30 October 2013

Review: The Great War of 189—: A Forecast by Rear-Admiral P. Colomb, et al.

Hardcover, 308 pages
Published 1975 (originally 1893)

Borrowed from the library
Read  September 2013
The Great War of 189—: A Forecast
by Rear-Admiral P. Colomb, Colonel J. F. Maurice, Captain F. N. Maude, Archibald Forbes, Charles Lowe, D. Christie Murray and F. Scudamore

This is a collection of faux newspaper articles written by real journalists and military men from 1893, telling the tale of the "next great war"-- in this case, Britain, Germany, and Italy versus France and Russia. A sort of tedious level of detail, and unfortunately it doesn't do a whole lot to imagine new technologies.

Is it impressive that they correctly predict the war would be kicked off by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand? Or was that just obvious back then? It seems very impressive to me to get that right twenty years early. I did feel bad for the political expert in the afterword (which essentially reviews the book's factual contents) who said the most implausible part was that the next war would start with a local conflict in Serbia that would end up involving the rest of Europe through the complex web of alliances. Better luck next time, dude!

No comments:

Post a Comment