It was a standing room only crowd who gathered in Noble’s Life Long Learning Center on November 3 for an information-packed lecture on the aftermath of World War I presented by Hamish Lutris, associate professor of history at Capital Community College in Hartford.
Among the interesting facts he mentioned was, that as Europe’s great empires disintegrated and newly independent countries formed new governments, far more evolved into monarchies or strong man regimes than into western-style democracies. At first, he said, Russia was considered quite forward thinking and its adoption of women’s suffrage in 1917 prompted America to do the same in 1920. And the gene pool of France, where so much of the most deadly fighting took place and which suffered 4,266,000 military and civilian casualties, was permanently altered.
Mr. Lutris lectures widely in the U.S., Europe and Canada on a wide range of historical topics. He will be back at Noble in January for a series of programs on the American West.