1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War
Writing about “a year of possibility not predestination,” Emmerson surveys a selection of cities around the world as they appeared in 1913. Portraying the European capitals of the next year’s belligerent countries, Emmerson strikes a cosmopolitan tone by noting social interconnections linking London to Paris to Berlin to Constantinople. Diarists and travelers populate his narratives, their descriptions lending eyewitness immediacy to his delineation of streetscapes, new architecture, and political issues. Above all, Emmerson seeks to evoke the economic globalization that affected, in positive and negative ways, all the cities he presents. As 1913 was, in retrospect, the apex of empires, Emmerson dwells on the imperial outlooks from Britain and France and from the empires doomed to destruction in the war ahead, the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman. Turning from centers of power to cities beginning to boom from their global linkages, Emmerson enunciates the aspirations of outliers like Winnipeg, Melbourne, and Buenos Aires. Including stops in Tehran, Mexico City, Jerusalem, several U.S. cities, Shanghai, and Tokyo, Emmerson’s historical world tour emotively captures the civilization soon to vanish in WWI. --Gilbert Taylor