Europe before 1914: Origins of World War and the Russian Revolution

Abstract

Before 1914, six European great powers — Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria—Hungary and Russia — along with two others from outside the continent — the USA and Japan — ‘had brought the greater part of the earth’s surface, resources, and population within their respective spheres of administration, control, or influence’.¹ This in spite of the fact that the total population of the eight powers was little more than a quarter of a world population approaching 1,700 million. In five of the six European great powers, between seven and nine out of every ten persons lived on the land. Even in the exception, Great Britain, the landed interest was far from insignificant, while in the other cases it vied with the urban middle class — the bourgeoisie — in an almost exclusively male struggle for supremacy. However, nearly everywhere the bourgeoisie was on the rise, as there was a considerable movement from rural areas to the cities as peasants became proletarians. For the migrants to become competent cogs in the ever expanding industrial machine, they were obliged to change their culture, for example to work regular hours, and to master the three Rs, reading, writing and arithmetic. Male dominance was marked at all levels of European society before the First World War, one of the few positive consequences of which was to be a move towards female emancipation.