Kenneth O. Morgan quotes:

The Rebecca Riots by David Williams is an unassuming book, but its significance is universal. The book and its author determined my life; they made me want to be a historian of Wales and of the world.

Britain, the first industrial nation, had offered the world a remarkable public experiment in liberal, capitalist democracy whose success was premised upon free trade and world peace. Tuesday, 4 August 1914 brought that experiment to an abrupt halt.