2024 Berlin Lecture: Thinking about War in the Modern Age

The Berlin Lecture will be delivered in 2024 by Professor Margaret MacMillan. 

Abstract

We like to think of war as an aberration, as the breakdown of the normal state of peace. This is comforting but wrong, as we are realizing yet again today.  War after all is deeply woven into the history of human society, even liberal ones, and at times has changed the course of history. It has helped to shape our institutions, our societies and culture and the international order. We should neither ignore nor glorify war but we ought to think about it. This lecture examines ideas about war, whether from strategists, historians, theologians, philosophers or artists. It will focus mainly on the period since the start of the 19th century when war became ever more destructive and far-reaching, and will conclude with the wars of the present.