Ring of Fire

The dramatic story of 1914—the start of World War I—presenting a comprehensive, dynamic history of the start of this truly global conflict.

Most people did not know what the world was getting itself into in 1914. Everyone thought they knew the sort of war they were going to get—a short conflict that would settle old scores in a matter of weeks—but it was soon clear that was not going to be the case.

From the Balkans to East Prussia, France, and Belgium, nineteenth-century warfare came face to face with twentieth-century technology and the ensuing, brutal clash of empires resulted in deadlock. And it was a truly global war, stretching from Europe to Oceania, from the Middle East to North America. It affected civilians as well as soldiers and governments, and for the first time, the world was faced with the fact that neutrality was practically impossible.

Understanding such a complex conflict is difficult, and over the last hundred years, it has been made even more so by a repeatedly blinkered approach to the history of it, with a focus almost entirely on English-language sources and a narrow view of the conflict through two main prisms—the Eastern Front and the Western Front. But what about the rest of the world? Countries like Australia and Canada willingly sent their young men to Europe. Danes were conscripted into the German army, North Africans immediately traveled to fight and die for France; and in colonies as remote as Samoa, men ran for ports and a chance to fight.

Ring of Fire will set out to rebalance our conceptions of a war that truly reshaped the world. Using access to an enormous quantity of primary material, largely untouched by general historians, the authors will tell the story of 1914 with a firm eye on presenting a truly comprehensive, inclusive popular history, a people's narrative that draws on source material from over twenty languages.