Einstein and the world community of physicists and astronomers - Astronomers and special relativity : the first publications - The early involvement : 1911 - 1914 - The war period : 1914 - 1918 - 1919 : a year of dramatic announcement - Men of science agog - Tackling the solar redshift problem - More eclipse testing - Emergence of the critics - The debate intensifies - Relativity triumphs - Silencing the critics - The emergence of relativistic cosmology