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Mega-wars that shaped world history
- vkou 7y agoThe British conquest of India, which spanned the late-18th and early-19th centuries, killing millions of people, and affecting the fate of hundreds of millions seems to be strangely absent. It's not even mentioned as a footnote.
- gerdesj 7y ago"Renowned scientist and best-selling author Vaclav Smil meticulously charts the single largest cause of non-natural mortality in the 20th century." The article is about C20 mate.
- vkou 7y agoThe article meanders quite a bit, wandering into the 18th and 19th centuries.
- durge 7y agoMaybe he thinks that this would be many separate conflicts because of the different powers that partook and over different decades? Does seem to be a big deal.
- gerdesj 7y agoThey also seem to have forgotten those bloody Romans rocking up and duffing up us Britons in 55 and 54BC then in 43AD getting the job done. Then those blasted Saxons, Jutes and Angles wandering on in and doing the same to us Romano-Britons in about 400AD. Oh and vikings and that. Picts, Irish, Celts and stuff. (lol) You'll never guess what. 1066. Fucking great bunch of neo-froggies, err Norsemen or something waft on in and duff up us Romano-British, Saxons, Angels, Welsh, Scots, Cornish, Old uncle Tom Cobbley and all (and all.) I'm not sure which Britain actually invaded which variety of India because I don't think you can use such trite terms. The India of C18/19 is not the India of today and neither is Britain. Today I personally identify as a Briton first and English second. Some of my forebears were German(ish) in C17. My surname is Gerdes: does that make me a German? How does that work out for my great uncle leaping out of a Dakota aircraft over war torn Arnhem. He's a Briton (Englishman) (a Saxon?), trying to liberate a part of the Netherlands - Dutch (Saxons?) from a bunch of Germans (Saxons?). Notice how close the English word Dutch is to Deutsche. I lived in West Germany as a British forces dependent for about 10 years. Those are years that I cherish. I'm talking about history on a scale of about 30-70 years (we were in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970-80s) with direct personal attachment and you are alluding to something that happened ~300 years ago in a world that you may not have even been a part of. History is history mate. You don't have to like it.
- hogFeast 7y agoYep, Britain in India is hopelessly complex. For most of the time they were there, the Brits (or, more precisely, the East India Company...power over which was nominally British but was actually responsible to no-one) were the balancing act in all the regional conflicts between the Marthas, Mughals, Bengals, the Portuguese, the French, etc. It was only after the 1850s that power really consolidated, and that wasn't through war. Definitely, you had famines...but where do you the draw line or attribute agency? It is very tricky to say: this famine wouldn't have occurred otherwise (the only circumstance I have ever come across where this was true was Mao).
- gerdesj 7y agoMy main thesis is that you can't dive in with C21 ideals about something that happened 300 years ago! Its not just hopelessly complex, it's a different world. Britain is not now the same Britain it was then. Back then Britain included Ireland in total, along with a shed load of extra bits, way bigger than these islands. It was a full on Empire where the map of the world had a lot of pink on it. A lot of pink.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago*since ~1796, in case anyone else went searching for the Punic Wars.
- Cactus2018 7y agoIf anyone is looking for a one hour history lecture, I recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1AGe2V0qHo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1AGe2V0qHo > The Battle of Kadesh, ca. 1285 BC, is the earliest military encounter that can be analyzed in detail. This conflict between the Egyptian forces of Ramses II and the Hittite army of Muwatalli
- nn3 7y agoI was looking for the battle of Tollense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollense_valley_battlefield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollense_valley_battlefield Trojan war would have been nice too
- garmaine 7y agoThe real Trojan war was an uneventful raid on a coastal city, one of hundreds that happened in that region and era. Just one that happened to inspire a particularly gifted poet...
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoNothing unleashes the stranglehold of the market and its corruption contracts, then the panic of the "elite". They could loose it all when the neighbours come marching in. War and civil war, were the great innovators. Even the cold war delivered on this. As soon as it was over, the mildew of the gilded age and its aristocratic sentiment settled again.
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- jackcosgrove 7y agoThe article mentions the come-from-nowhere stories of people like Hong Xiuquan and Adolf Hitler, but I see these figures as catalysts of larger forces that had been in play for decades. I see two major mega-wars in the past 300 years within the western world, whose history I am most familiar with. Both were results of a rising power challenging the existing superpower for supremacy. The first was the stretch bookended by the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars, which I think can causally be combined, especially when factoring in how French finances following the Seven Years War and American Revolution contributed to the French Revolution. These wars were a Thucydides trap as Britain was challenging France for European supremacy. Britain succeeded in displacing France at the top. The next megawar was the German challenge to Anglo-American supremacy, which took place in WWI and WWII. Germany failed to displace the Anglo countries. Both war were Thucydides traps with different outcomes, and the severity of the conflict and long shadow cast by the wars is due to the stakes involved.
- stefan_ 7y agoWW2 as some sort of Anglo-challenge must be a uniquely American school system PoV.
- jackcosgrove 7y agoWWI and WWII can be seen as one war, which was the attempt by Germany to displace the UK and wider Anglo world as the dominant western power. I think it makes sense to group the wars together. I don't know how widespread this view is.
- gerdesj 7y agoNot very widespread. You may not have a very long view on history. Take a look at my username (I'm "English" by the way). Just in case I need to spell it out: Gerdes ~= German. Those two wars had very different reasons despite Germany being a participant in both of them. Russia (famous for not being Anglo) was a major player in those wars as well and we should not overlook Japan etc as well.
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- baybal2 7y agoThe author completely forgot to include the thirty year war, it was instrumental in completely breaking Habsburg hegemony "almost" overnight on the historical scale, and opened way for historical shift of power to Western Europe from Central, and Eastern Europe.
- Merrill 7y agoThe Thirty Years War also confirmed that the primary legitimate basis for power would be noble birth instead of ordination by God - a shift begun by the Reformation. The French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars began the shift away from noble birth and WW I&II confirmed that the primary legitimate basis for power would be ownership and property.
- whatshisface 7y agoBy ordination by God you mean ordination by the local religious authority, right?
- kick 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings
- whatshisface 7y agoThat's a religious justification for noble birth. The system it backs up is heritable monarchy, it didn't precede it.
- kick 7y agoThat's a religious justification for noble birth. No. (See: Chinese Mandate of Heaven; the multiple examples of people claiming to be ordained by gods and similar higher powers historically despite no or little connection to nobility, so on.) The system it backs up is heritable monarchy, it didn't precede it. Assuming this is true (which seems highly dubious), what are you contesting? Their claim is that God ordained their rulership, not that 'local religious authorities' did. Regardless of existence of the entity in question, "the primary legitimate basis for power would be noble birth instead of ordination by God" is the right thing to say.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago> WWII is the quintessential transformational war, not only because of the sweeping changes it brought to the global order but also because of the decades-long shadows it cast over the rest of the 20th century. This is funny because my history professor used ww2 as the quintessential example of a non-transformational war. Nothing essential changed as a result of ww2. All those lives lost for essentially nothing. The power structure pre-ww2 ( US, Britain, Soviet Union ) was precisely the same post-ww2 ( US, Britain, Soviet Union ). The same people who ruled the world before ww2, ruled it after ww2 without any systematic change. There was no paradigm shift as a result of ww2. The international world order remained in place. WW2 was the bloodiest war. It was the most destructive war. But it wasn't transformational because the side trying to cause a transformation ( reshape world ) lost and they lost badly.
- pdonis 7y ago> The power structure pre-ww2 ( US, Britain, Soviet Union ) was precisely the same post-ww2 ( US, Britain, Soviet Union ). Actually, it's even worse than that, because the main reason for the US and Britain to fight Hitler was supposed to be to save Eastern Europe from a totalitarian dictatorship (WW2 started because Britain and France decided they had to honor their treaty commitments to Poland when Germany invaded), yet at the end of the war Eastern Europe was in the hands of a worse totalitarian dictatorship, the USSR. So while the main great powers were basically the same (but see below), the territorial situation was worse. > the side trying to cause a transformation ( reshape world ) lost I'm not so sure the Allies weren't also trying to cause a transformation. There was a key difference in the power structure after WW2 as compared to before: the United Nations. The previous attempt at a single world organization, the League of Nations, failed miserably. The UN did not. Whatever you think of the UN's actual policies (I'm often not a fan of them), the fact remains that for 75 years now the world has accepted the existence of a single world organization that has at least some governmental or quasi-governmental powers. That is not an accident.
- chx 7y ago> yet at the end of the war Eastern Europe was in the hands of a worse totalitarian dictatorship, the USSR. I was born in Hungary and I lived under the USSR occupation of Hungary. I am also the grandson of an Auschwitz survivor so I strenuously object to you painting the USSR as worse as Nazi Germany.
- mirimir 7y ago> And in 1918 the victorious powers, dictating a new European peace at Versailles, would not have credited that Adolf Hitler, a destitute, neurotic would-be artist and gassed veteran of the trench warfare, would within two decades undo their new order and plunge the world into its greatest war. According to a book review discussed recently here, Hoover did. Said book review totally transformed my understanding of him. And OK, not Hitler personally, but conceptually.
- redis_mlc 7y ago> dictating a new European peace at Versailles, would not have credited that Adolf Hitler, a destitute, neurotic would-be artist and gassed veteran of the trench warfare, would within two decades undo their new order and plunge the wo Well, when you're too timid to occupy defeated enemies, you get another war. That's why Russia insisted on occupying Berlin in WW2. A little-known fact is that the USA proposed enslaving Germany, which leaked out and is why there was no chance of peace talks. The USA wanted to decimate the population, deindustrialize Germany and make them peasant farmers. Russia subsequently succeeded in doing that. In a way it's a backhanded compliment to how much the Allies feared them.
- mirimir 7y ago> Well, when you're too timid to occupy defeated enemies, you get another war. The US occupied Germany for decades. At first, very clearly, killing substantial numbers of resistance fighters. And then more subtly and covertly. Its occupying force was ostensibly to ward off the Soviet Union, but there was a domestic role as well. And its policies in Japan were similar. That's the thing about the US. While there are numerous well-known examples of ham-handedness, US interventions have generally been so subtle and covert that their mention is readily discounted as conspiracy theory.
- mannykannot 7y agoJ. M. Keynes, who was at the 'negotiations', also recognized the danger. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/keynes-economic-consequences-peace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/keynes-economic-c...
- excalibur 7y agoThis article is excerpted from “Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years," first published in 2008. If some portions seem outdated, it's not just you.
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- Der_Einzige 7y agoWhy do folks forget the precursor to WW1 - the franco-prussian war? That was a huge war! Lead to German unification, over one million casualties (if you count civilians) and slightly less than that if you don't.
- xref 7y agoAnd Germany defeated France in 6 months, which 43 years later gave the Germans confidence that France would surrender by Christmas 1914...
- nwallin 7y agoI think the author is underselling WWI. 1. Undid the Ottoman Empire. If the Ottomans had limped around for 20 more years, they would have found themselves in a century drunk on oil, while in charge of the majority of the world's oil reserves. The Ottomans would have been the global superpower of the latter half of the 20th century. 2. Rise of Communism. Lenin was an outcast living in Switzerland when the Tsar was overthrown. He arrived in Russia -- delivered there by Germany and with significant German funding -- two months after the interim government had taken over. It was a liberal democracy, not unlike the government of the US or France, that had the most power when Lenin arrived. Even if the Russian Empire had still fallen, the century probably wouldn't have fallen under the shadow of communism. 3. The center of world banking moved from London to New York City. After the end of 1916 or so, Britain was pretty much broke, and the war effort was to a significant extent funded by NYC bankers. London indebted themselves greatly to the US, and wherever you were in the world, if you wanted something to do with money, you went to New York City to get it, because England didn't have any. Of course, for these loans to mean anything, Britain would have to win the war (and reparations) which leads us to... 4. USA as world police. The US wanted nothing to do with European, Asian, or African politics. Even Teddy Roosevelt's "imperialist" attitudes were limited to North and South America. If Wilson wanted all the NYC banks to not go bankrupt, he'd have to enter the war- which he did. And thus began America's role as world police rather than a regional power. 5. The Belfast declaration and the catastrophic carving of the Arab world on arbitrary lines. Israel's foundation was laid down in 1917 by England declarating their intention to create a Jewish state in Palestine. And the borders drawn up on meaningless lines in the desert rather than along ethnic boundaries plunged the Arab world into a century of sectarian violence and chaos. 6. The Ottoman Empire would have gladly sold oil to Japan during their wars with China. (which likely still would have happened) Japan never would have had the quarrel with the United States that lead to the attack on Pearl Harbor. While I'm not trying to minimize the human life cost of WWI, I actually don't think the death toll of the war was really all that significant. China's had a dozen or so civil wars with higher death tolls. More people died of the flu in 1918 and 1919 than all combat deaths from 1914 to 1918 combined. But WWI had an outsized effect on world history. I think it's probably the most transformational event in human history since... I dunno, Columbus introducing the Americas to Europe. I don't know what the world would look like if WWI didn't play out the way it did. But it wouldn't look like this.
- otabdeveloper2 7y agoApparently, 'world history' started in 1850? Good to know!