This middle volume focuses on the curious and cruel epoch of declining European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

    Social Democrats and Communists today face each other as bitter political enemies across the front lines of the Cold War; yet they share a common origin in the Social Democratic Party of Imperial Germany. How did they come to go separate ways? By what process did the old party break apart? How did the prewar party prepare the ground for the dissolution of the labor movement in World War I, and for the subsequent extension of Leninism into Germany? To answer these questions is the purpose of Carl Schorske's study.

    His concern is with “the prospects for individual liberty in democratic societies in which sovereignty purportedly resides in the whole people of the body politic.” His objective is a definition and understanding of “the canons of conduct for the public authority of a dynamic society.”Daniel J. Mahoney is Associate Professor of Politics at Assumption College.David DesRosiers is Executive Vice President at the Manhattan Institute.

    This study examines, analyzes and traces the history of the "balance of power," and its effect on historical events.