Download Global Consequences of World War I

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The long-term historical consequences of World War I provide historians a myriad of historical
connections. As you read the following, highlight the major consequences of World War I. After
you finish reading divide the effects of World War I into two categories: immediate and long term.
Within each area, again divide the effects into European, American and Global. (See the format sheet
at the conclusion of this reading.)
Global Consequences of World War I
By Edward J. Davies II
World War I (1914-1918), one of the world’s most devastating conflicts, was a struggle of great size that
began in Europe and eventually involved 32 nations. The war was fought between two great military alliances—
the Allies, which included France, Russia, Britain, and eventually the United States; and the Central Powers,
which included Germany, Austro-Hungary, and later, the Ottomans. By the end of the Great War, nearly 10
million troops had died and about 21 million soldiers had been wounded.
The Great War also precipitated revolution and unrest, an outcome wholly unexpected by the European
powers. The Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917 was only a foretaste of the rumblings and unrest that
would eventually reach Berlin and even Peking. At the end of the war, Vladimir Lenin emerged as a person
feared or venerated throughout the world. At the same time, Woodrow Wilson entered the fray with his famous
Fourteen Points, a set of war aims designed to bring and preserve peace. Wilson’s novel ideas, such as selfdetermination and the League of Nations, stood in sharp contrast to Lenin’s revolutionary appeals to exploited
peoples and his advocacy of violence to achieve justice and equity. The contrasting ideas of these two
visionaries energized colonial peoples across the globe and intensified their demands for independence or
autonomy. At the same time, the end of the war embittered many people as empires crumbled, reparations
were exacted from the losers, and the victors redrew the map of Europe.
The War, Manpower, and Colonial Populations
Although World War I began in Europe, from the very beginning it reached far beyond the confines of
that continent. Peoples throughout Africa, India, and Asia experienced the war as recruits or laborers in
European armies. These regions also contributed significant resources to sustain the war efforts of warring
nations.
As the war raged on, the European powers’ desperate need for soldiers and laborers compelled them to
look to their colonial populations. Colonial leaders gave their support, believing that loyalty demonstrated
during the ruling country’s time of great danger would lead to greater autonomy in the colony, a relaxation of
racial regulations, and even home rule at the end of the conflict. Certainly the leaders in British India and the
British African colonies supported the war effort with such motives in mind. Volunteers—both soldiers and
laborers—came forth in large numbers to complement the existing colonial regiments of Britain, France, or
Germany.
The French, for example, recruited 70,000 Algerians and 170,000 West Africans to serve in their
European armies. The British relied on Indian troops for their ill-fated 1915 campaign in southern Iraq and to
reinforce their armies in northern France. In fact, almost a million Indian troops and laborers served
throughout the globe. The British also recruited 100,000 Chinese laborers to meet the logistical demands of
their armies in northern Europe. In addition, hundreds of thousands of porters and workers from West Africa,
Egypt, and India provided invaluable services for the warring nations.
Subversion and Belligerent Policies in the Colonies
Off the battlefields, the warring nations used other means to weaken their enemies. For example, they
vigorously encouraged unrest, rebellion, and nationalism among their enemies’ colonial subjects. This strategy
was intended to weaken opponents by forcing them to devote resources and military power to suppress civil
and military disturbances, especially in west Asia. Probably the best-known incidence of such subversion
occurred in Arabia, where British agent T. E. Lawrence mobilized the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
The emerging Arab nationalism was a sentiment endorsed by the British government, which promised—but
never delivered—Arab independence.
Britain was also behind Zionism, another movement with the potential to affect western Asia. During
World War I, a small number of idealistic Polish and Russian Jews formed into a cohesive group that reached
out to all Jewish communities regardless of their country, language, or local customs. This group eventually
won British support for the formation of a Jewish homeland after the war. This support, documented in the
Balfour Declaration, collided with Britain’s earlier guarantees to the Arab nationalists and would later lead to
violent and bloody disputes between the Jewish and Arab communities.
The Germans and Ottomans, too, developed subversionary policies. They hoped to exploit the PanIslamic sentiment spreading in the British crown colony of India. An underground opposition party, the Ghadr
(Revolt), had already existed in the Punjab State. Leaders in Berlin, a gathering place for exiled Indian
dissidents, hoped to exploit this increasing tension. In the end, however, the great distance between Europe
and India and the difficulty of coordinating potential rebels under stiff British resistance foiled these ambitions.
The Germans and Ottomans were more successful in their efforts to encourage Islamic resistance in North and
West Africa, where opposition to colonial rule eventually outlasted the war itself.
World War I and the Bolshevik Seizure of Power in Russia
Unanticipated events in Imperial Russia proved equally as dramatic and successful as the warring
nations’ policy of subversion. In 1917, the Russian Revolution shook the entire world and created an ongoing
challenge to Western powers. The revolution would also provide hope to countries such as China that were
struggling against imperial control. Within three decades after the revolution, more than one-third of the world
would live under communist regimes.
A longtime ally of France, Imperial Russia went to war in 1914, ill-prepared to sustain the huge costs
demanded by modern, industrialized conflict. The war brought catastrophic losses and unbearable hardships to
the millions of Russians who fought in the Imperial armies. During the war, Russia also coped with massive
internal migrations as millions of refugees fled war zones and large numbers of civilians left their homes for jobs
in wartime industries and agencies. This vast movement of peoples, which equaled the number of individuals
called for military service, greatly disrupted a society already buckling under great domestic pressures and
notorious for its inefficiencies. Food shortages soon affected the cities while inflation undermined peasant
purchasing power. Workers and peasants blamed the deteriorating situation on the country’s leadership. By
1917, Czar Nicholas and his monarchical regime had lost the confidence of the Russian people. The monarchy
was replaced by a provisional government, supposedly under democratic forces.
At this moment, an exiled Bolshevik revolutionary named Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd,
assisted by German authorities who hoped that Lenin would create even more unrest in a country devastated by
internal strife. Lenin and his Bolshevik followers soon decided the provisional government was wrong to keep
Russia in the costly and grim war. By the fall of 1917, Lenin and his supporters had seized power from the
provisional government, which had lost the support of the Russian people. Once in control, the Bolsheviks
fulfilled their promise to take Russia out of the war. In December 1917, they signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty,
which ended Russia’s participation.
Wilson Versus Lenin
Lenin’s decision to take Russia out of the war directly challenged the message of U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson. Since early in the war, Wilson had vigorously pursued a negotiated settlement that would
bring a just peace to the warring nations. Central to Wilson’s Fourteen Points, a set of war proposals that
included territorial settlements and strategies for preventing future wars, were his notions of selfdetermination and his ideas for the formation of the League of Nations, an international assembly similar to the
United Nations which eventually superseded it. Wilson believed his proposals represented a revolution in
international affairs and an alternative to traditional European diplomacy, long dependent on balance of
power. Wilson faced further challenges as European nations disagreed with several of his key points. The
United States declared war on the Central Powers in April 1917, with Wilson intending victory as a way to crush
antidemocratic forces.
Lenin challenged both Wilson’s vision of the future and European ideas of diplomacy. He saw
imperialism as a poison to working class people everywhere. Lenin also argued that the war grew naturally out
of the imperialism of capitalist countries and their exploitation of colonial peoples. For Lenin, Wilson was an
integral part of the capitalist world and, therefore, part of the larger problem. While both men advocated a new
global order, they pursued it in vastly different ways.
The End of the War and Revolution
In 1918, the waves caused by the Russian Revolution swept into Europe, which was already in the midst of great
turmoil. In Germany, loss of faith in a leadership unable to break the British blockade or win a decisive victory
in the west led to military mutinies and uprisings throughout the country. Mass disobedience began in the navy
and culminated in the refusal of the German sailors in the port of Kiel to make one last death ride for the honor
of the Second Reich. The mutiny soon gripped the navy’s rank and file, who demanded an end to the war. The
old regime was on its last legs, and the Second Reich was soon replaced by a provisional government.
The sailors, joined by soldiers and workers, were soon building soviets, councils modeled after those
pioneered by the Russian Bolsheviks. These soviets directly challenged the old order in Germany. Then in 1919,
the Spartacist League, reborn as the communist party, attempted an ill-advised overthrow of the new
provisional government. Russian Bolsheviks gave aid directly and indirectly to their fellow German
communists, in hopes of fanning the revolution everywhere in Europe. To Lenin’s dismay, German military and
paramilitary forces crushed the attempted revolution. Attempted revolutions rocked Austria, Hungary, and
Bulgaria, demonstrating the appeal of Lenin to war-weary populations. All failed.
In spite of these European failures, the soviet-style revolution reached beyond Europe. Tobacco workers
in Cuba formed their own soviets, as did Irish Catholic sheepherders in Australia. In addition, a Bolshevik Party
appeared in Monarchical Spain. Even in the United States, the bastion of capitalism, Finnish workers in the
upper Midwest embraced communism and revered Lenin for years. The war and the revolution were
transforming the world.
The Impact of the War in East Asia
The war also reached East Asia in dramatic and fateful ways. The Japanese, who had joined the Allies in
declaring war on Germany, ruthlessly exploited wartime conditions. Taking advantage of the great distance
between Europe and East Asia, the Japanese quickly moved to seize the German-held Shantung Peninsula,
southeast of Peking. The Japanese then seized control of the peninsula’s main rail line and began to expand
their presence through newly formed manufacturing companies and other industries. The Japanese military
also looked to Manchuria and Mongolia, where they intended to expand Japan’s influence.
In the wake of their activities in the Shantung Peninsula, the Japanese government issued an ultimatum
demanding economic and territorial rights from the Chinese government. The Twenty-One Demands, as the
ultimatum was called, severely compromised Chinese sovereignty and greatly enhanced Japan’s presence on
the mainland. Under the agreement, Japan took control of territory, manufacturing operations, and key
economic and political assets. The day China submitted to the demands, May 25, 1915, henceforth became
known as the Day of National Humiliation, a day remembered in yearly demonstrations.
If Japan’s wartime activities compromised China, peace proved even more disturbing in the country.
The Chinese had hoped their service in Europe would lead to an end of the unequal treaties the Europeans had
forced on them during the second half of the 19th century. Unfortunately, these hopes were never fulfilled. In
fact, delegates to the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles learned that a secret agreement among the Allies
allowed the Japanese to keep their troops in Shantung peninsula. This news sparked the May 4th Movement of
1919, a series of nation-wide protests against the Japanese presence on Chinese soil. This moment also saw the
merging of radical and anti-Japanese sentiments among the Chinese intellectuals and students. Lenin’s claims
that imperial powers had exported their exploitation of people abroad struck home with Chinese intellectuals
and students. After all, they had seen firsthand the result of imperial exploitation in their homeland and
encountered it again when the Japanese moved into the Shantung Peninsula. Having watched the Bolshevik
challenge to Russian imperialists, Chinese radicals saw revolution as the means to overthrow the existing social
order.
Marxism and revolution now became a third alternative for Chinese people previously faced with
making the stark choice between the doctrines of the Confucian east and the Imperial west. Chinese radicals
founded debate societies, which brought together young individuals, such as Mao Zedong, to discuss China’s
plight. Clearly, many intellectuals and students saw capitalist exploitation as part of the larger problem
reflected in the Japanese presence in north China. Many of the students from such societies vigorously
participated in and led the May 4th protests.
Chinese laborers, arriving back from Europe, also contributed to these debates. They had acquired an
understanding of the world rare among the vast majority of untraveled Chinese. While in Europe, many of
these young individuals had learned to read and write. Many had also encountered Wilson’s ideas, particularly
his call for self-determination. They presumed that this ideal, if embraced by all nations, would lead to real
independence for China and freedom from imperial intruders. The war veterans joined the radical students and
intellectuals in their protest over Japan’s continued presence in China. Hundreds of student-led
demonstrations swept across the country. Merchants closed their operations while workers struck by the
thousands and joined a boycott of Japanese goods.
The May 4th Movement proved more than just a series of protests over a specific incident. It marked a
turning point in the emergence of Chinese nationalism and secured China’s legitimate place in the new global
order. New styles of dress, vernacular writing, and calls for new values spread through China. Scores of newly
founded journals enabled intellectuals to debate the merits of Marxism, liberalism, Socialism, and other new
philosophies. Above all, the movement called for a reunited country free from internal division and external
exploitation.
The Impact of the War in Africa
The war deeply affected Africa. As demands for personnel to aid the war efforts increased and created a
shortage of white labor, black Africans assumed administrative posts and mercantile positions throughout the
European colonies. The economic demands of the war also created new industries. However, African colonies
also suffered severe economic consequences. Wartime demands eventually created shortfalls in consumer
goods and sparked inflation and serious unrest in places such as Portuguese-held Madagascar and Frenchruled Senegal. Such disturbances reached as far as South Africa, where an unprecedented number of biracial
unions formed to demand economic fairness from the colonial government.
The drain of resources severely weakened Africa’s local populations. In some areas of East and Central
Africa, famine struck; shortly thereafter, various epidemics devastated the African peoples. Even more
damaging, millions perished from the influenza pandemic that arrived from Europe just before the war ended.
In some places, as much as 6 percent of the population perished. While militarily speaking Africa was a
sideshow in the Great War, the continent fully participated in its deadly consequences.
As did many European countries, Africa also witnessed a series of revolts against colonial rule. Wilson’s
Fourteen Points, including the right to self-determination, were partly responsible for these uprisings. At the
same time, the loosening of the war’s fearsome grip on society also facilitated this unrest. Across the continent,
rebels raised their arms—against French rule in Morocco, Italian rule in Cyrenica on the north coast, British
and French forces in the central Sahara, and European administrators in Somalia. Europeans generally
prevailed against the rebels. Ironically, imperial rulers had concluded that their African colonies held great
material value and demanded far greater investments in their infrastructures and peoples. This recognition
initiated new policies designed to accomplish these ends.
The Impact of the War on India
The war caused seismic shifts in India’s political landscape, too. For instance, the war brought on an
upsurge in production and created new industry. Raw materials and manufactured goods poured out of India
to feed the British war efforts. Industries such as iron and steel works flourished because of Britain’s high
demand for metals. At the same time, the sale of British consumer goods to Indian markets, slowed almost to a
stop because of Great Britain’s demands for military goods. Consequently, Indian buyers turned to Japan and
the United States, whose exports to south Asia jumped by 400 percent. These changes dramatically affected
India’s economy and its relationship with Britain.
Demands for Indian home rule also escalated during the war. These demands eventually led to the
creation of a viceregal assembly as well as local assemblies, whose appearance was loudly announced by
Gandhi’s campaign of nonviolent resistance in 1920. These bodies operated under severe restrictions, yet their
presence demonstrated the growing leverage of Indian nationalists. Indian soldiers and laborers returned from
the war with a profound distrust of their British rulers. Indian suspicion grew dramatically when the British
refused to rescind the harsh Defense of the Realm Act of 1916 designed to suppress dissent during the war.
Britain’s initial refusal, combined with the uprisings in the Punjab over the arrest of nationalists and
subsequent Amritsar Massacre of protesters, sparked a fury among the Indians. With a revitalized economy
and vigorous leadership, India continued to challenge British rule.
The Versailles Peace Conference
The formal end of the war occurred at the Peace Conference held in Versailles, outside of Paris, in 1919.
The agreements signed in Versailles affected not only Europe but also millions beyond Europe’s borders. The
Germans agreed to a truce, believing that Wilson’s Fourteen Points would serve as the basis for the peace
negotiations. The new German leadership hoped Wilson’s proposals would moderate the terms of peace.
However, Wilson was unable to restrain France’s desire for territory, reparations, and a hobbled Germany.
German land was given, either temporarily or permanently, to France or to newly created states such as Poland
and Czechoslovakia. In addition, the treaty broke apart the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Furthermore, Germans
had to admit to war guilt, a humiliation that would linger among many Germans during the 1920s and 1930s.
Finally, a series of new states appeared in eastern Europe. Many of these states, such as Poland and the
Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, were designed to act as barriers against the Bolsheviks as well as
to satisfy the demands for independence of ethnic minorities in the former empires. The Allied victors also
dismembered the Ottoman Empire, which had once stretched from North Africa to Persia. Under the guidance
of the League of Nations, the French and the British imposed the Mandate system on Palestine, Iraq, Jordan,
and Syria, taking control of these territories. The Mandate system made Great Britain and France supposedly
enlightened guardians of the West Asian territories. The Europeans took on the charge of promoting the
interests of the peoples under their rule, a noble goal many Arab nationalists rightfully doubted. Only Saudi
Arabia emerged as an independent nation free of European powers.
If the Versailles Treaty brought peace, it certainly did not bring happiness. The Germans left the peace
table embittered, waiting for their day of revenge. The Russians, who were never invited to the table, stood as
mavericks outside the international system. Beyond Europe, national aspirations and deep resentment over
imperial rule continued to fester during the decades after the Great War. And the people of the European
colonies, influenced by the visions of Wilson and Lenin, imagined a world very different from the one of their
imperial rulers.
About the author: Edward J. Davies II is an associate professor of history at the University of Utah. He is the
author of The Anthracite Aristocracy: Leadership and Social Change in the Hard Coal Regions of
Northeastern Pennsylvania among other publications.
Immediate Effects of World War I
Immediate Effects in America
Immediate Effects in Europe
Immediate Global Effects
Long-Term Effects of World War I
Long-term Effects in America
Long-term Effects in Europe
Long-term Global Effects
Questions: Respond to the following on separate sheet of paper.
1.
Do you believe that if the United States had entered the war earlier that any of the above consequences could have
been avoided? Explain why or why not.
2.
Many historians believe that Nationalism was one of the key driving forces behind WWI. Why do they say that? Do
you think that the forces of Nationalism around have changed today? Explain with specific examples.
3.
What do you believe is the most important lesson that people should have learned from World War I? Explain.
4.
For the global community, are there any ways that World War I could be viewed as a positive/ creative force?
Explain why or why not.