The First World War

Description

Since the Great War of 1914–18 was battled on all the seas of the world and eventually included belligerents from each mainland, it can reasonably be named a ‘universal war’. Yet, it was absolutely not the first. European forces had been battling each other all over the globe for the past 300 years. The individuals who battled in it called it simply ‘the Great War’. Like every one of its ancestors, it started as a purely European clash, emerging out of the clashing ambitions and common feelings of dread of the European forces. That its course should have been so awful, and its outcomes so calamitous, was the result from less of its worldwide scale starting at a blend military innovation and the way of life of the people groups who battled it. Karl von Clausewitz had written in the fallout of the Napoleonic wars that war was a trinity made out of the approach of the government, the exercises of the military, and ‘the interests of the people’s’. Every one of these must be considered in the event that we are to understand both why the war occurred and why it took the course that it did.