Europe’s Hundred-Year War – Study by Ferenc Glatz on WW I.
March 10, 2015
“Europe’s Hundred Year War. Questions to Spark Discussion” is the title of a study by Ferenc Glatz published in the volume based on the contributions to the conference commemorating the centennial of the outbreak of the Great War. Glatz condensed his perception on the war in three theses: (1) He refers to Europe’s hundred-year war which in his view is further subdivided into four phases; (2) In the aftermath of the Great War, there evolved the setting up of a new “world order” or a regulated “world governance”. (3) A better understanding and proper assessment of WW I. requires that it is placed in the broader setting of four contemporary factors prevalent in Europe (the world) in the period 1850–2013.
The four theses of Glatz are as follows:
First Thesis: The first phase of the hundred-year (1914–1919) was waged explicitly for reasons of establishing control over territory and spheres of influence. The second phase of the Great War (1939–1945) had as its initial goal to correct the Versailles system of nation-states and the state borders (1938) and later (1939) to erode the supremacy of the Atlantic World, as well as to implement what the national socialists envisioned as the “New Europe” programme. The third phase (1947–1989), for which he uses the common term Cold War, was ideological in nature from the outset––a clash between liberal capitalism and communism––, and was in fact extended to the global stage. The fourth phase (1990–2013) and was again a period of both armed conflict and territorial reorganisation, witnessing from 1991 onwards further erosion to the order of the 1919–1920 peace treaties. This process was completed in Europe with the end of the development of the nation-state system, the creation of the European Union (1992) and its later expansion into north-eastern Europe and the Carpathian Basin (2004) and into the Western Balkans (2007 and 2013).
Second thesis: In the wake of Europe’s Great War, we see the formation of a new “world order”, i. e. the establishment of a regulated “world governance”. Europe’s Great War and the establishment of the “new world order” cohere to the same process of developing a territorial organisational system – establishing and exceeding nation states (1920). The League of Nations has not ceased to develop further (1945, UN), while its “final destination” is envisioned in the establishment of a world state.
Third thesis: There are four key European (global) factors rooted in the period between 1850 and 2013 which contribute to a better understanding and assessment of Europe’s Great War. These four factors of the age are the following: (1) the nearly 200-year-long history of the development of the European nation-states; (2) the unfolding of the Industrial (Scientific) Revolution in Europe and its later global expansion; (3) the emancipation of the eastern and southern continents (i. e. the world beyond the settlement area of the white people) and the unfolding of a global symbiosis of human culture; and (4) the change in the Earth (Gaia) as a habitat in the past 170 years: the conceptual change based on the perceptions on the Earth’s position in space, the measurable level of climate change and the fear of facing the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources (energy sources, land, water and air).
The centennial commemoration is according to Ferenc Glatz a due occasion for turning attention of academic history writing on universal history, the growing demand on new thematic choices and genres as well as new perspectives (anthropology, psychology, decision theory).