Some origins to WWI

History of the Global Now
World War I
Terese Howard
9/3/09

During what we now call World War I, people called the war the Great War. This title expresses the vast nature of this war. More nations were involved in this war than any war before it. “In early 1914, the continent of Europe was the focal point of the entire world, a distinction it had enjoyed for centuries” (Lyons, World War I, 1), but by the end of both WWI and WWII America and Asia had joined that rank and progressively the entire globe has become the focal point. WWI greatly influenced many of the global ties that have accommodated the rise of what we now see as globalization.

World War I itself came out of mostly European international tensions and relations. Two conditions within Europe in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century will be discussed here: balance of power and ideological shifts.

Lyons explains that, “The various European countries had engaged in political and economic rivalry…for centuries. By the mid-eighteenth century five of those nations had emerged as Great Powers – Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia” (Lyons, 2). The onset on WWI was a result of imbalances of that power mix. For example, when Germany unified into one nation, the other powers became worried and were quickened to fight Germany in effort to keep them from over powering the balance in place. Germany’s unification was made possible by nationalist ideology that gave the country common ground. Other countries, such as Italy and Poland (Lyons,3), were also unified by nationalism, leading to some rise in power, but not as much as Germany developed. The industrial revolution also increased the imbalance of power. Britain had been the leader of industrial development since its beginning, but after 1830 it begin to spread across the globe and “by 1914 America ranked first in industrial production, followed by Germany, while Britain had dropped to third” (Lyons, 7). This gave some counties power that they formerly did not have and thus made others weaker. A third imbalance of power flocculated as various countries gain more or less colonial ground. This issue led to tensions between France and Britain which in turn influenced their relations in WWI.

Although WWI cannot be said to be an ideological war in the same way as many other wars, shifts in ideology did effect the alliances and workings of the various countries in the war. Particularly in Britain and France a political ideology that was referred to as liberalism came on the rise. Liberalism “favored freedom of the individual form excessive government control….It also stood for limitations on the powers of kings and other rulers and the establishment of elected parliaments to share the political process” (Lyons, 8). In this way liberalism facilitated the increased involvement of people within those countries. On the other hand some people within those countries or other whole countries, such Germany and Austria-Hungary, were more conservative. Some responded to the trend of liberalism and became more conservative – striving for traditional monarchies and such. Furthermore the rise of socialism influenced both of these ideologies. Some liberals became sympathetic to socialist concerns for the working man and worked for reformation on these issues. Other liberals, however, saw these socialist influences as dangerous to the market place and became more identified with conservative concerns. These political ideologies accompanied other reasons for alliance or animosity going into WWI.

Lyons, Michael. World War I: a short history, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1994.