“1913: In Search of the World before the Great War”, by Charles Emmerson

 

544 pages, PublicAffairs, ISBN-13: 978-1610393805

By publishing 1913: In Search of the World before the Great War in 2013, Charles Emmerson managed to create a tidy little century-long yardstick by which to offer an appraisal of a world long-gone, a more “innocent” world by many people’s estimations – the year before the industrial revolution at last found a place on the modern battlefield. And while a noble pursuit, one in which I was very excited to read about, I found Emmerson’s book to have failed in its purpose, as he managed to miss the world he was looking for. Oh, he travels the world of 1913, going from the capitols of Europe, to the major cities of America (Detroit! Whoo-hoo!) and Canada, as well as to other colonial hotspots the world over – but this book quickly descended into a kind of historical travelogue. He describes these places, alright, but the World he ostensibly seeks to find remains hidden to him: there is no poetry to the places he describes, no magic to the many persons who lived, thrived and survived during this last year of peace – and who, the men at least, would soon find their lives cut short in a cause the merits of which have not withstood the test of time.

I wanted this lost world to be brought to life once again, even if briefly, but it wasn’t. There are facts and figures and allusions and discussions and so on and so forth, but this is just dry knowledge. Telling me all about downtown Winnipeg filled a gap in my knowledge about our neighbors to the Great White North, but I learned nothing about Winnipeggers themselves: their worldview as Canadians but also subjects of a distant King, an independent nation that was also expected to fight and, if needs be, die for a Great Britain they were only tangentially a part of. This is a mindset that is so very different than my own, but one which still remains hidden to me. I wanted more on this culture, too, on the new modes of music and political thought and societal evolution, but – nothing, a sad and inexcusable series of omissions, if I may be so bold. The approach seems original with that vision across different cities, but fails, disperses. One expects a daily view of life in those cities, of their physiognomy, of their inhabitants, of what actually happened then, but the author is just lost in previous historical contexts and the surrounding countries and cities.

(And don’t get me started on the many factual errors: Tsar Nicholas II was not a descendent of Queen Victoria, the city of Weimar was not the capital of Weimar Germany and the Michigan Central Station was designed by the firms Reed & Stem and Warren & Wetmore, neither of whom designed Penn Station). While 1913 is an interesting global tour of the world of 1913, it in no way brought this world back to life, and it sadly remains hidden still.