One World Divisible: A Global History Since 1945. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, March, 2001 by Michael F. Hopkins

One World Divisible: A Global History Since 1945. David Reynolds. Allen Lane: The Penguin Press. [pound]25.00. 896 pages. ISBN 0713994614. Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the Twentieth Century Longman. [pound]15.99 p.b. 378 pages. ISBN 0582382491.

Millennium meditation has provoked a large number of general histories -- Simon Schama and Norman Davies on Britain, Professor Davies again on Europe, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto on the past thousand years, J. M. Roberts on the twentieth century. Now there is David Reynolds's account of the second half of the twentieth century.

It is, as one would expect from so meticulous a scholar, a thorough study that has mastered a great deal of detail and is presented in a well organised, lively and clear style. Extensive footnotes and a substantial analytical bibliography allow the interested reader to pursue further inquiries. The maps are useful and more detailed than is common in most books nowadays, while there is a sound selection of illustrations.

His treatment is based on the latest knowledge by a leading authority who has kept abreast of both the information and the debates. He has augmented his own expertise in the relations between Europe and the United States with a stint of teaching in Asia. This shows in his text, for he does justice to events and issues beyond Europe and North America. As an illustration of this, one notes the regular use of words and phrases from a range of different languages. We read of zaibatsu, Japanese for big industrial holding companies, fanshen, Chinese for the transformation of the country, swaraj, Hindi for self-rule, Yishuv, Hebrew for Jewish settlements in Palestine.

The author makes sense of this crowded era by taking politics as his central concern. His description of his task, as being that of examining the process of state-building, is an interesting counter to another Cambridge historian, Richard Evans, who has suggested that 'a return to traditional political history based on the study of the nation state . . . is whistling in the wind'. Mr Reynolds has triumphantly proved him wrong. Yet this work is more than a political account.

While the bulk of his volume comprises a detailed explanatory political narrative, it also contains four chapters on broader themes, covering a range of periods -- in some cases the whole era and earlier. Demography, urbanisation and American consumer culture; the consumption of culture (both high and low), art and music, as well as the revolution in child education and female labour; science and technology; and lastly, a reflection on the material and intellectual in the global and local context in the contemporary world.

The book ably charts the major features of international politics and the essentials of domestic affairs in a large number of countries. The author considers smaller states as they emerged in global developments. But his treatment always goes beyond viewing them merely as features of the larger events. He does justice to their own history. Mr Reynolds examines the emergence of a cold war first in Europe and then in Asia. He follows the disputes over Korea, Germany, Cuba and Vietnam; the respite provided by a phase of detente in the 1970s before another bout of cold war in the 1980s; and the end of the cold war that accompanied the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whilst the cold war is a dominant theme, the author looks beyond it to explore other issues, recognising the local origins of issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict or the war in Afghanistan.

Whilst Mr Reynolds's main expertise may lie in international relations, he is very impressive on the policies and fates of individual countries. He is especially good on Japan -- his time there as a visiting professor shows.

David Reynolds does not seek a radical new reading of the last half-century and there are no major revelations. The main value of his work consists in its being the most reliable outline of world history since 1945, combining able summaries of developments with judicious judgments on them. The volume abounds in valuable insights: the British departure from Palestine in 1948 was the only time in the history of the British Empire that there was no one to whom they could transfer power; while Egypt is as large as France and Spain combined yet its cultivable area is only four per cent of the total, equivalent in size to the Netherlands.

Mr Reynolds highlights the importance of the government's role in promoting economic growth in the American West. Even in the 1990s nearly half the land west of the Rockies was in federal ownership. He is also good at tying up loose ends. So we learn what happened to the Aswan dam project after American and British finance was withdrawn: the Soviets agreed in September 1958 to fund it. The fate of the Schuman Plan of May 1950, usually only covered as a stage in the story of European integration, is also summarised. It proved a failure: Europe did not witness the steel glut or the coal shortage that it was designed to tackle. It will be a rare individual who sits down and reads this book through or even reads large sections consecutively. Its main value will be how useful it is for those wanting a swift grasp of a variety of topics.