The Penguin Dictionary of Modern History 1789-1945 [antikvár]

PREFACE This Dictionary is intended as a reference-companion for those who are interested in the history of the modern world, particularly between the years 1789 and 1945. Chronological divisions are notoriously arbitrary guides to the past and, in a country whose oldest university begins the study of 'Modem History' with the Roman occupation, this starting-point may perhaps appear unduly late. Yet if any one year is to be chosen then 1789 has much to commend it. It was on 30 April 1789 that Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States and it was on 5 May that the States-General gathered at Versailles. In that same summer, Manchester installed its first steam-engine in a cotton-mill and an obscure Home Secretary, Viscount Sydney, resigned from Pitt's Government, having perpetuated his memory through a newly founded township on the shores of Botany Bay that was destined to become the second largest city in the Commonwealth. These four events, although vastly different in importance, were each symbols of a new age. The emergence of a nation, the conflict between autocracy and the people, the mastery of machines, the desire to carve one's name in remote lands - all are recurrent themes in the history of the next century and a half. We may seek the origin of these movements in earlier decades, but we must go back several hundreds of years to discover a greater divide in human affairs than the 'Revolutionary Epoch'. We are, of course, too near 1945 to decide whether it, also, forms a historical climacteric, although it may seem so to our generation. I chose this year, rather than an earlier or later date, for two reasons. The arrival at manhood of young people who know the Second World War only by hearsay seems to me to justify the inclusion of some of the events of those years of upheaval, and yet I shrink from going into the period of Cold War, partly because of limitations of space and partly because I do not think we can yet appraise the significance of its more dramatic moments. Will future historians make the Bandung Conference of 1955 a chapter-heading or a footnote? And which phantom prime minister of the Fourth Republic has left anything that will endure? These are questions that we may leave for others to decide. For the moment, students of the post-war decade will find guidance in the excellent Penguin Dictionary of Politics by Florence Elliott and Michael Sum-merskill. Naturally I have mentioned relevant happenings of these years in a broad context, but there are no specific entries on the people or problems of the post-war world. The selection of topics for a book of this size is difficult; many incidents and individuals have been omitted only with the greatest reluctance. I have tried to compile a guide to the states of the modern world in action. Inevitably, British affairs predominate, but it has seemed to me important to avoid, so far as possible, that insular concentration which is the besetting sin of much of our historical teaching (and even more, a practising schoolmaster may add, of our historical examining). Accordingly, the Dictionary includes many entries on the U.S.A. and the Slavonic countries, and some on Latin America and the Far East, as well as on Western Europe. I have attempted to summarize the history of individual states only where there are not many topics or biographies from that country included elsewhere; thus the reader will find 'Denmark' in but 'Italy' out. There are paragraphs on some of the