fin de siecle redux

I am reading The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914, by the unmatched Barbara Tuchman. It’s a great read: chapters are about 50 pages or so, requiring me to take large bites each time. The chapters so far are expositions of a time and place, rather than part of of a narrative, so I need to read the whole thing and digest it in its entirety.

Looking at the world she describes — the landed aristocrats in Europe and their struggles with the increasingly frustrated and violent working class and the metamorphosis of America from a benign, inward-looking power to an aggressive and increasingly imperial one — it doesn’t take much to see similarities with today’s headlines. It seems all of a piece with some fin de síecle undercurrents: the turn of a century incites people to do bold or foolish things, and a new millenium perhaps more so.

Especially interesting is the struggle within the Republican party of the time — still very much the party of Lincoln — to embrace or reject the course that would make America a superpower. There were passages that could be ripped out of analytical pieces in today’s papers, as foreign adventures are debated, the need for a far-reaching military presence is argued for and against: it makes me wonder how much of what we see is really new.

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