World War I resulted in huge change in governance of the world. By its end the monarchies of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires had been swept away. If you include the Chinese Revolution of 1911 that ended the Ming Dynasty, only the British and Japanese Empires still were ruled by monarchs and royal families.
World War I ended the legitimacy of the divine right to rule others by virtue of noble birth.
Edit: this hasn’t been well received. To sum up: you can’t just say “Monarchy bad. Destruction of monarchy good”. You have to look at consequences and actual effects in the world. All of the countries listed had abjectly horrific 20th centuries. Britain and the western European countries which kept their monarchies objectively had much gentler centuries.
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That did not end very well for virtually any of the countries involved. Only the former Ottoman Empire really escaped any kind of widespread hell.
The former Russian Empire was under a totalitarian system for 70 years. The Austro-Hungarian empire first had to deal with the holocaust and Nazi conquest and then Soviet conquest. The Chinese had to deal with the Great Leap forward and Maoism. And the Germans had Nazism, the Holocaust, and years of turmoil in between the end of the war and the end of WWII. They also had their country split in half and the eastern part made poorer.
The British and Japanese now have a token monarchy. The same applies to most countries that still have one: the monarch is not the source of power.
What exactly was gained? Monarchical power was already on the way out. The French Revolution had clearly undercut the power of monarchs and they did not hold real power by the start of WWI. And abrupt lack of monarchy rather than gradual evolution seems to have led at minimum decades of torment in most of the places you name.
You could make an argument about ending colonialsim but WWII and Japanese conquest Of European colonies did a lot more on that front. WWI expanded several empires.
I guess that it is a matter of counterfactual history whether the Armenian genocide, or something like it, would have occurred if it were not for the disruption of the war.
And the seeds for the recent and ongoing trouble in the Middle East were sown in the division of the former Ottoman Empire immediately after the war, as described in David Fromkin's book, "A Peace to end all Peace." (best history-book title ever!)
Oh thanks. Yes I forgot about the Armenian genocide. Also I suppose the ethnic cleansing of turks in Greece and the Greeks in Turkey. Plus the middle east situation.
a lot of things changed as a consequence. The USA definitely came out on top. A lot of colonies were "liberated". For the most part Europe became democratic (which it clearly wasn’t before)
Are the deaths justified? Of course not. But the world would be very very different.
Its true, basically all of the old European and Eurasian empires were dissolved.
As for democracy, the period between WWI and WWII was quite the opposite with the rise of fascism across Europe.
Modern European democracy largely came later after WWII.
WWI was a net boost to colonialism with European powers given nominal control of the former Ottoman empire; European colonialism was still going strong (and arguably still is) well through the middle of the 20th century.
US influence in Europe was only drastically increased after the implementation of the Marshall Plan after WWII, and obviously only in Western Europe.
It was a classic case of prisoner's dilemma: several powers solving a mini-max problem. What happens if I arm myself, what if I don't? Of course, the thorny question is what happens if I don't arm myself and my neighbor continues arming. But then, after arming and arming and arming for decades, at some point the question becomes what happens if I attack first vs what happens if my neighbor attacks first.
Unfortunately, in all these questions, when you contemplate the best outcome and the worst outcome, in 1914 history did not show any scary examples of really bad outcomes. All involved parties have been involved in various sorts of interborder conflicts where the worst outcome was not truly devastating. Russia had suffered a pretty bad naval defeat at the hands of the Japanese a few years back, France has lost some territories to Germany a few decades back, but all in all, all major European powers had experienced only success in their recent history.
Today, 100 years later, we have different answers to the same questions. Answers that will inevitably include nuclear holocaust. Does this mean we'll never see a major war again? I don't know what the future holds in store. I"m thankful that there was no major war during my lifetime, I can only hope there won't be one during my kids' lifetime.
By every single concrete measure, you're simply mistaken in saying that. In terms of death toll, sheer human misery and displacement, destruction, impoverishment, post-war political catastrophe (the Iron Curtain being just one part of this) and possibly even psychological scarring, World War II was so much worse for Europe than the first War.
If we look at physical infrastructure alone, the vast majority of Europe at the end of the first war was mostly intact. At the end of WWII, even this wasn't the case, whole cities and large parts of the continent's man-made landscape had been shattered into twisted ruins.
I am sincerely curious to see how you would qualify such a statement that WWI was worse for Europe than WWII.
I am with you on the second point; WW2 in Europe was a continuation of WW1, while concurrently there was an Asia-Pacific war starting with Japanese incursions into Korea and Manchuria.
