Margaret MacMillan - War and the International Order in the 20th Century

We tend to see war as a breakdown of the international order but one that raises interesting issues. Can a particular international order—the balance of power for example—tend towards war? And how much does the experience of war produce new and perhaps stronger international norms and institutions? This lecture examined the two great wars of the 20th century and asks what caused them and what their consequences were.

Margaret MacMillan was educated at the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford. She was a member of Ryerson University’s History Department for 25 years, Provost of Trinity College at the University of Toronto from 2002 to 2007 and Warden of St Antony’s College and Professor of International History, University of Oxford from 2007 to 2017. She is a Professor of History, University of Toronto, the Xerox Foundation Distinguished Scholar at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and a Distinguished Fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs. Her research specializes in British imperial history and international history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her publications include Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, Nixon in China: the Week that Changed the World, The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 and History’s People: Personalities and the Past. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Companion of the Order of Canada.