the 1st world war

[beauti_life]

Hello,
What are the reasons of the First World War??
And how it effect on the art and the author by their writing??

[stlukesguild]

You might want to go to a history forum to find the answer to the first part of your homework...:rolleyes:

[Sancho]

Big – Big – BIG – Question.
Too big, I think.

1st Answer (dull): The rise of the Nation-State.

2nd Answer (more interesting): The literature reflected, and sometimes drove, the general attitude.

I think the Europeans lost their optimism (and hubris); I mean, if Europe was so great, and the industrial revolution was so fabulous, why was it all used as a means to just slaughter everybody? That is, machines are good but machine-guns are bad.

I think the Americans lost their innocence; I mean, two big oceans and two mostly friendly neighbors were no longer enough to insulate the 48 states from the world at large. They had to play, and in a bigger fashion than just selling the Europeans the machine-guns that they craved with which to slaughter themselves. (You see, an American invented the machine-gun. And European hubris blinded them to the lessons of the slaughter of the American Civil War.)

I think the Russians were lost, but were not hubristic or innocent; I mean, they just decided to quit WWI and go home and have their own revolution and slaughter each other.

I think the Chinese finally grew some cajones and told the rest of the world to piss-off and to take their opium with them as they were leaving.

I think the Indians had the same idea, but it took another world war (and Gandhi) for the idea to take.

I think that Latin America, Arabia, South East Asia, Sub Saharan Africa, and everybody else, sort of figured out, all at once, that Europe was F*cked, and that they were better off determining for themselves where they were going and what they were going to be - (a very important 1 of 14 points).

…and the literature tells this story a whole lot better than anything else.

I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “slaughter” so many times in one post.

[bazarov]

Hello,
What are the reasons of the First World War??

Many nations were unsatisfied with distribution of colonies and wealth, and rapid grow of arm industry. Assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914 was just an excuse for starting the war.


And how it effect on the art and the author by their writing??
Well, I am not very familiar with post WWI literature, not sure I can answer on that.
No offense Sancho, but this is the worst and the stupidest post I have ever seen.

[jon1jt]

Big – Big – BIG – Question.
Too big, I think.

1st Answer (dull): The rise of the Nation-State.

2nd Answer (more interesting): The literature reflected, and sometimes drove, the general attitude.

I think the Europeans lost their optimism (and hubris); I mean, if Europe was so great, and the industrial revolution was so fabulous, why was it all used as a means to just slaughter everybody? That is, machines are good but machine-guns are bad.

I think the Americans lost their innocence; I mean, two big oceans and two mostly friendly neighbors were no longer enough to insulate the 48 states from the world at large. They had to play, and in a bigger fashion than just selling the Europeans the machine-guns that they craved with which to slaughter themselves. (You see, an American invented the machine-gun. And European hubris blinded them to the lessons of the slaughter of the American Civil War.)

I think the Russians were lost, but were not hubristic or innocent; I mean, they just decided to quit WWI and go home and have their own revolution and slaughter each other.

I think the Chinese finally grew some cajones and told the rest of the world to piss-off and to take their opium with them as they were leaving.

I think the Indians had the same idea, but it took another world war (and Gandhi) for the idea to take.

I think that Latin America, Arabia, South East Asia, Sub Saharan Africa, and everybody else, sort of figured out, all at once, that Europe was F*cked, and that they were better off determining for themselves where they were going and what they were going to be - (a very important 1 of 14 points).

…and the literature tells this story a whole lot better than anything else.

I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “slaughter” so many times in one post.


the rise of the nation-state is actually not a dull answer. start at the Treaty of Westphalia, or Greece for that matter. there are only states today, no nations.

the rest of your armchair observations i'll leave in the chair.

[Sancho]

Ha! Thanks for the glowing review, bazarov.
I bet you’re European
But I disagree with your assessment; heck, I’ve posted plenty of more stupider stuff than that one... and on this forum.

Anyhow, I was a bit flip in my previous post, (and my apologies to the Russians) but let’s look at it a little closer and maybe we’ll come with something that beauti-life can use in his/her homework.

When the guns of august roared in 1914, most Europeans thought it would be a short and glorious war and the boys would be home for Christmas. The tension was so high that there was almost a sense of relief when the shooting finally started. I think that they thought a good old fashioned blood-letting would be healthy and would finally decide, once and for all, who was the-king-of-the-hill. But after the Battle of the Marne and the subsequent four years of trench warfare, Europeans really began to question their assumptions. How could the most advanced and enlightened civilization on the planet, have used all of tools of the industrial revolution just to maximize the slaughter of each other? Maybe it wasn’t the European “White Man’s Burden” (prewar Rudyard Kipling) to civilize the rest of the world after all.

From a literature standpoint we can look at someone like Kipling and compare his writing to that of someone like James Joyce. In particular I’m thinking of a stream of consciousness chapter in Joyce’s Ulysses when Stephen Dedalus is walking along Sandymount Strand. There is a loss of a sense of a deterministic and ordered universe in postwar European writing. And, I think, collectively Europeans began to question their former assumption of European superiority, especially after their civilization’s near-death experience.

As for the United States: they were dragged kicking and screaming into the First World War. And when the guns fell silent in November of 1918, they sort of looked around and realized that they were the last ones standing. So, I would say, at that point the Americans became reluctant players on the world stage; My-My how times have changed. In some sense, the optimism and hubris of the prewar Europe managed to float across the Atlantic and infect the Americans.

From a literature standpoint, I think that this idea is epitomized in Hemingway’s, The Sun Also Rises. I also think that American writers finally emerged from the shadow of great European writers and gained their own distinctly American voice.

Okay, let’s do one more: China. My reference to opium was not flip. British (and some American) traders, in an effort to economically dominate China, hooked the Chinese on opium. Millions of tons of opium were smuggled into China in the 19th century and when the Qing dynasty tried to stop it, the British Military moved in to protect British financial interests. That action morphed into the aptly named “Opium War of 1842.” After that, a couple of rebellions go badly for the Chinese (Taiping and Boxer) leaving China chopped up into economic spheres of influence to Western States and Japan – not political imperialism but certainly economic imperialism.

So what do the 19th century trading practices of the Western Powers and the East India Company have to do with WW-I? In 1917 the Chinese actually sent a couple of hundred thousand troops to Europe to support the British war effort. This was done with the hopes that it would help to regain Chinese sovereignty after the war. They were rewarded in the Paris Peace Treaties by the ceding of former German spheres of influence in China over to the Japanese!?!?! At that point, (May 4th) the Chinese collectively said, “WTF?” And one budding young Chinese liberal with western leanings, picked up a copy of Karl Marx’ Communist Manifesto and decided that he was a Marxist. His name, of course, was Mao Tse Tung. (The Communist Manifesto was my literary tie-in)

It took Mao, and about a million pissed-off Chinese, another few decades to kick out the rest of the Westerners and the Japanese and Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang Nationalist party, but they did it. And only in about the past 15 years or so has China, economically, opened itself back up to world trade. This is off topic, but I think they’re just getting warmed-up, so if you have a few extra dollars or pesos or euros or whatever, you may consider buying a few shares of a Chinese ETF (Exchange Traded Fund).

Well that's it, and in the outside chance that anyone is still reading this incredibly long post – I did say that it was a BIG subject.

[Clouder]

Sancho,
Your above post is quite objective on the China part in WWI (Your mention on some major events are accurate). I do think it is more a social science and history topic. If we discuss history from literature perspective, I am afraid it might not relate to the core attributes/substances, although vice versa, it makes much sense.
WWI is complicated and there are many factors involved, especially, like any other war lasting for more years, its direction changes in time. However, that doesn't mean there are no major factors among this "pool". I think WWI is the explosion among "different interest identity/groups". The fact is that not only it brings disasters to European countries but the world, especially the poor countries as well. I think it is also a right perspective to look back at 19th century's hisitory - advanced industrialized western countries expanded by colonism and colonization with endless conflicts.
Russia and China are good examples for the truth: one extreme is created to confront the other extreme. Communism is created to be against imperialism to balance the world; a brake to stop its madness. They exist in a Relative sense.
One more point, WWI's result has huge impact on WWII too. Since the major conflicts are not resolved, then bigger disaster is sure to come.
My post is quite incoherent; sorry for that.

[Noisms]

There is a loss of a sense of a deterministic and ordered universe in postwar European writing.

Far too simplistic. There had been a loss of a sense of a deterministic and ordered universe in literature for long before the First World War, and afterwards it wasn't just Europeans who displayed it. Read the works of Dos Passos, Stein and Stevens and tell me Americans hadn't lost the sense of a deterministic and ordered universe too.

[Sancho]

Hi Clouder,

I’m just getting started at exploring Chinese history and it’s almost like being a kid again – everything is new and fresh and exciting. Somebody once told me that in order to study history, you have to stand somewhere. That is, you have to look at it from a position. You can look at it from one position and then circle around and look at again from another position, but you have to look at history from somewhere. Well, I’m standing in North America and I’m not sure that this is the best place from which to look at Chinese history. I’m trying to work out a trip to China in the next couple years (probably wait until after the Beijing Olympics), but I’m anxious to go. I want to smell the smells, taste the food, walk the roads, ride the trains, ride a bicycle in the Beijing-Bustle etc.

I think I learned more about India in one cross-town Bombay taxi ride than I did in reading a pile of books about India.

Oh yes, we were talking about WWI, weren’t we? Well, days before my trip to India, I had a chance stand on the living-breathing-earth at Verdun, and I’m not a superstitious man, but my experience there was - spooky. I felt more gravity there than in any other place I’ve ever been. My wife and I only spent a couple of hours at Verdun, but when we left, we were spent.

[amanda_isabel]

the war had a great effect on the literature of the time. some would say that there was a dearth in literature during that part of the contemporary period since people didn't really have time to write and instead were in the war or so. add that two world wars to a sudden rapid porgres in sciene and technology and what they got was uncertainty, so i guess that this uncertainty is what is reflected in literature.

the world war, though, was a breaking out. and i think it might have influenced not only politics but i think it had a large influence on the breaking away in literature. during the contemporary period, literature broke free of the rules the classical period had set. poetry, for example, no longer had to have a definite rhyme and rhythm. big effect.

[Sancho]

Far too simplistic. There had been a loss of a sense of a deterministic and ordered universe in literature for long before the First World War, and afterwards it wasn't just Europeans who displayed it. Read the works of Dos Passos, Stein and Stevens and tell me Americans hadn't lost the sense of a deterministic and ordered universe too.

Hi Noisms,

I don’t think that you understand the argument. The argument is: collectively European’s attitudes about themselves and the rest of the world fundamentally changed as a direct result of the experience of WWI, and this is reflected in the literature.

The fact that a marginalized American “Lost Generation” writer wrote in a similar vein, has no bearing on the argument at hand. However, as you stated, there were prewar European writers (and others) who questioned the idea of an ordered and deterministic universe. That is true but they tended to be on the fringes and did not reflect the collective attitude of European civilization in the early 1900s. Following the war, writers who previously weren’t taken seriously by most Europeans, all of a sudden gained a voice and became mainstream. (Fredrick Nietzsche may be an example) I think this actually bolsters my original argument.