WW1: Was it the first world war? (2014)
bbc.com
bbc.com
I disagree with its characterization of the conflict as ‘the world's first industrialised "total" war’. The American civil war was in many ways the first economy-vs-economy war, with mechanized weapons and logistics (even rail to the front). The Europeans mostly ignored it because it was far away
* trench warfare, and "charges" into enemy lines so disastrously repeated in WW1 -- the lessons of the power of repeating rifles had not yet been learned.
* the first engagement between two "ironclad" ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Merrimack_(1855)
* an early war that used railroads and telegraphs
* the first war that was photographed and had photographic journalism
* rifling + minie ball -- the US civil war was the first war using rifled muskets with special grooved bullets that could kill a man a half-mile away (800 meters), often shattering bones. It was the main reason why there were so many amputations.
* The gatling gun (predecessor to the maxim gun) was the first machine gun capable of firing a continuous series of rounds without reloading (the innovation was the creation of a belt of bullets that could be fed into the gun).
* medical innovations such as anesthetic inhalers, recognizing how to deal with chest wounds, life saving amputations, military ambulances, facial reconstruction surgery were invented in the US civil war (and contributed to much higher survival rates than in the Crimean War)
* Aerial reconnaissance (via balloons)
* naval torpedoes and naval mines were invented in the US civil war
This is totally wrong. A myth made up by nationalist American historians. This played into larger 'military all idiots' narrative that was popularized after WW1.
However it is incorrect in multiple ways. First of all, the European military did observe the war quite a bit and had officers write up a lot of leanings.
However much of that was already very old and outdated by WW1. The Russia-Japan war and the British-Boar war were far in terms of learning for WW1. These were observed as well.
The everybody predicted 'short war' narrative taught in popular history is not really all that correct.
Britain and France, at the very least, kept a very close eye on the war because of the cotton trade. That's not something that people outside of historical circles talk about much but France invaded Mexico during the American Civil War.
Especially France and Britain, as you say.
To be fair, the Americans took the same attitude to WWI and WWII for much of those wars.
On the political side I agree the US was uninterested in WWI and had a strong isolationist attitude towards the Second World War (which is why FDR fought the war mostly through executive orders through Dec 1941).
But the European powers, especially the Uk, were quite interested on a political basis in the US civil war, mostly siding with the confederate side both for trade reasons and to cut a potential geopolitical rival in half.
Going back to technology, I’m really not sure you could say the US was uninterested in that aspect: after WWI they became interested in air warfare and followed the work of (for example) Liddell Hart more closely than the British war office.
Also it’s striking that when the US finally entered the war they chose a logistics expert (Eisenhower) as European generalissimo rather than a direct war fighter (though he had fought in WWI among other places). I think that was in part due to learning from German difficulties in France and the US (technically illegal) supply chain support to the UK from ‘39.
In addition to my other comment, this is also totally wrong. Both Civilian and military leaders were very much thinking about this.
Go for example read Russian Interior Ministers Durnovo secret assessment that was sent to Nicholas II.
Many thinkers were actually obsessed with the question of total war. Some thought that it was so absurd that nobody sane would ever fight it,
> "the economic cost of war was so great that no one could possibly hope to gain by starting a war the consequences of which would be so disastrous. - Norman Angell
There were Russian intellectuals making the same argument.
Honestly if you actually start researching WW1 and the lead up to it you discover many things that are counter to the typical WW1 you learn in school.
One good source I'm reading right now that includes a discussion on this:
- Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia
But there has been quite a bit of work done on this.
I'm always interested in such new perspectives. Do you have anything further to recommend (in addition to Towards the flame)?
A big narrative specially in the US is about Isolationism and that is why the Wealth of Nation failed. This is totally incorrect, see this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTBI86s0oSQ
I certainty don't agree with all of these, but these are all good about WW1 and Inter-War history.
- July 1914: Countdown to War
- The War that Ended Peace: How Europe abandoned peace for the First World War
- Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I
- The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
- The Russian Revolution: A New History
- Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia
- The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I and Revolution
- Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928
- Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941
- The Great Interwar Crisis and the Collapse of Globalization
It's Sean McMeekin. He spends time on some things that are often missed. But the Revolution is of course a huge topic.
The declaration of war by the UK brought in all its colonies and India into the conflict and made possible the capture of Germany's colonies in Africa. This radical transformation of a european continental war is what justified calling the conflict a world war. The industrialized nature of the war was not why the coming conflict was described as a world war. By that criteria it is hard to see how any prior conflict would even come close.
The fact that german leaders at the time felt the need to coin a new term is a very powerful argument for WWI being a significantly different kind of conflict.
At the onset the Eastern Romans still held onto small portions of Western Europe all the way to Syria and Egypt, meanwhile Sassanid Persia stretched all the way to modern Afghanistan. By the end of the war, both states had their demographics depleted from war, changing the world forever and allowing for the rise of Islam.
You had the formation of coalitions led by the "super" powers of the time, with the Romans having Armenians, the Turkic Khanate, and a subset of Arabian nomads in their corner, while another set of Arabians, the Avars, and the Slavs were with the Persians. All the meanwhile you had opportunistic factors like the Visigoths in Spain.
There was even a civil war on the Roman side during all of this.
Anyways I find this part of history super interesting and it would make Game of Thrones look like child's play.
It occurred in a time that humans in the Americas were split off from the rest of the world and thus could not participate. At least two entire continents not participating in your "first world war".
See "Persian Fire".
"The Silk Roads" is a good account of the specific events you are talking about.
1) Not really, no (Napoleonic and Seven Years' have decent claims to being about as global)
But:
2) It's fair to dub it, at least, a World War, if anything is.