The Social and Political Influences Leading up to the First World War

The Social and Political Influences Leading up to the First World War

Romanticism began in the closing decades of the Eighteenth Century. Influencing all spheres of life, pervading the populace of Europe and the first half of the Nineteenth Century with idealistic, yet unreal sentiment. Contradicting any romantic or idealistic belief were the uniform followers of rationalism and conservatism, descendents of Puritanism that arose in the Church of England during the early 17th Century. The German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann quoted in retrospect "infinite longing" was the essence of romanticism, if this definition is accepted, it may be said that it created in Europe, an illicit hunt for a "utopian" society. This I theorize is the ulterior motive of European society, the search for perfection, seeking a fool's paradise.

Nationalism. It is more than loyalty to a nation, that is simply patriotism. Nationalism is the belief that ones country is highest on the pedestal of global pre-eminence. It is the need to elevate ones country to a higher global state than any rivals, thus the need for self-determination as in Germany, Prussia absorbed many of the northern protestant states and later the southern catholic ones under the guidance of Otto Von Bismarck. Otto Von Bismarck applying a policy of "realpolitik"1, a mixed bag of "blood-and-iron" ,which subsequently "unified" over 39 tribal duchies of varying sizes, into a single cohesive, culturally unified nation. This is the first time Germany had been completely unified, the change, radical even compared to the Congress of Vienna(1814-15) of which the result was the number of states decreasing from 240 to 39. In a further attempt to strengthen the bond holding Germany together, Bis...

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...m II's plan to turn Germany into a wold power with a large colonial empire

4. Charles Robert Darwin, 1809-1882, British Scientist responsible for revolutionizing evolutionary theory with his work, "On the Origin of Species" (1859).

5.By 1914, most African countries existed as European colonies, only Liberia and Ethiopia were independent.

6.Germany attained some small tracts of land in Africa, a few small Pacific Islands all of which accounted for just over a single Mile in area excluding Germany itself.

7. The "Communist Manifesto"(1848), was the first published statement of modern socialist doctrine. Whilst living in England, Marx expanded on original theories in "Das Kapital"(1867).

8. Lenin systematized Marxist views of the war in "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1916), arguing that only a revolution that destroyed capitalism could peace.