Beastro wrote: ↑Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:44 am
I've come to thinkin time WWI will mark the end of the Modern Era in people's minds in the way I doubt too many were focused and occupied with events at hand to pause and point out the significance of Rome's fall.
WWI definitely seems to be a dividing line, in many ways it looks more like the last 19th century war than 20th century, even if the moving on of technology made it so much more horrific.
Actually, in terms of tactics used and outcomes, WW1 was the daughter of the US Civil War, and it took until WW2 for the European general staffs to relearn the tactics that Grant and Sherman found from 1863 on (albeit with better technology).
In economic and social terms, the long 19th century died in Flanders, but in war it survived another 25 years.
Beastro wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:50 am
People like to focus on the tech. What they forget is the sheer scale that had changed war. Even the last wars Europe had fought had more in common with Napoleonic warfare than what WWI ushered in.
That's all about the tech still. The society and politics that led to war were still very much 19th century, which is why I label it as such, but the technology is what result in the scale (although don't underestimate the scale in terms of spread of the Napoleonic Wars, even if they impact on most people was rather less - they stand a reasonable claim to the World War label).
Beastro wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:50 amA thread months back on another board I post on had that come up and someone posted this pic.
I know what information I can get from that collage, but you may want to elaborate on what can be seen there.
The main crux is Mars la Tour. A battle fought in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the last major European war before WWI occurred that everyone used as a measuring stick for the next fourty years for what war was to later come.
As one can see it has more in common scale-wise with Waterloo and the battles which came before it than with the new scale of war that only emerged with WWI.
Beastro wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:50 am
People like to focus on the tech. What they forget is the sheer scale that had changed war. Even the last wars Europe had fought had more in common with Napoleonic warfare than what WWI ushered in.
That's all about the tech still. The society and politics that led to war were still very much 19th century, which is why I label it as such, but the technology is what result in the scale (although don't underestimate the scale in terms of spread of the Napoleonic Wars, even if they impact on most people was rather less - they stand a reasonable claim to the World War label).
When it comes to the World War label I myself would peg the Nine Years' War as the first instance of that, though the Seven Years' War is commonly held to be the first fully global conflict.
I'd rather say the seeds of global conflict were set by same factors that produced the Modern Era in the first place. One can see that in how wide spread fighting was in the 80 Years' War due to how widespread the Iberian Union's holdings were.
