> Skip to content
  • Published: 4 April 2013
  • ISBN: 9781846147258
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 800

Europe

The First 100 Million Years




Half a millennium of European warfare brilliantly retold by a masterly historian

At the heart of Europe's history lies a puzzle. In most of the world humankind has created enormous political frameworks, whether ancient (such as China) or modern (such as the United States). Sprawling empires, kingdoms or republics appear to be the norm. By contrast Europe has remained stubbornly chaotic and fractured into often amazingly tiny pieces, with each serious attempt to unify the continent (by Charles V, Napoleon and Hitler) thwarted.

In this marvelously ambitious and exciting new book, Brendan Simms tells the story of Europe's constantly shifting geopolitics and the peculiar circumstances that have made it both so impossible to dominate, but also so dynamic and ferocious. It is the story of a group of highly competitive and mutually suspicious dynasties, but also of a continent uniquely prone to interference from 'semi-detached' elements, such as Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Britain and (just as centrally to Simms' argument) the United States.

Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy will become the standard work on this crucial subject - and an extremely enjoyable one.

  • Published: 4 April 2013
  • ISBN: 9781846147258
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 800

About the author

Brendan Simms

Brendan Simms is director of studies in history at Peterhouse and the Newton Sheehy Lecturer in International Relations at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Impact of Napoleon and many articles and reviews on the wars of the Yugoslav succession, the Third Reich, and international history.

Also by Brendan Simms

See all