World War 1 was the culmination of a century of uneasy peace.
World War 1 was the culmination of a century of uneasy peace. This is not to say that there was no conflict from when Napoleon was run out of France in 1815 to the day the Archduke of Austria was gunned down in 1914. There were many wars between individual powers or with indigenous kingdoms, like the Crimean War, Franco-Prussian War, and Anglo-Zulu War. But there was a noticeable lack of the sort of European, continent-wide war that always seemed to repeat itself over the decades. Technology advanced as it always had. The range, power, and versatility of artillery developed exponentially. Railroads and telegraph lines rapidly increased the speed with which orders, troops, and supplies could be transported on a tactical and strategic scale. Advanced rifles and machine guns multiplied the number of men that could be killed by a factor of fifty or more. Naval ships now bore 16-inch cannons and could fire accurately from miles away. There was no trial run for any of ...