THIS slim volume packs a mightier punch than many a thick tome written about the causes of the first world war.

While its subtitle could lead to misconceptions that the book deals only with the immediate causes of that conflict, Eddie Glackin in fact begins his historical analysis a century before 1914 to explore its true causes.

He demonstrates concisely how it resulted from the ongoing battle between competing imperialist nations for the spoils of Africa, Asia and Latin America which had been rumbling on since the early 1800s after the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of feudal power in Europe.

It’s thus a classic history primer for young people but also extremely informative for an older generation that has perhaps forgotten or never knew how bloodthirsty, rapacious and vicious the competition for colonies was, as well as to what depths of human depravity and untold greed this scramble for land and resources reached. 

The emerging capitalist nations were desperate for new markets and sources of raw materials and the African, Latin American and Asian continents offered easy pickings. With their superior weaponry and industrial power, the big colonialist nations of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and, somewhat later, the US pillaged and massacred their way to achieve their goals.

Glackin expertly and with utmost clarity charts this process with many examples, among them the virtual genocide of the Herero people in what is today Namibia by the Germans, the first concentration camps set up by the British in South Africa and the murders and horrendous mass mutilation of the Congolese as a means of intimidation by Belgium.

These rampaging colonial nations were of course bitterly and heroically resisted by the indigenous populations but they didn’t stand a chance.

The first world war represented the culmination of this battle for colonies and resources with one of the most senseless examples of mass murder on European soil.

It left an emergent US as the strongest global power, consolidated British dominance in India and Africa, leaving France and Spain with a few sops and Germany routed and robbed of all its colonies.

This modestly priced book should be on the bookshelf of anyone who has a keen interest in history and wishes to have it explained as a process seen from an intelligent Marxist perspective.

• Available from Connolly Books, Dublin, email: connollybooks@eircom.net

Review by John Green