ABSTRACT
‘Crisis’ is an overworked word. It is used to describe anything from a brief personal setback – ‘I’ve had a crisis at work’ – to the very brink of nuclear war – ‘the Cuban Missile Crisis’. This makes it difficult for the historian to distinguish a period that might properly be defined as one of crisis from the ordinary ups and downs of the historical process. Two things allow us to view the years between the two world wars as a crisis in a significant sense. The first is the sheer range and scale of the upheavals and conflicts that define the period. The second is the very keen sense that contemporaries themselves had that they were living through an age of chaotic, dangerous transition and the development of a morbid culture that reflected these anxieties. Not for nothing did Winston Churchill christen his study of the era of the Great War, published between 1923 and 1927, The World Crisis.
