How did World War I shatter the liberal and rational assumptions of late 19th century and early 20th century in Europe?

Answer 1

I'm not an expert - just a former avid student, and still avid reader, of economic history - but I'll throw out some ideas to start the ball rolling.

Between 1815 and 1914, an eerily even number of years, there were hardly any wars involving more than two countries - only the Crimean war stands out in that entire period (although maybe someone can correct me on the exact number). Social memory is not that long - just look around you now and think about how huge stock market crashes and depressions happen at large intervals, e.g. 1870s, 1930s, 2000s. Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics this year, actually was on TV recently and tried to argue that the difference between now and the 1930s is that we have the 1930s to look at and learn from, entirely ignorant of all the depressions and Stock Market crashes that had happened before. If the Nobel Prize winner doesn't remember, what chance for those wheeling and dealing on a daily basis?!

Anyway, my point is that with that kind of length of time, variables are taken as constants. Things such as global peace, the (financially) benign hegemony of London and the UK, the ability to move capital around the world instantly (sound familiar?!), even to a lesser extent the ability to up sticks and move to a new country without the need for a passport or a visa ... all these were increasingly taken as immutable 'givens', rather than politically dependent outcomes.

I'm not big on social history, but it may even have been the case that people believed that there would never really be a global or multi-country war again, i.e. that enlightened and globalization-embracing countries and kingdoms were 'the end of history', to borrow another more modern phrase. (Childers' Riddle of the Sands leads me to think that that may not have been the case, though.)

Anyway, World War 1 broke all those assumptions. Humanity hadn't really changed at all - life could easily revert to being nasty, brutish and short, even pointless. Huge debt, the mobilization of state resources and the consequent postponement of the private economy, these were huge wrenches for the upper tiers of global society.

I hope that's enough to get a conversation started on this... I'd be very interested in hearing others' thoughts.