The New Atlantic Order: The Transformation of International Politics, 1860–1933

by Patrick O. Cohrs

This magisterial new history elucidates a momentous transformation process that changed the world: the struggle to create, for the first time, a modern Atlantic order in the long twentieth century (1860–2020). Placing it in a broader historical and global context, Patrick O. Cohrs reinterprets the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as the original attempt to supersede the Eurocentric 'world order' of the age of imperialism and found a more legitimate peace system – a system that could not yet be global but had to be essentially transatlantic. Yet he also sheds new light on why, despite remarkable learning-processes, it proved impossible to forge a durable Atlantic peace after a First World War that became the long twentieth century's cathartic catastrophe. In a broader perspective this ground-breaking study shows what a decisive impact this epochal struggle has had not only for modern conceptions of peace, collective security and an integrative, rule-based international order but also for formative ideas of self-determination, liberal-democratic government and the West.

Genres: History, International Relations, Nonfiction

1130 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2022

About the author

Patrick O. Cohrs is Professor of International History at the University of Florence.

Reviews

[Audrey Gerrard]

A grand volume of over 1000 pages yet still lively and incisive, makes a striking extended and detailed argument for reframing the post WWI peace negotiations in a “long 20th century” - a chronology shift that is very convincingly presented. Compelling history brilliantly written, an intriguing book for scholars as well as enthusiasts of history and international relations.

[Peter Camus]

A masterpiece opening up a wealth of new perspectives on how the global order was transformed in the long 20th century, with consequences that still reverberate in the 21st. It also provides the most comprehensive account yet of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the aspirations to create a modern peace in Europe, the Atlantic sphere and the world after the watershed catastrophe of the First World War. Highly recommended!