Picture of author.

Christopher Clark (1) (1960–)

Author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

For other authors named Christopher Clark, see the disambiguation page.

12+ Works 4,055 Members 87 Reviews 4 Favorited

About the Author

Christopher Clark is the Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge. His books include The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 and Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Life in Power.

Works by Christopher Clark

Associated Works

Munich 1919: Diary of a Revolution (2015) — Preface, some editions — 61 copies, 1 review

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Clark, Christopher
Legal name
Clark, Christopher Munro
Birthdate
1960-03-14
Gender
male
Nationality
Australia
Birthplace
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Places of residence
West Berlin, Germany
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
Education
Pembroke College, University of Cambridge (Ph.D|1991)
Freie Universität Berlin
University of Sydney (BA)
Sydney Grammar School
Occupations
historian
Professor of Modern European History, University of Cambridge
Relationships
Lübbren, Nina (wife)
Organizations
Australian Academy of the Humanities (Fellow)
Awards and honors
Wolfson History Prize (2007)
Knight Bachelor (2015)
Officer's Cross, Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2010)
Deutscher Historikerpreis (2010)
Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (2019)
Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2013) (show all 12)
Preis des Historischen Kollegs
Laura Shannon Prize (2015)
European Prize for Political Culture (2018)
Queensland Premier's Literary Awards (2007)
H-Soz-u-Kult prize (2007)
Fellow, St Catharine's College, Cambridge University (1991)
Short biography
Christopher Clark's research interests are centred on the history of nineteenth-century Germany and continental Europe. His early work focused on the political and cultural history of religion. His first book was a study of the relationship between Christians and the Jewish minority in Prussia between 1728 and 1941; here he explored the ways in which contemporary understandings of Christianity shaped successive mutations of the 'Jewish Question'. Since then he has published various articles and essays on related subjects - some of them examine the trouble that results when the state authority takes the initiative in religious questions, others look at the ways in which questions of religious allegiance were implicated in processes of political and cultural change. In 2004 he co-edited, with Wolfram Kaiser of the University of Portsmouth, an edited volume about the 'culture war' between Catholic and secular social forces that polarised so many European states in the years 1850-1890. In the meanwhile, he has published a study of Kaiser Wilhelm II (2000) for the Longmans/Pearson series Profiles in Power and completed a general history of Prussia for Penguin, due out in spring 2006. He is currently working on a study of political change across Europe in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions.
Research Supervision

Chris Clark has supervised doctoral and M.Phil projects on a wide range of subjects in nineteenth and twentieth-century German and comparative history. Successful Ph.D candidates have worked on the role of trial lawyers in Weimar political trials and the evolution of the concept of 'resistance' in early post-war Germany (1945-1954). His current doctoral students are working on monarchical governance in mid-nineteenth-century Hanover, and a comparative study of accident insurance policy in late-nineteenth-century Germany, Italy and Britain.
Teaching

Professor Clark has taught final-year undergraduate courses on German History, co-teaches a Themes & Sources Paper (with Professor Blanning) on Music and Society and contributes to the core lectures for the Modern European element (Papers 17 and 18) in part One. He also contributes to the M.Phil in European History, both as an option provider and as M.Phil Secretary. He is one of the convenors of the seminar in Modern European History.
Key Publications

The Politics of Conversion. Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728-1941 (Oxford, 1995).
Kaiser Wilhelm II (Harlow, 2000)
Culture Wars. Catholic-Secular Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, 2004) (co-edited with Professor Wolfram Kaiser)
'The Napoleonic Moment in Prussian Church Policy' in D. Laven and L. Riall (eds.), The Napoleonic Legacy (Oxford, 2000), pp. 217-236.
'The 'Christian State' and the 'Jewish Citizen' in nineteenth-Century Prussia', in H. Walser-Smith (ed), Confessional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 2001), pp. 32-54
'The Limits of the Confessional State: Conversions to Judaism in Prussia 1817-1843', Past & Present 147 (May 1995), pp. 159-79.
'The Wars of Liberation in Prussian Memory: Reflections on the Memorialization of War in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany', Journal of Modern History (September 1996), pp. 550-76.
'Die europäischen Kulturkämpfe und der neue Katholizismus', Comparativ 12 (2002)
Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs, Correspondence (New York, 1995), 109 pp. (translation)

http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/c...

Members

Reviews

I read “The Guns of August” by Barbara Tuchman a year ago and finished the book without understanding what she was writing about. Colorful narrative filled that book, but it did not contain any analysis of why Europe found itself in The Great War.
If you want to read “The Guns of August,” read “The Sleepwalkers” first. The book’s title is excellent, and Christopher Clark’s narrative is a masterpiece. My mistake has been collecting Kindle editions of books on World War I when I was out to have print versions of all of them.
The events in Europe at the turn of the 19th century were complex, so I suggest reading print versions of books on the subject: you can flip back and forth to refresh your understanding of the events and the people.
Christopher Clark divided the events into separate sections, starting with Sarajevo and Serbia. When I read the first chapters, I wondered about their relevance to the outbreak of the war. After you progress through the book, study the shifting alliances, and understand the fears, ambitions, prejudices, and personal ambitions of the men leading European countries at the time, do you start to gain the faintest glimmer of understanding of why the war broke out and mushroomed into ‘The Great War.’
I could not spot one specific factor, even though many blame it on the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. As Christopher Clark wrote, the war did not explode as soon as Gavrilo Princep pulled the trigger. Leaders in different countries tried to prevent conflict and watched each other’s maneuvers with suspicion and dread.
Political and military leadership in each country pulled away from each other, each becoming locked in their strategic posturing. And Europe sleepwalked into ‘The Great War.’
The events of the time were complex, and Christopher Clark’s treatment was masterly. He struck a delicate balance between narrative and analysis: one without the other is incomplete.
If you are starting to study the origins of World War I, buy this book, but buy a paperback or hardcover edition. The Kindle edition is excellent, but you must purchase the paperback/hardcover edition to study World War I.
Christopher Clark’s book is a masterpiece. Once you start reading the book, you won’t stop until you reach the end. Have a pencil and sticky tabs close at hand when you read this excellent book.
… (more)
1 vote
Flagged
RajivC | 52 other reviews | Oct 10, 2024 |
When we read about violent upheavals in history — most particularly the French Revolution of 1789 — our habit is to associate them with radical causes, subversive organizations, and characters who emerge from the morass in a more or less confined theatre.

In Christopher Clark’s Revolutionary Spring we are seeing something quite different, a series of events more akin to the Arab Spring the Middle East experienced in 2011-2012 where almost simultaneously independent nations of an entire region of the world seemed to explode with no premeditation. Ergo Clark’s title for this work about the upheavals all over Europe in 1848-1849.

These revolutions are characterized by little rhetoric, virtually no conspiracies, and few leaders either with revolutionary credentials or serious charisma. These revolutionaries didn’t really participate in building from the ruins. That was left more or less to the people who were in power before all the violence broke up the party.

These revolutions were spread across the continent. Sometimes they were about voting rights, or workers’ rights, control over Parliament by linguistic majorities, even a say in government by subject peoples. Some were about a cultural nationalism, but not always. It was the unusual revolution that sought to completely overthrow monarchies.

The upheavals surprisingly started in Switzerland of all places over a move to reinstate Jesuits in the educational system. They spread to France, the German principalities, Palermo, Rome, Naples, Milan, the Netherlands, Budapest, Vienna, Spain, and Prague.

There were initiatives to end slavery of blacks in Guadalupe, to end the repression of Jews, to enfranchise the poor, even to end the slavery of Roma peoples in the area we associate with Romania today. But almost none of these issues were resolved after counter-revolutions which followed almost all of the initial violence.

Women’s rights? Nope.

Post revolutionary states left conservatives and some liberals in power. Radicals were left on the periphery. And new violence broke out this time led by radicals, but these were squelched once more.

The revolutions almost seemed like new opportunities to trick the poor. The very poor didn’t even want the revolutions. In some readings you might say the later Russian Revolution was a big trick on the poor.

In hatred of the Hapsburgs local governments kept trying to redraw the maps with little success.

I think it no accident that Clark focuses on the June Days of 1948 in Paris where radicals invaded and sacked the Chamber of Deputies, a new legislature Parisians had created only months earlier.

The parallels with the January 6, 2021, sacking of the US Capital are abundantly clear.

What is not clear is how historian Clark views the Trump uprise: is it a revolution or a counter-revolution over the moderates in Washington? As in the earlier revolutions, violence did not legitimize it. There was little faith in republican ideals then or now.

I was struck in Clark’s work about how little the Europeans cared about the revolution in America or spouted its ideals.

The authorities of the 1840’s reversed almost all of the gains of the revolutionaries. The rabble were poorly armed. The situation in America is quite different: there are more than 400 million quite lethal firearms in the hands of Americans. There are means to communicate over secret (often encrypted) computer networks, and cheerleaders of the violence in almost every segment of American society, even in the police and likely in the armed forces.

Who could believe even two years ago a coup-d’état would be attempted in modern Germany by neoNazis and white supremacists?

A revolution in America — shrill, chaotic, unhinged — to reverse the gains of the Republic over 200 years is not so unimaginable. It could have succeeded with the first Trump administration. It may yet with a second.

Clark’s book is long and his writing style, well, I frequently nodded off. But I must tip my hat to the range of research used. It had to cover many languages, periods, and a lot of dusty archives. I hope all the researchers got their due in the acknowledgements. I didn’t read them. Sorry.
… (more)
 
Flagged
MylesKesten | 2 other reviews | Jan 23, 2024 |
This book brought a major revision to how I viewed the causes to WWI. For example, I hadn't known that the plot to murder Archduke Ferdinand originated from inside the Serbian Government. I also was still under the impression that the German head of state launched the war. He didn't. No wonder the Germans were so perplexed at the Paris Peace Conference after the war. I was also clueless as to the role French finance played in 1) Arming the Serbian Government and 2) Developing Russian railways for their military machine. There are plenty of surprises in this book. One feeling I had leaving the book was that the Russian people deserved better leaders. It's so tragic that the good ones, like Stolypin, got assassinated along the way. Russia replaced one set of nincompoops with an even worse group.… (more)
 
Flagged
MylesKesten | 52 other reviews | Jan 23, 2024 |
This was chosen by Michael Ledger-Lomas, author of Queen Victoria: This Thorny Crown (Oxford, 2021), as one of History Today’s Books of the Year 2023.

Find out why at HistoryToday.com.
 
Flagged
HistoryToday | 2 other reviews | Nov 24, 2023 |

Lists

Awards

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Statistics

Works
12
Also by
2
Members
4,055
Popularity
#6,208
Rating
4.1
Reviews
87
ISBNs
145
Languages
12
Favorited
4

Charts & Graphs