Origins of the First World War, pt. 11 -- The 19th-Century Revolution in Warfare

The scale and horror of the First World War were possible only after the Nineteenth Century's double revolution in the nature of war. Warfare -- including weaponry, strategy, and command -- had remained mostly unchanged for three centuries, from the early integration of firearms in the 1400s until the French Revolution; the campaigns of Napoleon unleashed a new era of mass mobilization and nationalistic fury, while a series of haphazard improvements massively multiplied the killing power and reach of firearms, tearing open a battlefield "killing zone" unlike anything that prior generations of soldiers could have imagined. We follow both the breakdown in the old distinctions between war and civil society and the breakneck advance in land and sea warfare that set the stage for the nightmare of World War I.

Image: Japanese riflemen defending a breastwork embankment, Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5.

Margaret MacMillan on war & 19th-century society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJVe0KLONJU

Nicholas Murray on the emergence of trench warfare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cbq7iu8FrI

Suggested further reading: Nicholas Murray, "The Rocky Road to the Great War"; Margaret MacMillan, "The War That Ended Peace"; Hew Strachan, "A Clausewitz for Every Season," https://www.the-american-interest.com/2007/07/01/a-clausewitz-for-every-season/

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