Fritz Stern Lecture

Friends or Something Else? Alliances in War and Peace

Alliances between states, from the Delian League to NATO, are a recurring feature in international relations and they can keep peace or encourage war. States make alliances out of self-interest, fear, or ideology, and the ensuing relationships are rarely easy, especially when they are put to the test. Alliances can make and keep the peace or lead to conflict and in so doing have helped to shape, for better or worse, the modern world. Using examples from the recent past and the present, Margaret MacMillan examines the nature, dynamics, and types of alliances, and suggests reasons why they succeed or fail.

Margaret MacMillan is a professor of History at the University of Toronto and an emeritus professor of International History at Oxford University. She was Provost of Trinity College, Toronto from 2002-7 and Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford from 2007-2017. She is currently a trustee of the Imperial War Museum. Her research specializes in British imperial history and the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Publications include War: How Conflict Shaped Us, Paris, 1919, and The War that Ended Peace. She gave the CBC’s Massey lectures in 2015 and the BBC’s Reith Lectures in 2018. Awards include the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction and the Governor-General’s literary award. She has honorary degrees from several universities and is an honorary Fellow of the British Academy. She is also a Companion of the Order of Canada and a Companion of Honour (UK).