What event in history or historical person do you feel had the greatest influence on the modern world and why?
I am the one who asked this question, yet even I realize just how impossible a task it is to decide with any certainty an answer. I am a historian and I know that no one person or event has singularly shaped the modern world. Indeed, we are now the culmination of the contributions of millions of people and things. So, this answer is really a matter of opinion coupled with facts and/or sentiment, but it presents no finality. In essence: there is no right answer. I also think given the question, it would be acceptable to single out a nation or country. An answer would have to be based on the world as the answerer sees it.
But what to choose? What to single out and put my finger on, point to and say, “this?”
Roman Emperor Justinian I created the Corpus Juris Civilis that helped form some of our modern laws. The American Revolution inspired the French Revolution. The New Deal inspired The Great Society, which in turn evolved the welfare state, the demolition of which characterizes the Reagan administration. There are millions upon millions, perhaps even billions, of historical connections that fuse the past with the present in very obvious ways. In fact, it is almost futile to try to make sense of it all and unwind the tangles of history. Though one may isolate history and determine cause and effect, even causes have causes, and those causes have causes, and effects are rarely ever singular in nature. In short, you start with one point and end up with countless threads extending both back and forth.
All that said, I have thought this over for a while and come to my event: the Assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Este Franz Ferdinand on June 14, 1914. He was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia who was also in affiliation with The Black Hand organization. The purpose was to break free from Austrio-Hungarian control and become part of Greater Serbia. The first assassination attempt failed when a grenade was lobbed at the car and bounced off harmlessly. To protect the Archduke and his wife, the driver took a backway route out of ‘harms way’ and managed to end up right in front of Princip, who shot both Franz and his wife dead.
It was a snowball effect from here.
Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia the July Ultimatum, which they knew Serbia would not be able to accept because Serbia did not want Austro-Hungarian police in their territory. Based on the response of Serbia, Vienna declared war on July 28th.
So, a small war between two small world powers. Easy to quell, right?
Wrong.
The arms race of nations to compete and tip the scales of the balance of power made everything volatile, and nationalism heated up everyone. And the war wouldn’t have been as wide reaching if not for the secret treaties previously delegated that began to come out one at a time. It was like a European wide domino effect once Vienna declared war on little Serbia. Russian joined in the war to defend Serbia as part of a treaty, and Germany came in on the side of their Austrio-Hungarian friends. Then cue Britain, France, and Italy and the whole mess escalated into…
World War I.
What is the legacy of World War I? Why has it had such a influence on the modern world?
First, World War I was the first war fought in a ‘modern’ sense. Rather, the men learned very fast how to fight a modern war since the war began with modern weapons being used in old fashioned ways. This had the unfortunate result of men being offed like desperate lambs sent to slaughter. Militaries learned to hide in trenches or in tanks, to wear uniforms that blended in with the surroundings, to wear masks or lob at each other gases that would suffocate a person in seconds.
Second, it was during World War I that Russia began to shift towards Communism in earnest. With the creation of the Comintern, Communism began to expand to surrounding areas such as North Korea, China, and Vietnam. Americans would later fight in Korea and in Vietnam, and China would shift greatly under their Communist Regime. Also, Communism went head to head with Democracy during the Cold War, which shifted American thinking and society a great deal.
Third, the Versailles Treaty would wind up the cause of another great war. Yes, World War II. The War Guilt Clause placed the blame of the war on Germany… and the cost. Anger towards not only America and the Allied Powers, but also the German government that had submitted to the clause, would plant the seeds of a later take over by Adolf Hitler. You would think that would be all to this, but it’s not. Germany went into debt trying to pay off the cost of the war that they were blamed for. The German government had to borrow money from America to pay off their debts. When the American stock market collapsed, so too did Germany’s. Since the payments were going to other major European Powers, they too felt the devastation of the Great Depression. It was a world wide phenomena. Out of the Depression, we got the New Deal, which created the foundations of the Welfare State.
Fourth, Wilson created the League of Nations. Though the League of Nations was a weak body (not enough diplomacy, no military, etc), it was the beginnings of what would later be created and called the United Nations.
Fifth, the end of imperialism. After the war ended, the Western powers began to dismantle old empires and pull out of their external holdings. New countries were created and supported. Nationalism won out. But, the effect was not all positive because new lines were drawn in continents such as Africa, which paid no attention to tribal lines. A lot of conflict in Africa today derives from these random boundary lines.
These are just five things that have come from World War I that have changed the world. They are by no means the ONLY effects. The assassination of a barely significant Archduke in a small Baltic country led to a world war that shaped us into the world we are today.
Then again, we could just blame all of this on Kaiser Wilhelm’s gimp arm and call it a day.
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