions of European peacemaking. They forgot the rule that a balance of power required the preservation of all its essential actors, including the weakest of them, Austria-Hungary. This the British too failed to heed. The Central Powers may have started the war, but that does not mean they in any real sense caused it.

    Stealing Horses includes appraisals of Niall Ferguson and A. J. P. Taylor as well as an extensive unpublished final work rethinking the First World War as ‘the last eighteenth-century war’.

    With an introduction by Perry Anderson.
    PAUL W. SCHROEDER (1927–2020) is the author of, among other things, The Trans-formation of European Politics, 1763–1848 and America’s Fatal Leap, 1991–2016. He taught history and political science at the University of Illinois for many years.
    Paul W. Schroeder View titles by Paul W. Schroeder
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    Introduction, Perry Anderson

    PART I
    1. World War I as Galloping Gertie: A Reply to Joachim Remak
    2. International Politics, Peace and War, 1815–1914
    3. Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War
    4. Stealing Horses to Great Applause: Austria-Hungary’s Decision in 1914 in Systemic Perspective
    5. World War I and the Vienna System: The Last Eighteenth-Century War and the First Modern Peace

    PART II
    6. Romania and the Great Powers before 1914
    7. Prudence vs Recklessness: Assessing Responsibility for World War I

    PART III
    8. World War I: A Tragedy, not a Pity
    9. A. J. P. Taylor’s International System

    Acknowledgments
    Index
    "A historian of remarkable chronological breadth and a fiercely independent mind. Great historians have a life, and they have an afterlife. Paul W. Schroeder’s may just have begun"
    —Times Literary Supplement

    "Probably the foremost expert on the history of international politics in the world"
    —Lothar Höbelt, International History Review

    "A powerful intellect, a meticulous and innovative researcher who transformed his field"
    —Katherine Aaslestad, Perspectives on History, the news magazine of the American Historical Association

    "Perhaps the most distinguished diplomatic historian of his generation. He thought hard about the fundamental issues he was concerned with. What he had to say was always stimulating, always worth reading"
    —Marc Trachtenberg, H-Diplo

    "Few knew old Europe as intimately as Schroeder did. His cogent argument concerning the centrality of international relations is one which historians of all stripes ignore at their peril"
    —Thomas Otte, author of Statesman of Europe

    "A kaleidoscopic set of essays on the European state system in the century leading up to and during the Great War… written with calm and analytical rigor."
    —Mathias Fuelling, Jacobin

    "A gem that calls into question some of the standard interpretations of the war’s origins and its outbreak."
    —Thomas Parker, H-Diplo

    About

    ‘How had the world by 1914 become susceptible to a disastrous systemic breakdown? The one American historian who rose to this analytical challenge was Paul Schroeder. These historical insights have an obvious urgency today’

    Nicholas Mulder, Financial Times

    Stealing Horses to Great Applause is arguably the finest consideration yet of the origins of the First World War. Breaking with accounts focusing on the actions of a single state or the final countdown to hostilities, Paul W. Schroeder analyzes the systemic crisis that engulfed the Great Powers in 1914. Increasingly, they had become more interested in colonial expansion abroad (‘stealing horses to great applause’, in the old Spanish adage) than in the traditional conventions of European peacemaking. They forgot the rule that a balance of power required the preservation of all its essential actors, including the weakest of them, Austria-Hungary. This the British too failed to heed. The Central Powers may have started the war, but that does not mean they in any real sense caused it.

    Stealing Horses includes appraisals of Niall Ferguson and A. J. P. Taylor as well as an extensive unpublished final work rethinking the First World War as ‘the last eighteenth-century war’.

    With an introduction by Perry Anderson.

    Creators

    PAUL W. SCHROEDER (1927–2020) is the author of, among other things, The Trans-formation of European Politics, 1763–1848 and America’s Fatal Leap, 1991–2016. He taught history and political science at the University of Illinois for many years.
    Paul W. Schroeder View titles by Paul W. Schroeder

    Table of Contents

    Introduction, Perry Anderson

    PART I
    1. World War I as Galloping Gertie: A Reply to Joachim Remak
    2. International Politics, Peace and War, 1815–1914
    3. Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War
    4. Stealing Horses to Great Applause: Austria-Hungary’s Decision in 1914 in Systemic Perspective
    5. World War I and the Vienna System: The Last Eighteenth-Century War and the First Modern Peace

    PART II
    6. Romania and the Great Powers before 1914
    7. Prudence vs Recklessness: Assessing Responsibility for World War I

    PART III
    8. World War I: A Tragedy, not a Pity
    9. A. J. P. Taylor’s International System

    Acknowledgments
    Index

    Praise

    "A historian of remarkable chronological breadth and a fiercely independent mind. Great historians have a life, and they have an afterlife. Paul W. Schroeder’s may just have begun"
    —Times Literary Supplement

    "Probably the foremost expert on the history of international politics in the world"
    —Lothar Höbelt, International History Review

    "A powerful intellect, a meticulous and innovative researcher who transformed his field"
    —Katherine Aaslestad, Perspectives on History, the news magazine of the American Historical Association

    "Perhaps the most distinguished diplomatic historian of his generation. He thought hard about the fundamental issues he was concerned with. What he had to say was always stimulating, always worth reading"
    —Marc Trachtenberg, H-Diplo

    "Few knew old Europe as intimately as Schroeder did. His cogent argument concerning the centrality of international relations is one which historians of all stripes ignore at their peril"
    —Thomas Otte, author of Statesman of Europe

    "A kaleidoscopic set of essays on the European state system in the century leading up to and during the Great War… written with calm and analytical rigor."
    —Mathias Fuelling, Jacobin

    "A gem that calls into question some of the standard interpretations of the war’s origins and its outbreak."
    —Thomas Parker, H-Diplo

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