The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

by Adam Tooze

Instead of the neat stage theories projected by nineteenth-century theorists, history took the form of what Trotsky would call ‘uneven and combined development’, a loosely articulated web of events, actors and processes developing at different speeds, whose individual courses were interconnected in labyrinthine ways.66 ‘Uneven and combined development’ is not an elegant phrase. But it well encapsulates the history we tell here, both of international relations and of interconnected national political development, stretching around the northern hemisphere from the United States to China by way of Eurasia. For Trotsky, it defined a method both of historical analysis and of political action. It expressed his dogged belief that whilst history offered no guarantees, it was not without logic. Success depended on sharpening one’s historical intelligence so as to recognize and seize unique moments of opportunity. For Lenin, similarly, a key task of the revolutionary theorist was to identify and attack the weakest links in the ‘chain’ of imperialist powers.67