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War”
• Background:
– 1815: Congress of Vienna to end the
Napoleonic Wars (19891815) and reintegrate
revolutionary France into the European system
– Clausewitz recognized that the Napoleonic
Wars had “democratized” war forever
•
Explaining Why No Global Wars
between 18151914?
• The principal European powers Germany,
AustriaHungary, Russia, France, and the United
Kingdom developed a system of consultations
and conferences to preclude general war
• Exceptions: The Crimean War, 185456
The PrussianDanish War, 1854
The PrussianAustrian War, 1866
The PrussianFrench War, 1870 and
the creation of Germany
Balkan Wars before WWI
Key Factors in the Changed Conditions of Big
Power Relations to Explain Why WWI?
1) Industrial Revolution
— Increased economic wealth supplies resources for war
— Large standing armies and navies can be supported
and the population mobilized for war in the event of
hostilities
— Development of civil technology also produced a
revolution in military technology on land and sea:
artillery, the machine gun, rapid firing and reliable rifles,
metal oceangoing warships, advanced communications,
submarines, etc.
2) Firepower and mass armies increased the lethality of
war, approaching Clausewitz “pure war”
Additional Factors Leading to
Pure War
• The Continued Rise of Nationalism and the
Democratization of European State Security and the
Security of Europe’s Empires
• The erosion of the Concert System of
conferences and consultations among
governmental elites
— The creation of the Italian and German states,
driven by national sentiment and mass mobilization
— The collapse of the Bismarkian system of flexible
alliances and continuation of the Congress system,
18701890
Immediate Factors Leading to
World War
• The rise of German power and the challenge to the
balance of power on the Continent
• The rise of German power and the BritishGerman
naval armaments race
• The end of flexible alliances and their replacement
by two rigid alliances
– The Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and
Russia
– The Central Powers: Germany and AustriaHungary
Immediate Factors Leading to
World War
• The rise of German power and the challenge to the
balance of power on the Continent
• The rise of German power and the BritishGerman
naval armaments race
• The end of flexible alliances and their replacement
by two rigid alliances
• The spread of nationalism to the Balkans the
Serbian assassination of the Austrian Archduke
Ferdinand and his wife in 1914
Warfare and War Planning Replaces
Political and Moral Limits on Pure War
• The German Schlieffen Plan
• The French Plan 17
Schlieffen Plan: 18951914
Schlieffen Plan Defeated: 1914
The Costs of War
• 15 million casualties
• European empires fundamentally
undermined by the loss of human and
material resources
– The German and Austrian empires are
destroyed
– The Russian empire loses control over its
eastern provinces, notably Poland
• The Russian Revolution introduces a