The Modernity of the Great War: Technology and Sociopolitical Reforms

LUSI YANG



The Modernity of the Great War: Technology and Sociopolitical Reforms

The Great War was one of the bloodiest wars in human history which started in Europe from

1914 to 1918. The endless bombing and firing led to approximately 10 million casualties on all

sides.1 The Great War did not happen overnight; many factors contributed to it. First, the Serbs

in Bosnia and Croatia was always a threat to the Austro-Hungarian Empire because of the

potential nationalist uprising led by their independent Serbian brothers. Count Berchtold, the

Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister was plotting for a brutal diplomatic measure against Serbia

just the week before the assassination.2 Second, Germany was still young and developing rapidly

in every aspect from economics to technology and felt ready to challenge the old European

traditions by breaking the Pax Britannica and French civilization.3 Kaiser Wihelem II, the

German Emperor at the time, enforced his Welpolitik to transform Germany into a global power

through acquiring oversea colonies and developing navy. This policy was directly against the

British and the French. Britain feared Germanys naval ambition and France feared to compete

with Germany over colonies. Russia also feared a widespread of German culture.4 Lastly with all

these fears packed, Britain, France and Russia stood together and formed the Triple Entente to

fight against the ambitious German Empire. Similarly, the German Empire formed a Dual

Alliance with Austro-Hungary to protect themselves from foreign attacks. As a result, when a

Bosnian Serb who was assisted by a Serbian organization shot the Austrian Royal couple,

Austria found the perfect opportunity to declare war on Serbia. The Russians who considered the

Serbs as their little brothers first mobilized and both the Triple Entente and the Dual Alliance fell

into place. All these events led to a war that could be considered modern in two aspects: the

advancement in technology and the growth of modern thoughts on international peace, self-

determination and gender equality as the result of the war.



The superiority of weapons usually decides the victor of a battle; hence, science and modern

technology became pivotal in the Great War. Both the Allies and the Central Powers gathered the

scientific communities to invent and modify the worlds deadliest weapons. In France, the

Academy of Sciences became the scientific center of the war. In Britain, the Board of Invention

and Research, the Munitions Inventions Department and the Air Inventions Committee were

established to deal with new weapon ideas.5 In Germany, multiple new scientific institutions

were created. The most famous one was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical and

Electrochemistry which developed an anti-freeze for vehicles to take charge of the chemical

warfare.6 In Austria-Hungary, the Technical High School was converted into a research hub in

1916 to improve the production of munitions.7 All of these institutions turned this war into a

modern arms race.

Consequently the arms race contributed to advances in military technology. This

advancement could be seen through Ernst Jungers The Storm of Steel, the horror of the

landscape in itself, but the fact that these scenes such as the world had never known

beforeThus all the frightfulness that the mind of man could devise was brought into the field.8

In trench warfare, the most important weapon was the machine guns. Under the pressure of

Germanys vicious air-cooled MG 08, the British invented the Lewis gun which was highly

portable and accurate.9 Similarly, the most advanced mortars at the time from Germany could

contain more than 100 pounds of explosives and shoot high into the air.10 As a soldier described,

They fire noiselessly and a single one often kills as many as 30 men.11 Furthermore, the

Germans introduced the flamethrower which intensified the terror of being burned to death, but

this weapon was soon adopted by the Allies.12 Chemical weapons were also employed in the war

and this was evident from Wilfred Owens Dulce Et Decorum Est, Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An


ecstasy of fumbling / Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time.13 Once again the Germans were

the first ones to employ chlorine in the Great War in 1915. Finally, this war gave the

industrialized nations the opportunity to launch tanks, military aircrafts and submarines to break

through the motionless stalemate of the trench warfare.

This war did not just bring technological advancement, but it also fostered some very

principal modern ideas. The first was the idea of international peace based on President Wilsons

creation of the League of Nations which was presented in the Treaty of Versailles after the war at

the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. This League would operate by a body of sovereign states

agreed to pursue common polices and common interests. If any differences among the sovereign

states occurred, they would have to be settled through an international court.14 Refusal to comply

would result in economic sanctions or even military intervention by the League.15 As a result,

this new international organization was responsible to resolve international disputes and to

promote international cooperation. However, the League had no armed force to ensure an ever-

lasting international peace. Despite this downside, the proposal of the League was widely

popular and resulted in recognition of the League as the first international body to embrace the

idea of world peace and justice.16 In addition, the League consisted four permanent members

including Britain, France, Italy, the United States and Japan.17 By 1920, a total of 48 states

joined the League planning to work together to terminate future atrocity.18 Above all, the League

set up the stage for the creation of todays United Nations and its international peacekeeping

force.

Another modern principle emerged from this war was the principle of self-determination in

President Wilsons Fourteen Points. A century before the war, New Imperialism was the main

focus of the industrialized European nations. The famous European Scramble for Africa turned


roughly all parts of Africa into European colonies. Meanwhile in Central Asia, Britain and

Russia contested for domination, which was famously referred as the Great Game. In Eastern

Asia, Britain, Portugal and Germany established colonies in the Qing Empire. The existence of

colonies and Empires was the major cause of the absence of the modern thought of self-

determination in the centuries before the war. However, after the war, Wilson popularized this

modern thought. In Wilsons speech, he stated, Self-determination is an imperative principle of

actionNational aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed

only by their own consent.19 As a result of this principle, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian,

German and Russian Empires yielded several new modern nation-states. The Treaty of Brest-

Litovsk created Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; the Southern Slavs were united under

Yugoslavia; the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia joined with the Slovaks and Ukrainians to form

Czechoslovakia; Poland finally became an independent state and was no longer partitioned by

the three Empires; Hungary also became independent from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.20 The

modern principle of self-determination also spread into several colonies. Britain granted

independence to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Irish Free States. At last, this modern

principle of self-determination is fully embodied in todays international law.21

The war also brought the attention to the modern thought of gender equality. It was believed

that the war had improved the status of women in the home front to the extent that women in

Britain, Germany, the United States and France could vote after the war. 22 Many of them were

also able to find better paying jobs. As the countries went into war, there was a growing labour

demand for woman workers. This change in the labour market represented a drastic change for

women who moved from poorly paid jobs to more lucrative jobs. In all the belligerent nations,

fewer women worked in the garment and textile factories because the upper-class women no


longer interested in the latest fashion.23 Many wealthy families released their domestic servants

during the tough times of the war.24 Consequently, women moved into others sectors of the

economy. In France, women filled government and industrial jobs in huge numbers.25 More and

more women worked as secretaries or bookkeepers whereas before the war there were virtually

no women working in these positions.26 Munition plants filled with women and the inspection of

final armament became womens job.27 The salary of these women also tripled. In Germany,

there were more women working in open mines, in metal and electrical industries, in chemical

plants and in munition factories.28 In Britain, most of the female domestic servants shifted into

munition plants where they worked in remote regions.29 In the United States, many women

became machinists rather than working as production workers.30 Those women who worked on

railways received the same wage as men.31 Moreover, some women permanently gained their

positions even after the war such as those working in banks and insurance companies.32 Women

thus proved that they could do the jobs once restricted to men. As the result of this war, the

traditional sense of womens role has slowly replaced by the modern thought of gender equality.

All in all, the Great War took the world to the next level of technological advancement

and popularized the most fundamental modern thoughts on international peace, self-

determination and gender equality. In The Storm of Steel, Junger believed, Chivalry here took a

final farewellThe Europe of to-day appeared here for the first time on the field of battle.33 In

modern warfare, there was no need for knights to fight on battlefields. Machine guns, tanks, and

aircrafts replaced them on the battlefields. The Great War developed a new kind of warfare that

Europe and the rest of the world had never seen before a mechanical war. This war could be

considered as one of the most horrendous conflicts in history. However, the impact of this war

was enormous. It brought the attention to international peace and led to the establishment of the


League of Nations which set up the stage for todays United Nations. In addition, the universal

principle of self-determination from the Fourteen Points created many independent states after

the war and was a dream come true for many nationalists. Most importantly, this principle is

essential in todays international law. Lastly, the war brought the idea of gender equality into

every aspect of the society and permanently changed the gender composition of the labour force

in some sectors of economy.



Endnotes
1
Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner, eds., The Western Heritage (Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2013), 852.
2
John Keegan, The First World War (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 51.
3
Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York:
Mariner Books, 2000), 87
4
Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, 82.
5
Ian Beckett, The Great War (Harlow: Longman-Pearson, 2007), 215-216.
6
ibid.
7
ibid.
8
Ernst Junger, The Storm of Steel: from the diary of a German storm-troop officer on the
Western Front (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929), 108-109.
9
Neil Heyman, Daily Life During World War I (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002), 29.
10
Neil Heyman, Daily Life During World War I, 33.
11
ibid.
12
Neil Heyman, Daily Life During World War I, 34.
13
Jon Silkin, The Penguin Book of Frist World War Poetry (London: Penguin Books, 1996),
193.
14
Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner, eds., The Western Heritage, 857.
15
ibid.
16
Christian Tomuschat, The United Nations at Age Fifty: A Legal Perspective (Martinus Nijhoff
Publishers, 1995), 77.
17
Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner, eds., The Western Heritage, 857
18
Charles Townshend, The League of Nations and the United Nations, last modified February,
2011, BBC History, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/league_nations_01.shtml.
19
Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp, Social Norms (New York: Russell Sage Foundation,
2001), 194.
20
Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner, eds., The Western Heritage, 859.
21
Edward McWhinney, Self-Determination of Peoples and Plural-Ethnic States in
Contemporary International Law: Failed States, Nation-Building and the Alternative, Federal
Option. (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2007), 8
22
Ian Beckett, The Great War, 454.
23
Neil Heyman, Daily Life During World War I, 213.


24
ibid.
25
ibid.
26
ibid.
27
ibid.
28
Neil Heyman, Daily Life During World War I, 214.
29
Neil Heyman, Daily Life During World War I, 215.
30
Neil Heyman, Daily Life During World War I, 219.
31
ibid.
32
Neil Heyman, Daily Life During World War I, 228.
33
Ernst Junger, The Storm of Steel: from the diary of a German storm-troop officer on the
Western Front, 110.


Bibliography
Beckett, Ian. The Great War. Harlow: Longman-Pearson, 2007.
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. New York:
Mariner Books, 2000.
Hechter, Michael and Karl-Dieter Opp. Social Norms. New York: Russell Sage Foundation,
2001.
Heyman, Neil. Daily Life During World War I. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Junger, Ernst. The Storm of Steel: from the diary of a German storm-troop officer on the Western
Front. London: Chatto & Windus, 1929.
Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.
McWhinney, Edward. Self-Determination of Peoples and Plural-Ethnic States in Contemporary
International Law: Failed States, Nation-Building and the Alternative, Federal Option. Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, 2007.
Silkin, Jon. The Penguin Book of Frist World War Poetry. London: Penguin Books, 1996.
Tomuschat, Christian. The United Nations at Age Fifty: A Legal Perspective. Martinus Nijhoff
Publishers, 1995.
Townshend, Charles. "The League of Nations and the United Nations." Last modified February,
2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/league_nations_01.shtml