- Location
- Arlington, Virginia
This is why it is argued that the Seven Years' War was the first world war - although there were wars beforehand that had both European and colonial participation (like the rest of the French and Indian Wars).
-
Hi Guest!
The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress
Alternate History General Discussion
- Thread starter Elektronaut
- Start date
Then we could label several other wars as World Wars if we go that route.
Ricardolindo
Well-known member
- Location
- Portugal
I meant a World War I analogue. Many people argue that even if Franz Ferdinand had lived, it was inevitable.
Austro-Hungary was gonna fall apart sooner or later,especially with Franz in charge given his distain for the Hungarian nobility and the latter becoming impossible to be satiated.
No Assassination of Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand
First POD discussion post on here, so let's make it a biggie. Whether Franz Ferdinand goes home the first time he's attacked in Sarajevo, or the sandwich myth is true and Gavrillo goes to the bathroom after wolfing down a BLT and misses his shot. Now, the alliances by this point have long...
forum.sealionpress.co.uk
Heraclis makes a good case/scenario of Russia intervening on behalf of a Hungarian uprising,with WW1 happening in 1917 but with a Russia that has more railways.
- Location
- Albany, NY
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It was an unsustainable global system, so yes.
- Location
- Albany, NY
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's also something to be said that eventually, when you've been running around for generations brutalizing the planet, you'll eventually be numb to the idea of brutalizing your neighbors and the planet in the name of more of the trinkets of victory. That is to say that for the European regimes of 1914 the suffering of war had become cheap. And once you make that cheap, launching a war against your neighbors becomes a more and more reasonable solution. Regardless of if you're in Paris, Berlin, Petrograd, Vienna, Budapest or London. Its the same callousness that helps the United States jump from genocidal colonial wars on the frontier to San Juan Hill or the Occupation of Haiti.
Reading the tone of coverage at the time, it feels like the view was that a general European war was something like how we view climate change now (perhaps) - a disaster we can all see coming, and which almost everyone wants to prevent, but there's a sense that nobody is doing enough and it's inevitable. (Example as I couldn't find the one I was looking for, from the Glasgow Herald in December 1912)
Ricardolindo
Well-known member
- Location
- Portugal
I disagree. There had been crises where war had been avoided. People wanted to avoid such a war. As I said, I know I am in a minority on this topic.
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
- Location
- Washington, Douglass Commonwealth
- Pronouns
- he/him
As @David Flin says, peace has to be lucky every time, war only has to be lucky once. I would also say that the fact crises kept happening suggests that people weren't entirely anti-war. If they were truly anti-war European countries would stop behaving so belligerently and nearly going to war every few years.
- Location
- Albany, NY
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's always people who want to avoid wars, unfortunately it is a critical component of human history that they can't always win out.
The nations of Europe had spent the past century in a heady orgy of war and rape and pillage. The imperial boomerang always comes home. It was going to win out at some point, the only question then is the length and the width of it all.
Ore we would have seen a new but bigger Balkan war.
- Location
- Arlington, Virginia
Isn't that what World War I, at least in the region, was to begin with?
An international order of drunk men yelling "OH YEAH?!?!?!" at each other in the car park on the assumption everyone will agree they're well 'ard and so don't actually have to fight
Ricardolindo
Well-known member
- Location
- Portugal
There was support for limited wars, but everyone was afraid of a world war.
- Location
- Albany, NY
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's rather like tactical nuclear weapons though. It becomes very hard to find the line that separates the big and the little and no real way to ensure things don't accelerate.
The Balkan Wars were both one big crisis and a dozen or so smaller crises that continually almost set things off. Any small war that "lets off the steam" risks a full explosion.
- Location
- North Solihull
- Pronouns
- she/her
Agree with the point that the problem with having to be lucky every time there's a crisis, is that you only have to be unlucky once. Add in agents who increasingly believe that the probability of themselves in particular being unlucky is trending towards 1, and that well, wouldn't it be better to force something sooner, on something nearer their own terms?
That said, I'd read a detailed great power by great power, year-by-year timeline where the plates just about keep spinning, perhaps all the way through the c.1890-192? period until some new unpredictable and possibly horrific equilibrium is reached.
That said, I'd read a detailed great power by great power, year-by-year timeline where the plates just about keep spinning, perhaps all the way through the c.1890-192? period until some new unpredictable and possibly horrific equilibrium is reached.
I'm thinking of Moorcock's Warlord of the Air, where there's no WW1 and the Great Powers have got everything on an even keel and this also means colonialism never ended so most of the world are brutalised vassals.
napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
- Location
- Washington, Douglass Commonwealth
- Pronouns
- he/him
Except the Great Powers kept provoking other Great Powers, even though it was obvious that a war between two Great Powers would escalate into a pan-European war. Like, there's no way Germany can threaten to go to war with France in the Tangiers Crisis and think "Yeah, this is going to be a limited war." I'll grant you that there was a lot of bluffing going on, but it's also clear that the Great Powers were willing to accept the possibility of stumbling into a world war, seeing it as a price of enforcing their aims (another way to put it is that they had a serious gambling problem, and figured that if you want to play with the high rollers you have to be willing to lose everything).
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
There was also the problem of a lot of character issues in the first two seasons, partly because they had too many characters in ill-defined roles; mainly Georgi (the blind guy flying the ship), Worf (what was his job again?), Tasha (not up to the task), and Wesley Sue Crusher, not to mention a bunch of chief engineers, none of whom lasted long enough to make any real impression. My honest feeling is that they didn't do much thinking about the background and it shows.
Things got sorted out a lot in seasons 2-3. Geordi becomes Chief Engineer, Worf becomes Head of Security, Yar gets killed (a shame, but Crosby was't up to the task), leaving Wesley as the only real poorly-conceived character. Maybe not fair on Wheaton, but he never really matured as an actor until it was too late to save the character - really, they'd have been better going with a Harry Kim-like character instead. However, the show largely focuses on Picard, Riker, Worf and Data - everyone else is pretty much secondary, as they're not interesting characters:
Interesting: Picard, Worf, Data
Middling: Riker, Geordi
Uninteresting: Troi, Crusher
Terrible: Wesley
Contrast this to DS9, where all of the characters were interesting and well-defended. But DS9 was an arc-show, so it could afford to set up the groundwork.
- Pronouns
- he/him