The mud-filled, blood-soaked trenches of the Low Countries and North-Eastern Eur
ope were essential battlegrounds during the First World War, but the war reached
many other corners of the globe, and events elsewhere significantly affected it
s course. Covering the twelve months of 1916, eminent historian Keith Jeffery us
es twelve moments from a range of locations and shows how they reverberated arou
nd the world. As well as discussing better-known battles such as Gallipoli, Verd
un and the Somme, Jeffery examines Dublin, for the Easter Rising, East Africa, t
he Italian front, Central Asia and Russia, where the killing of Rasputin exposed
the internal political weakness of the country's empire.
And, in charting a
wide range of wartime experience, he studies the 'intelligence war', naval engag
ements at Jutland and elsewhere, as well as the political consequences that ensu
ed from the momentous United States presidential election. Using an extraordinar
y range of military, social and cultural sources, and relating the individual ex
periences on the ground to wider developments, these are the stories lost to his
tory, the conflicts that spread beyond the sphere of Europe and the moments that
transformed the war.
