David Wetzel

David Wetzel

David Wetzel is an international historian who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in the diplomacy of nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. He has written on the Crimean War and on the three wars of German Unification.[1] Of these he has made the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and Bismarck's diplomacy in the twenty years that followed it the focus of his scholarly concerns.

Education

David Wetzel earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in history from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on the Crimean War.[2]

Career

Teaching

Wetzel started working at Berkeley in 1986 in the billing and payments services department, and was hired as a lecturer in 2003 after completing A Duel of Giants.[3] In 2012 he was one of seven Berkeley faculty members listed among America's best professors in a book published by The Princeton Review.[4]

Publications

Wetzel's first book, The Crimean War: A Diplomatic History (1985) surveyed the conflict from a bird's eye point of view. Ann Pottinger Saab welcomed it as "a trenchantly written synthesis, understand [ing] the war in terms of the consequences for Central Europe and the national unification movements.[5] According to D.W. Spring: Wetzel "avoids the minutiae of details....yet he reveals the substance of the negotiations with a sure grasp of their complexity."[6] Wetzel's second work A Duel of Giants (2001) deals with the July crisis of 1870 that led to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. James F. McMillan praised it, commenting that "the book can be recommended as a useful theme in European history...which has suffered from neglect for some forty years."[7] Michael Schmid observed: "David Wetzel's study is an extremely well crafted analysis of this dramatic episode in European history, and it is a pleasure to read."[8] Norman Rich admired the way "Wetzel concentrated on the personalities involved in the crisis [and his treatment] of the crisis itself, which he discusses clearly and dispassionately."[9] Arden Bucholz noted the "uniqueness" of what he termed Wetzel's "systems analysis of people".[10] In 2005 a German translation of the book appeared as the seventh volume of the Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung Wissenschaftliche Reihe.[11] In 2008, Wetzel debated Bismarck’s motives in the period leading up the war with the distinguished Augsburg historian, Josef Becker.[12] In 2011, he contributed an article on this subject to the popular German magazine Damals.[13]

In 2012, he wrote an article entitled “Any Mouse Can Bite a Lion’s Tail: Recent Research on the Concert of Europe,” for the periodical for the Deutsches Historisches Institute, Paris.[14]

In 2012, Wetzel published A Duel of Nations on the diplomacy of the Franco-Prussian War itself. Patricia Kollander called Wetzel's book "a superb sequel to the author’s Duel of Giants," writing that Wetzel aims, "not merely to explain the progress of these events but also to shed light on 'the motives and concepts that drove the key actors as they said and did the things that the record reveals."[15] Matthias Schulz echoed Kollander, pronouncing the work a "major achievement ... that fills an important gap in the literature which has not seen such a lucid and well-composed case study on nineteenth century war and diplomacy in many years."[16] Jeremy Black wrote, "[T]his exemplary work not only demonstrates the value of diplomatic history but also provides rich guidance on how it should be tackled."[17] Alfred Kelly added: "The book is obviously a labor of love. It has the feel of a series of masterful undergraduate lectures, complete with arresting character sketches and bizarre stories stories about crackpot minor players."[18] Said Dirk Boenker: The book is " an impressive piece of scholarship [and] a valuable English language account of the high diplomacy of the Franco-Prussian War."[19] In the Historische Zeitschrift Ulrich Lappenküper expressed no doubt that the book would fill an “important gap in the literature addressed to this subject in the English language"[20] and Dennis Showalter called it "the definitive account of its subject."[21]

Selected bibliography

Media

References

  1. ↑ "Wars of German Unification". Oxford Bibliographies. Retrieved 2015-03-03.
  2. ↑ "David Wetzel". UC Berkeley. Retrieved 2015-03-03.
  3. ↑ True Shields, "A professor’s passion: David Wetzel's climb to the top", The Daily Californian, October 3, 2012.
  4. ↑ Amruta Trivedi, "Seven UC Berkeley instructors selected as Princeton Review’s 300 'Best Professors'", Notes from the Field, The Daily Californian, April 3, 2012.
  5. ↑ The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature, 3rd ed. 2 vols. (New York, 1995) 2: 47:121
  6. ↑ The Slavonic and East European Review vol. 65, no.3 (July, 1987), 471
  7. ↑ James F. McMillan, "The Empire the French Forgot," Times Literary Supplement (15 March 2002)
  8. ↑ Michael Schmid, "International History Review" (September 2002) Vol. 24, no.3: 654
  9. ↑ Norman Rich, Journal of Modern History (June 2004), Vol 76, no 2: 422
  10. ↑ Bucholz, Arden (September 2002). "A Duel of Giants: Bismarck, Napoleon III, and The Origins of the Franco-Prussian War. By David Wetzel.". Central European History 35 (3): 434–435. doi:10.1017/S0008938900001679. Retrieved 2015-03-03.
  11. ↑ Duell der Giganten: Bismarck, Napoleon III. und die Ursachen des Deutsch-Französischen Krieges 1870-1871 (Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2005).
  12. ↑ Wetzel's reply to Josef Becker was published as "Bismarck and the Franco-Prussian War: A Response to Josef Becker", Central European History, 41 (2008): 111-24
  13. ↑ Bismarck und Napoleon III. – Die Vorgeschichte des Krieges 1870/71" DAMALS (September 2011)
  14. ↑ “Any Mouse Can Bite A Lion’s Tail: Recent Research on the Concert of Europe,” Francia, 39 (2012): 521-33. http://www.perspectivia.net/content/publikationen/francia/francia-retro/39-2012/0521-0534. Accessed 1 April 2015.
  15. ↑ Kollander, Patricia (June 2014). "A Duel of Nations: Germany, France, and the Diplomacy of the War of 1870–1871. By David Wetzel". The Journal of Modern History 86 (2). doi:10.1086/675462. Retrieved 4 March 2015.
  16. ↑ Schulz, Matthias (April 2014). "David Wetzel. A Duel of Nations: Germany, France, and the Diplomacy of the War of 1870–1871.". American Historical Review 119 (2): 590–591. doi:10.1093/ahr/119.2.590. Retrieved 2015-03-03.
  17. ↑ Jeremy Black (4 October 2012). "A Duel of Nations: Germany, France, and the Diplomacy of the War of 1870-1871". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 2015-03-03.
  18. ↑ Alfred Kelly, The Historian (Summer 2014) vol. 76, issue 2: 434
  19. ↑ German Studies Review 36: 3 2013, 699-700.
  20. ↑ Ulrich, Lappenküper (2013). "Historische Zeitschrift". 297 (2013): 234.
  21. ↑ Dennis E. Showalter, The Wars of German Unification (Modern Wars) 2nd.ed., (London: Hodder Arnold, 2015), 697.

External links

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