If the Great War were a play in five acts, one for each year from 1914 to 1918, then 1916 – act three – would represent its climax. Yet in history as in theatre, space matters no less than time.

Like many of Shakespeare’s dramas, the war played out in numerous settings on what became a truly global stage. Making sense of time and space at the midpoint of the first World War is the challenge to which Keith Jeffery rises triumphantly in this sparkling history. In doing so, Jeffery stands at the forefront of the newest trend in the history of the war by emphasising both the local and global dimensions of a conflict that engulfed the lives of millions.

Combining sharp analysis with superb storytelling and using a gallery of extraordinary characters, he discusses 1916 in 12 scenes. The first 10 focus on different battles, fronts and regions, including Asia, Africa and the Middle East as well as Europe. The last two point to the shifting action of 1917 (American entry and the Russian Revolution) and the war’s denouement in 1918.

While rejecting the common obsession with the “mud and trenches of the western front”, Jeffery does not neglect Verdun and the Somme. He knows that these great battles of attrition drove the destructive dynamic of the war in 1916. But he declines to endorse the verdict that they were a “learning curve” leading to victory. “If victory there was,” he notes of the Somme, “it was undoubtedly pyrrhic.”

Jeffery is more interested in exploring the ramifications of stalemate on the western front for the war’s other theatres. The year opened with the Allied withdrawal from Gallipoli and concluded with fighting in Macedonia, where by the end of the year half-a-million British, French and Serb troops confronted the Bulgarians in another deadlock.

In between, the Russians recovered from their huge retreat in 1915 and under their most gifted general, Aleksei Brusilov, drove the Austro-Hungarians back across southern Poland before the Germans halted them. This forced the Austrians to call off their “punishment expedition” against Italy in the Alps, encouraging the Italians to renew their own unsuccessful offensives against the Austrians on the Isonzo river. Eventually, some 600,000 Italian soldiers died in the war, proportionately nearly as many as British.

The Ottoman Empire’s participation activated imperialist rivalries across its former and current Arab provinces, from Libya to Iraq, as the Allies struggled against their German-backed Ottoman foes. In 1916, this resulted in more fluid campaigning that resembled 19th-century colonial warfare yet also imported the latest techniques (aircraft, heavy artillery) from Europe.

Colluding with each other in the secret Sykes-Picot accord, the French and British divided up the future Middle East. Yet the British fanned the Arab Revolt (under TE Lawrence) with promises of independence while favouring Zionist interests in Palestine, thus sowing the seeds of enduring conflict.

War on the move

Military stalemate, however, did not mean that the conflict was static. On the contrary, Jeffery identifies key developments that altered the nature and tempo of the war precisely because of the stalemate.

Prime among these was the naval war. As the author shows, Jutland, the major naval battle of 1916 between the British and German fleets (yet another standoff), was less important than the broader economic war in which the Allies blockaded the Central Powers while the Germans attacked Allied shipping with submarines. The result was vital since the side that won (the Allies) could ultimately bring more men and material to bear on breaking the stalemate.

He also shows how the relentless need for labour (military and civilian) led each camp to ruthlessly exploit their most vulnerable pools of manpower: the German-occupied populations in Belgium and eastern Europe, the Russian Empire’s Muslims in central Asia, and the British and French in their non-white colonies.

The result was major revolts against conscription in central Asia, Algeria and elsewhere, as imperial structures buckled under the needs of war, with consequences for the future. The war both propelled the colonial empires to their zenith and undermined them.

African soldiers

As the pressures of a Euro-centric war were translated to the farthest reaches of the globe, the consequences could be devastating. In the case of Africa, dragged into the war by its colonial masters, indigenous soldiers served in Europe and Africa. The German commander, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, fought a brilliant irregular campaign against the Allies around German East Africa, only surrendering a fortnight after the Armistice in November 1918.

Together with the impact of the war on frail subsistence economies, some 200,000 Africans perished as a result of combat or famine. Yet for the first time, large number of Africans went to France to fight or to work and saw their colonial masters with new eyes – and new demands for reform.

Jeffery gives Ireland its due place, arguing cogently for the global significance of “Ypres on the Liffey” during Easter Week 1916. But he relates this to the experience of “nationalist” and “unionist” soldiers in the Battle of the Somme, and embroiders an Irish thread across many of the far-flung regions he deals with.

Nurse in Serbia

Irish figures include Flora Sandes, who went to Serbia as a nurse and ended up fighting in the Serb army. Indeed, with his eye for colourful characters and telling anecdotes, Jeffery brings his drama alive at every stage with participant accounts, making particularly good use of nurses, newspapermen and spies.

The author makes an excellent case that 1916 was act three of the Great War. The year saw the conflict transformed in numerous regards, such as the cost of the military deadlock for ailing powers such as Russia, the terms of colonialism and, most fatefully, the rejection of peace and deepened commitment by both camps to military victory at (almost) any cost.

Of course, history is not drama, and each year of the war was its own turning point. But for breadth of scholarship, vivid and accessible writing and a pace that never flags, 1916 is the ideal book to read in order to place this year's commemoration in a global and truly illuminating perspective.

John Horne is emeritus fellow of Trinity College Dublin and visiting fellow at Balliol College Oxford