He both traces continuity across Koselleck’s premodern/modern divide and reveals discontinuities in German history. He set out to explore how German regimes over three centuries have envisaged their present in relation to their future and past. Iron Kingdom is a wonderfully readable, gripping account of a state which, for both good and ill, has fundamentally shaped our world. Clark offers no solutions, but that is not his task. It was both a progressive, well run, enlightened country and a huge, threatening barracks. He is the author of Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, among other books. Catharine's College at the University of Cambridge, UK. Prussia's power came from a sequence of notably brilliant rulers (most famously Frederick the Great), dynastic marriage and an obsessive focus on military excellence. Christopher Clark is a professor of modern European history and a fellow of St. Prussia's role in Europe's fortunes has been incalculable and Iron Kingdom is, extraordinarily, the first major book devoted to it. After the Second World War Prussia, which had still continued to exist as part of the German state, was abolished by the Allies, blamed for the overwhelming militarism that had led Europe into total disaster. With its capital in Berlin, Prussia grew from being a small, poor, disregarded medieval state into one of the most vigorous and powerful countries in Europe, the scourge of its many enemies and, ultimately, the motor behind the creation of the German Empire in 1871 with all that implied for the 20th century.
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