The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, by Peter Frankopan.
In this part of the story, Frankopan will intersect with Halford Mackinder without ever mentioning his name. Mackinder gave a presentation in 1904. To summarize: the coming (from his vantage point) struggle is for the Eurasian landmass – the world island. My most extensive review of his work can be found here.
I have long felt that his views best capture the geo-political struggle for empire; his views best explain the reasons for the wars of the last one-hundred years. To summarize Mackinder: whoever controls this world island will control the world; I posit a corollary, or maybe a fallback position: whoever prevents anyone from controlling this world island has a chance to control the world.
Co-opt Russia or destabilize Russia.
With that, we are now ready to cover Frankopan’s views of the road to the Great War, World War One. From Frankopan:
…it was not a series of unfortunate events and chronic misunderstandings in the corridors of power in London, Berlin, Vienna, Paris and St. Petersburg that brought empires to their knees, but tensions over the control of Asia that had been simmering for decades. It was not Germany’s spectre that lay behind the First World War; so too did that of Russia – and above all the shadow that it cast on the east. And it was Britain’s desperate attempt to prevent this shadow growing that played an important note in bringing the world to war.
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Forgive the long cite, but you must admit that you have never read anything like this in school: the root (or, at least, a major root) cause of the war was…