[HN Gopher] WW1: Was it the first world war? (2014)
___________________________________________________________________
WW1: Was it the first world war? (2014)
Author : Petiver
Score : 12 points
Date : 2021-05-05 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| Tsarbomb wrote:
| I've always considered the last Roman vs Persian war the first
| world war. It lasted nearly 30 years, saw action, territory
| changes, and troop movements from Western Europe, through Africa,
| and the Middle East.
|
| 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.
| gustavo-fring wrote:
| That (still relatively local conflict) dates back to the Greeks
| and Persians if not earlier.
|
| See "Persian Fire".
|
| "The Silk Roads" is a good account of the specific events you
| are talking about.
| gumby wrote:
| The article makes some good points.
|
| 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
| JadeNB wrote:
| > The Europeans mostly ignored it because it was far away
|
| To be fair, the Americans took the same attitude to WWI and
| WWII for much of those wars.
| gumby wrote:
| I was referring to the technical developments of the war,
| most specifically the impact of rail (mechanized guns,like
| the maxim gun, were by then prominent in colonial conquest).
| The economy vs economy aspect was not recognized by anyone
| until the 1930s as far as I can tell.
|
| 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.
| midasuni wrote:
| I suppose calling the American civil war a world war makes
| sense for a country that calls a baseball tournament the World
| Series
| [deleted]
| Kranar wrote:
| GP didn't call it a world war but rather the first
| industrialized total war.
| hangonhn wrote:
| That's not what GP is saying. His disputing the claim that
| WWI was the first industrialized total war. Total war is not
| the same as a world war. Total war is the idea of committing
| your entire nation to war (economy, population, etc) instead
| of just the military. His argument that the American Civil
| War is the first industrialized total war is not novel nor
| unfounded. It's a position taken by more than a few military
| historians. Sherman's strategy of destroying the Southern
| economy is indeed something that was new and would come to
| characterize many wars in the industrial era and after,
| including WWI and WWII. Before WWI, there was the Franco-
| Prussian war and many American Civil War veterans served as
| advisors to the Prussian army, teaching them the ways of
| total war, such as shelling Paris, etc.
| jghn wrote:
| I think often the Crimean War is the one viewed as the
| template for modern warfare. But this raises a good point
| that things are always more of a spectrum and the US Civil
| War had already pushed a few steps in this direction.
| gumby wrote:
| Perhaps it would be appropriate on that basis but I am not
| American and have not seen a World Series so did not see the
| connection. I also did not claim the American civil war was
| any sort of "world" conflict; I clearly was speaking of the
| bbc's myopic claim that it should be considered the first
| industrialized conflict.
| intergalplan wrote:
| TL;DR:
|
| 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.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-05 23:01 UTC)