{"id":1512,"date":"2013-09-08T22:07:45","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T02:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/?p=1512"},"modified":"2013-09-09T13:29:47","modified_gmt":"2013-09-09T17:29:47","slug":"critical-summary-of-mazower-chapters-1-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/2013\/09\/08\/critical-summary-of-mazower-chapters-1-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Summary of Mazower (Chapters 1-4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first four chapters of Mark Mazower’s\u00a0Dark Continent <\/em>are incredibly informative, original, and thought\u00a0provoking in regards to twentieth century European history. In these chapters he primarily focuses on the contending issues that arose after the First World War and continued to linger until the onset of World War Two. His approach is unique because he does not recount the history in a chronological order, instead choosing to focus on developing specific issues and showing how they were interrelated throughout the entire continent in one way or another. The thesis of these chapters is that the mixture of an unsettled post war climate and the failure of\u00a0several democratic governments to solve the economic and social issues at hand led to a contentious political climate. This climate was ripe for the emergence of radical socialist and totalitarian regimes.<\/p>\n

The first chapter is centrally focused on democracy and alternate forms of government. The second chapter\u00a0is about nation building and post war re-structurement. The third chapter’s\u00a0focus is based on\u00a0government initiatives and social programs aimed at cultivating the populations of each nation. Lastly, the fourth chapter is about various economic conflicts and rebuilding efforts. Within each of these chapters Mazower chooses a topic and then elaborates on it and expands it\u00a0to Europe as a whole. An example of this is when he addresses the toll that\u00a0World War I\u00a0inflicted on population numbers. The male populations were severely reduced in every country that fought in the war, leading to a fear of population decline and thus\u00a0the weakening of the country. To combat this fear each government tried to bolster population numbers by encouraging women to reproduce prolifically, creating social programs to aid mothers in child raising, and either discouraging or outright outlawing abortion. Mazower wrote that there was a “pro-natalist reassertion of traditional family and gender roles,” that overtook much of Europe\u00a0(Mazower, 84).<\/p>\n

Mazower does an excellent job of supporting his evidence with a mix of primary and secondary sources. He cites a pro-natalist publication in Britain titled\u00a01916 Cradles or Coffins? Our Greatest National Need,\u00a0<\/em>to emphasize the concern that genuinely existed in Britain. In the following sentence he mentions how Germany was doing the exact same thing, thus adhering to the structure of his book by emphasizing how certain prevailing themes crossed international boundaries and were applicable to Europe as a whole in one form or another. While his use of supporting evidence is prolific and well chosen, he\u00a0tends to\u00a0jump around in the text too often and does not sufficiently develop and expand his arguments.<\/p>\n

Mazower does a good job of condensing the people, places, and events from this time period in history into one book considering how difficult of a task this is. The scope and density of the material are a grueling endeavor to tackle. \u00a0Although people who do not have background knowledge of European history may have difficulty challenging many of the preconceptions that exist, this is not a sufficient deterrant for reading this book.\u00a0This text offers a fresh perspective on European History and would appeal to green undergraduates and scholars alike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first four chapters of Mark Mazower’s\u00a0Dark Continent are incredibly informative, original, and thought\u00a0provoking in regards to twentieth century European history. In these chapters he primarily focuses on the contending issues that arose after the First World War and continued … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51180],"tags":[80466,80465,80423,80475,80474,80424,80473,80476],"class_list":["post-1512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-chapters-1-4","tag-critical-summary","tag-dark-continent","tag-democratic-governments","tag-european-history","tag-mazower","tag-population-decline","tag-pro-natalist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}