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2 results

  • 11 - Epilogue

  • from Part II - Towards a World of Unlimited Possibilities
  • Peter J. Bowler, Queen's University Belfast
  • Book:
    Progress Unchained
    Published online:
    11 February 2021
    Print publication:
    04 March 2021, pp 267-272

  • Summary

    Thinkers opposed to the increased dominance of technological progress have continued to express a fear that the result will be disaster or dehumanization. Their opposition to the utilitarian reconfiguration of the idea of progress has been all the more effective because even the technophiles cannot agree on which innovations will gain control of society or on what the results will be. In the absence of a clear-cut goal which progress is supposed to achieve, it is always possible to disagree about the benefits and dangers of what is being developed. As other cultures take up the focus on technological innovation, it is no longer clear that the West will shape the future. Diversity and innovation remain the key factors, just as the Darwinian perspective on progress would imply.

  • 8 - The Western Front

  • from Part II - Theatres of War
  • Edited by Jay Winter, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the First World War
    Published online:
    05 December 2013
    Print publication:
    09 January 2014, pp 204-233

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the long-term and deeper causes of what is called the primordial catastrophe of the twentieth century. It is also concerned with the moods and mentalities and the bearing that these had on the outbreak of war in 1914. The chapter commences with the origins of the First World War. To grasp the highly dynamic developments that the societies of Europe underwent in the three or four decades before 1914, the impact of industrialisation, demography and urbanisation is considered as major background factors. The chapter also discusses social imperialism, electoral politics, cultural optimism, cultural pessimism and the preventive war in 1914. There are two key documents that date from the spring of 1914 after the international and domestic situation in Germany and Austria-Hungary had deteriorated further in 1913. Finally, the chapter talks about the key to understanding what happened in Europe in July and August 1914.