The Great Powers and the European States System, 1814-1914

Anyone expecting this second edition to be a warmed-over version of the old Bridge and Bullen textbook of 1980 will be pleasantly surprised. With all but the introductory chapter and portions of two others entirely revised, expanded, and improved by Bridge, it is essentially a new book, solid and up-to-date in scholarship, clearly and engagingly written, factually accurate and comprehensive, and soberly cautious but incisive in interpretation. Along with Norman Rich's Great Power Diplomacy, 1814–1914 (1992) it is easily the best general discussion of the nineteenth-century European states system for scholars and students alike. The factual accuracy that characterises the work (I found only one misstatement worth mentioning: Tsar Nicholas I was not blindly hostile to railway development but actually promoted it) extends to the title. This is a chronological narrative of the game of European high politics as played by leaders of the great powers, and of how the...