'Im Sog der Katastrophe - Lateinamerika und der erste Weltkrieg' (In the Wake of Disaster - Latin America and the First World War) by Stefan Rinke was recently published by Campus Verlag. Stefan Rinke is an Einstein Research Fellow and a professor of the history of Latin America at the Freie Universität Berlin.
"When news of the outbreak of war in Europe became known in Latin America in August 1914, it was referred to as a 'drama of all mankind' where there could not be any spectators. Many observers agreed that that summer, one era came to an end and a new one began.
In Latin America, which owing to the new form of propaganda war and the new communication technologies was more closely involved in the events of the Old World than ever before, the war gave rise to emancipatory aspirations which became visible during the fighting or immediately afterwards. Potential conflicts already simmering for quite some time were aggravated by the great seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century and resulted in new social movements of very different types."
Stefan Rinke is now working on the English translation of his book, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. A Spanish translation is also underway. Moreover, Prof. Rinke is currently preparing an international conference on the global history of the end of the First World War together with Michael Wildt from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Credits: campus Geschichte
