The First World War as a global war

This article discusses the widening of the First World War from a European war to a global war and what that meant for the participants. Today's politicians, who talk (albeit tautologically) of an ‘increasingly globalized world’, forget how already ‘globalized’ the world seemed in 1914, especially if you happened to live in London. The fact that the First World War was a global war was itself the product of a global order, shaped by the European great powers and held together by an embryonic economic system. The title ‘the world war’ was a statement about its importance, not a statement about its geographical scale. And yet the French and British official histories, unlike the German, did not use ‘world war’ in their titles, any more than they had used the phrase during the war itself. They preferred the title ‘the Great War’, and in English the war only became widely known as the First World War after 1945, in other words after there had been a Second World War. The article explores the implications of the title ‘the Great War’ and the idea that the war of 1914–1918 was a great European war (a name also used in Britain, especially during the war itself). The article also examines the role of finances in the widening of the war and the global economy during a worldwide conflict. It also discusses the role of empires in the expanding war. However, the financial situation of participants, including those who entered the war at a later date, and the desire for empire were not the only factors in the creation of a global conflict. Decisions made in the interest of individual nations also had an effect on the widening of the war from a regional dispute. The corollary of the article's argument, that the First World War was in some respects an aggregation of regional conflicts, was that the war would not simply end when the European war ended. All that was agreed on 11 November 1918 was the surrender of Germany, largely on terms which reflected the situation within Europe and specifically on the western front. Only here did the guns fell silent at 11am on that day. However, so imperative were the immediate demands of the conflict that there was scant consideration of their long-term effects. Some of the consequences of the fact that the First World War was waged as a global war remained with Europe throughout the Cold War, and others remain in the Middle East to this day. Keywords: global wareconomicsempireneutrality Notes 1. Falls Citation1930, 299. 2. Tomlinson Citation1930, 340–1. This essay was first delivered as a lecture at a symposium held in Vienna on 7 November 2009 to mark the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the Austrian Republic, ‘1918–1920: der Fall der Imperien und der Traum einer besseren Welt’, and I am grateful to Wolfgang Maderthaner and Lutz Musner of the Verein für Geschichte der Arbeiterwegung for their invitation and inspiration. Since then it has had outings as a seminar paper at Victoria University Wellington and St Andrews University, and it was the keynote lecture at the 2009 conference of the International Society for First World War Studies; I am grateful for the questions and comments raised on all these occasions. 3. Clarke Citation1997, for examples of the genre; see also Echevarria Citation2007 and Dülffer Citation1994. 4. Herwig Citation1991, 281. 5. Jerabek Citation1991, 100. 6. Schulte Citation1980, 116. 7. Pöhlmann Citation2002; there seems little sense that the title of the series was ever seriously debated. 8. Green Citation2003; again, the title does not seem to have debated. 9. For this sort of thinking, see Lukacs Citation1977. 10. See de Cecco Citation1984, 115–21; Eichengreen Citation1992, 3–9, 29–66. 11. See Frey Citation1994, 327–53; Knauss Citation1923 remains useful, here 73–4. 12. The essential work on this is Burk Citation1985, 80–93; see also Nouailhat Citation1979, 373–82; Cooper Citation1976, 209–30. 13. Michel Citation1982, 21–4, 404. 14. War Office Citation1922, 363, 379–84. 15. A point that forms a key theme of Ferguson Citation1998, 248–318. 16. Boell Citation1951, 23. 17. Mühlmann Citation1942, 22; see also Wallach Citation1976. 18. Gehrke Citation1960, vol. 1, 1. 19. Lewis Citation1977. 20. Mombauer Citation2001, 206. 21. von Moltke Citation1922, 308. 22. Jeffery Citation1985, 133. 23. For this sort of thinking, see Bobbitt Citation2002; Goodspeed Citation1978.