New Books Network Duncan Kelly, "Worlds of Wartime: The First World War and the Reconstruction of Modern Politics" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Jan 19, 2026
Duncan Kelly, Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge and author of 'Worlds of Wartime,' delves into the intersection of modernism, politics, and economics shaped by the First World War. He discusses the 'world crisis' concept introduced by Ilya Alévy and critiques of Marxian labor value that transformed socialist debates. The conversation highlights nationalist movements like Young Asia and Ireland's Machiavellian moment, along with insights on Keynes and Malthus in reconstruction economics. Kelly also contrasts Wilson's federalism with racial critiques from figures like Du Bois.
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WWI As A Modernist Intellectual Break
- Duncan Kelly reframes WWI as an intellectual and political modernist rupture that reshaped politics and economics.
- He argues ideas forged during wartime fixed modern assumptions about nation-states, markets, and representative democracy.
The 'World Crisis' Mix: Nationhood And Revolution
- Alévy's 'world crisis' frames the war as the collision of nationalism and revolutionary contagion producing structural disequilibrium.
- That mix made the war both an intellectual and systemic crisis whose aftermath fixed new political orders.
Kant Debates Became Wartime Propaganda
- The 'Kant Wars' in France split thinkers who saw Kantian republicanism as the path to perpetual peace from Catholics who treated Kant as tainted German thought.
- Kelly uses this to show wartime debates recast philosophical traditions into propaganda and political programs.
