The Similarities Between The Napoleonic Wars And World War I

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Introduction Throughout the course of history societal, organizational and technological advances have been made. Whether these advances are always for the best is controversial, especially, in the setting of wartime. This essay focuses on the these three changes and how they effected both the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. Technological advances were made in terms of weaponry, but were not probably utilized which ultimately ended up being problematic. Many new organizational schemes came about during both of these time periods, but they focused on aggressive offensive strategy, which did not prove to be beneficial. And finally, within society the idea of nationalism was circulating through different countries, however, this nationalism came about through different occurrences creating a war filled with different motivations. Overall, these changes proved to create a great deal of instability within the Napoleonic Wars and World War I.
Technological
During the time of World War I there were many technological advances, including “railroads…rifling and breech loading guns and artillery, high …show more content…

Sagan believes that World War I was brought on by “the political objective and alliance commitments of the great powers” (Sagan, 1986 153). This instability between alliances that shaped the war was referred to as “chaingaining” or the pressure put on a state when it must “support allies’ adventurism or risk being left alone” (Downes, Lecture 10 February 20th). Additionally, the alliances were not stable because of the ambiguity within them, also known as the “deterrence failure” (Downes, Lecture 10 February 20th). For example, the United Kingdom was unclear about whether they would go to war and kept their “military commitment” within the Triple Entente, a secret (Downes, Lecture 10 February 20th). Both strategy and alliances influenced the stability of this

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