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James Kitchen, Living the Great Illusion: Sir Norman Angell, 1872–1967, by Martin Ceadel, The English Historical Review, Volume CXXVI, Issue 520, June 2011, Pages 737–738, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cer123
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Extract
Martin Ceadel has painstakingly constructed the definitive study of the life and work of Norman Angell, one of the leading internationalists of the first half of the twentieth century. Angell's conceptions of conflict, peace, security, and international relations dominated much of the intellectual discussion of the period. As such he had access to, or indirect influence upon, key political opinion formers, including Winston Churchill, Lord Esher, and Woodrow Wilson. Yet he also shaped popular discourse, partly through his irrepressible ability to churn out journal articles and monographs (41 in total) throughout his career, but also through an almost unending series of lecture tours in Britain, Europe, and especially the USA. His resulting prominence was such that he did not look out of place when photographed in 1944 alongside Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and Howard Hawks on the set of ‘To Have and Have Not’. Yet, in terms of the historiography of radical and internationalist thought, Angell has, until now, been particularly badly served. As Ceadel is at pains to point out, many previous studies have reduced Angell's musings on international relations to the erroneous aphorism that war in a globalised economy was impossible. Instead, Angell highlighted the economic irrationality of conflict. He developed ideas that had first been disseminated by Richard Cobden, but placed them into the context of the international capital flows that seemed to dominate the global economy of the first decade of the twentieth century. Ceadel expertly and exhaustively delineates the various strands of Angell's thought, correcting many of the previous misconceptions. Key to this analysis is the fact that, for much of his life, Angell's view of international affairs was not clearly defined, and thus changed on a regular basis—often to suit the audience that he was trying to reach with a particular message. Even his ‘illusion’ thesis led him to argue for pacifist and pro-defence approaches at the same time. It is by clarifying the complexities and contradictions of Angell's thought that Ceadel's study proves of greatest value.
