History lessons for big powers

Historian says China and the US see themselves not just as nation states

Margaret MacMillan says there are dangers in the United States being too "smug" in response to China's rise.

The internationally-renowned Canadian historian contends there are parallels to the build up to World War I, which also involved a major shift in the balance of power.

"Established or status quo powers tend to be rather smug and unresponsive to the concerns of rising powers. You see this today with the United States and you saw this with Britain before the First World War."

MacMillan, who was speaking in her office at St Antony's College, Oxford, where she is warden, adds, however, that there are also risks to making connections to events in the past.

"You can always make parallels but the thing is not to be trapped by them because nothing in history repeats itself exactly the same.

"Now a hundred years later we have different kinds of communications, different powers, we no longer have empires and so really in so many different ways it is a very different world," she says.

Her latest book, The War That Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War, winner of the international affairs book of the year at the Political Book Awards, however, could be seen as carrying certain lessons for today.

"I think the United States no longer feels quite as dominant as it once was. I think it feels it is overstretched and has got too many responsibilities. A lot of Americans now complain about being asked to be the world's policeman.

"You also have powers that are growing in strength. It is not just China. There are also Brazil and India. How it will play out is anyone's guess. It doesn't, however, mean we are doomed to have another world war."

Some might think MacMillan might have a unique insight into World War I since she happens also to be the great granddaughter of Britain's war-time prime minister David Lloyd George. Her mother who was of Welsh heritage left the UK to go on a schoolgirl trip to Canada in 1939 and never returned.

"It may have given me a sense of history but I never knew him because he died a year after I was born. I never felt the need to defend him in either my latest book or the one on the Paris peace conference.

"I have shifted my opinion of him. I tended to share the common view that he was dodgy and tricky and had no moral principles but I have actually developed a great respect for him."

MacMillan, a very youthful 70, could be described as a late developer. She spent 27 years teaching history at the relatively backwater Ryerson Universty in Toronto, which specialized in vocational-orientated education.

"I taught engineers. They had to do a liberal arts subject. It was a challenge (to keep them interested) and you had to tell them stories and they would always want to know what happened next and that in a way became a technique. It was very useful experience. I owe Ryerson a lot," she says.

Her life was transformed, however, in her late 50s by the dramatic success of Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which sold some 240,000 copies and resulted in her being the first woman to win the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

"It was quite a surprise. I think it was better it happened later in life than earlier. If I had had a big success early on it would probably have been impossible to live up to," she says.

Her next major book, Nixon in China: The Week That Changed The World, was published in 2007 and looked at former US president Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972, which paved the way to the restoration of diplomatic relations between the US and China.

Like Peacemakers, centered on the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, it was another to focus on a set piece historic event.

"I think (through this approach) you start with something vivid and you can get to all the issues through the story," she says.

The book to some extent drew on her experience of teaching Chinese history at Ryerson, which she did without learning the language.

"I must have taught Chinese history at undergraduate level for 10 to 15 years. There was a great deal of work in English and French so I was very lucky. I learned quite a lot."

MacMillan still thinks Nixon's visit was a pivotal historic moment, not least because it was the first time an American president had ever been to China.

"It was a recognition that something fundamental had changed in the relationship between China and the United States. I think it was the symbolism of the visit that was important as opposed to the actual content," she says.

She says few of the actors at the time foresaw Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up of the late 1970s or that China was going to transform into a world economic superpower.

"I think neither Nixon or (then US secretary of state Henry) Kissinger thought relations would develop as they have. There was a wonderful phrase from Kissinger when he said that he thought that trade between the two countries would not amount to much."

MacMillan, who moved to Oxford in 2007 to head St Antony's, a college for graduate students, says the problem with US-China relations is that both parties view themselves as "civilizations" and not just nation states.

"Both tend to see themselves as role models for the rest of the world. They are both convinced they are right and their way of doings thing is right. It therefore doesn't always make for an easy relationship."

She acknowledges that when China becomes a larger economy than the United States, which some predict may happen by the end of the decade, might be seen as a key historical event.

"China has a population around four times bigger than the United States so the average Chinese is not nearly so well off. Technologically also the United States is still way ahead. But China is beginning to translate its economic and military strength into real power."

MacMillan says whatever happens, the Chinese will retain a deep sense of their own history.

"I don't know if they are unique in this. The Serbs go back to 1389 (Ottoman-Serbian wars). The Egyptians could go back to the pyramids but curiously they don't.

andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 10/24/2014 page38)