Stocktake on the cruellest century

With the millennium only weeks away (even if, strictly speaking, the 20th century has another year to run) predictably there has been much literary stocktaking of our epoch and of the immediately preceding ones. The tone, on the whole, is sober and rather introspective rather then being either apocalyptic-pessimist or Brave-New-World euphoric.

Western man is still, in a sense, convalescent after two catastrophic wars and mass racial and ideological persecution, his collective conscience wounded and haunted and his belief in progress and the growth of a proper world order severely damaged, if not killed outright. Postwar recovery in many fields has been spectacular, and European union is a stride into the future; but nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented, genocide thrives in many quarters of the globe, the physical environment is threatened, and, though science has achieved a great deal, it remains a two-sided weapon.

A thousand years is too great a task for any historical retrospectives; the 20th century in itself is enough, and more than enough. The 19th, in spite of wars, revolutions and huge gaps between rich and poor, believed that it was on an upward spiral which would lead to new heights for humanity. It managed, somehow, to combine this with Darwinism and the doctrine of the fittest - which when it was applied pragmatically to economic life, triggered off headlong industrial competition between nations and laid the powder-trail for war.

Though the 20th century opened with the Boer War, the belief in progress was general until the Great War robbed Europe of many of its best and brightest young people, opened the way for social anarchy and dissolution, and left an entire generation disillusioned and totally at odds with the Old World, the old morality and commercial middle-class civilisation.

In 1901 the European nations owned or ruled most of the globe; today the age of Western imperialism is only a memory, though economic neo-colonialism is still strong in Africa, the Middle East and in Latin America. Christianity, the official creed of Western man since the late Roman Empire, has been steadily undermined by materialism, rationalism, the sexual revolution, political ideologies and cults, and the quasi-official amorality of Big Business International.

Reflections on a Ravaged Century by Robert Conquest (John Murray, £25 in UK) finds the chief culprit for the misdeeds of modern man in the mass ideologies which have allowed him to kill or enslave millions of his fellow-men with a clear conscience, or even the conviction that he was actively doing good. He has already written a classic of its kind in The Great Terror, one of the first books to lift the lid off Stalinism at a time when the Left almost everywhere still claimed Stalin to be a kind of Peter the Great figure, brutal but historically necessary. His latest book is not, as that was, a work of research; instead it is an attempt at intellectual and historical analysis.

WHY did Western man (and a lot of people elsewhere in the globe as well) espouse causes which were manifestly evil in their morality though promising some vaguely imagined ultimate good? And why did so many of the human race throw themselves voluntarily into the arms of tyrants? Conquest does not pretend to have the answers, but he does at least warn us against easy solutions such as thinking that greater prosperity will solve everything, or that scientific and mathematical formulae will work as effectively with people as they work in other fields. And though he believes in the value of education worldwide, he does not expect miracles as a result.

Humanity: a Moral History of the Twentieth Century by Jonathan Glover (Jonathan Cape, £18.99 in UK) attacks what its author believes to be at the core of the modern dilemma - the collapse of morality, as generally understood until quite recently. He makes a persuasive case when he argues that the technological and scientific revolutions outran both moral theory and practice - a process which already was plain in the first World War - and how a bureaucratic devotion to "duty" made genocide and mass civilian bombing much easier for those involved.

He notes, too, the strong core of moral puritanism in some of the worst Nazis - for instance, Eichmann, who when given a copy of Lolita while in prison and on trial for his life, indignantly handed it back as an "immoral" book. Bur he goes of the rails in his simplistic attack on Nietzsche, a prophet who understood perfectly that much or even most of traditional morality would no longer serve and was in fact little more than habit and prejudice. Nietzsche was turned by the Nazis to their own unholy use, but his ultimate message was far over their heads, and a great deal of it is still relevant to us. In fact, if he had been listened to and properly understood, much mischief might have been avoided in the West, and in Germany in particular.

Twentieth Century: a History of the World 1901 to the Present by J.M. Roberts (Penguin Press, £20 in UK) is a sober, scholarly and at times conventional history which ends with a fair-minded and unemotional survey of our present international situation. It does not, however, mince words and it is salutary to be reminded that "there are now more dictators, bandit rulers and authoritarian political regimes in the world than in 1939". Nationalism, much demonised when not written off as obsolete, is still a force for good or bad, and our persistent refusal or inability to understand Islam and the Middle East is likely to work against us in the long run.

Another solid work of history is Martin Gilbert's Challenge to Civilisation: a History of the 20th Century 1952-1999 (Harper/Collins, £29.99 in UK), the third and most recent volume in his series on the century gone by. The previous ones covering the earlier period are now out in paperback. This book is written in straightforward chronological style - a history of record rather than a history of analysis and ideas. As such, it is straight and unpretentious in approach and should make a very useful work of reference.

The American Century by Harold Evans (Jonathan Cape/Pimlico, £47.20 in UK) comes close at times to the coffee-table category, but nevertheless offers a fascinating panorama of the US in its many faces and aspects. It puts heavy but fully justified stress on photographic illustration, though the text (Evans had helpers in Gail Buckland and Kevin Baker) is also good, journalistic documentary. American Chronicle by Lois Gordon and Alan Gordon (Yale, £32.50) goes methodically through the history of the Western superpower year by year, the result is a splendid book of reference, though visually rather disappointing. Finally, We Interrupt This Programme by Peter Bernard (BBC, £18.99 in UK) is a run-through of 20 news stories covered by the BBC over the years, from the Great Strike to the death of Princess Diana. Some good photos, but otherwise not a lot of substance.

Brian Fallon is a critic and author of The Age of Innocence: Irish culture 1930-1960