Kaiser Wilhelm II or Humanitarian Imperialism

Kaiser Wilhelm II: Profiles in Power Series

Author: Christopher Clark

Kaiser Wilhelm II is one of the key figures in the history of twentieth-century Europe: King of Prussia and German Emperor from 1888 to the collapse of Germany in 1918 and a crucial player in the events that led to the outbreak of World War I. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including unpublished archival material, this study focuses on:

* the character and extent of his power
* his political goals
* his success in achieving them
* the mechanisms by which he projected authority and exercised influence.
* his role in the formation of foreign policy and his impact on the events of July 1914

Following Kaiser Wilhelm's political career from his youth at the Hohenzollern court through the turbulent peacetime decades of the Wilhelmine era into global war and exile, the book presents a new interpretation of this controversial monarch and assesses the impact on Germany of his forty-year reign.

Christopher Clark is a Lecturer in Modern European History at St Catharine's College, Cambridge University.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
	Acknowledgements
	Chronology
Ch. 1	Childhood and youth	1
Ch. 2	Taking power	27
Ch. 3	Going it alone	55
Ch. 4	Domestic politics from Bulow to Bethmann	92
Ch. 5	Wilhelm II and foreign policy, 1888-1911	123
Ch. 6	Power and publicity	160
Ch. 7	From crisis to war: 1909-1914	186
Ch. 8	War, exile, death: 1914-1941	225
Ch. 9	Conclusion	257
	Further reading in English	262
	Index	266

New interesting book: Comptabilité Directoriale :une Introduction aux Concepts, les Méthodes et les Utilisations

Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War

Author: Jean Bricmont

Since the end of the Cold War, the idea of human rights has been made into a justification for intervention by the world's leading economic and military powers—above all, the United States—in countries that are vulnerable to their attacks. The criteria for such intervention have become more arbitrary and self-serving, and their form more destructive, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan to Iraq. Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the large parts of the left was often complicit in this ideology of intervention—discovering new "Hitlers" as the need arose, and denouncing antiwar arguments as appeasement on the model of Munich in 1938.

Jean Bricmont's Humanitarian Imperialism is both a historical account of this development and a powerful political and moral critique. It seeks to restore the critique of imperialism to its rightful place in the defense of human rights. It describes the leading role of the United States in initiating military and other interventions, but also on the obvious support given to it by European powers and NATO. It outlines an alternative approach to the question of human rights, based on the genuine recognition of the equal rights of people in poor and wealthy countries.

Timely, topical, and rigorously argued, Jean Bricmont's book establishes a firm basis for resistance to global war with no end in sight.