During the last 500 years, which have made the modern world what it is: Wars or Ideas

Well, university is now over for me:D except for exams:(.

Today I had my last day of history class and since we didn't have a final exam:cool: (we've done four essays each worth 25%) we did something different.

So in lieu of a lecture or an explanation about a non-existent exam, our Prof decided to have an in class discussion by applying all that we'd learned or knew over the course.

The course was European history 16th to 20th century. The question the teacher put to the class was this: which has had the bigger influence on making the world what it is today, wars or ideas (reformation, renaissance, enlightenment, industrial revolution, etc)?

As someone who prefers history before the pre 19th century history, I prefer to rely on ideas being the bigger influence, but the other group brought up good points on the influence of World War I on destroying much of the old order.

So AH.com, since my classes discussion went cyclical, what are your opinions. War, or Ideas?
 
It sounds like the chicken and egg arguement, but I would have to say that the fount of wars and the modern world is ideas. It is ideas that spark movements that fire wars and have lasting impacts long after wars have ceased.
 
The borders, over which the wars was fought, don't appear to matter much. At least in Europe. Hence ideas. Especially if one consider every invention a result of ideas.
 
Ideas without a doubt. Ideals reflect the changes in society, which then create the conditions for war. For instance, the wars around the Reformation. Luther was not affected by war, but his ideas certainly found fertile ground in Europe and set off a century and a half of conflict.
 
Wars are fairly trivial, historically speaking, once you look beyond the scope of a generation or two. We tend to focus on them because they are big, ostentatious kaboom events and at the level of the individual, they are hugely important (nothing much may change for your country going through a war, but as any veteran will tell you,nothing is the same after you have been through a war).

Ideas, on the other hand, are an incredibly wriggly, squiggly concept to pin down.

I would argue that if you take an inclusive definition of 'ideas' (one that embraces inventions and technological processes, habits of mind, conceptions of space, time, law, proper social order etc. below the reflected horizon), it is ideas. If you take ideas in the narrower sense of formulated theoretical philosophical tenets, it is a touch harder because while you haven't added much to the realm of war, a lot of what you would otherwise have attributed to ideas now ends up ascribed to neither realm.

Ultimatly, of course, it's a pretty pointless question. What made the Napoleonic Wars transformative? Not least, nationalism. What made nationalism successful? Not least, the Napoleonic Wars. What made both possible? Advancing technology, spreading literacy, stronger habits of social discipline and emerging nation state administrations. I don't see any way of prising this apart into a neat stack of 'war' and 'idea' even if you are allowed a 'none of the above' box.
 

Thande

Donor
Both, and the two feed off each other. Without WW1, for example, communism would just be an abstract construct - the war was needed to allow the revolution in Russia to succeed - but equally without other ideological ideas WW2 would not have happened, or at least not happened the same way it did. Trying to say one or the other is like asking whether plants need sunlight OR water to photosynthesise.
 

Deleted member 1487

Both, and the two feed off each other. Without WW1, for example, communism would just be an abstract construct - the war was needed to allow the revolution in Russia to succeed - but equally without other ideological ideas WW2 would not have happened, or at least not happened the same way it did. Trying to say one or the other is like asking whether plants need sunlight OR water to photosynthesise.


Damn you Thande!!!!! I was just about to articulate the exact same thing! As a consolation, I will throw out there that the Renaissance was partly borne out of the rediscovery of literature in the middle east during the crusades, which goes to show that wars can help create ideas/movements and the inverse is just as obviously true too.
 
You have to look at the historical periods. From 1589 to 1913 (particularly the last 140+ years), it would be easy to argue ideas over war. But that period was rather unique in human history, in that a small number of countries with maritime prowess and state-of-the-art weaponry enjoyed a bounty of less developed regions to colonize.

The economic downturn between the world wars was aggravated because the new world had "filled up" and the American frontier was no longer open for those who needed to pursue new opportunities from Europe or the eastern US.
 
Both, and the two feed off each other. Without WW1, for example, communism would just be an abstract construct - the war was needed to allow the revolution in Russia to succeed - but equally without other ideological ideas WW2 would not have happened, or at least not happened the same way it did. Trying to say one or the other is like asking whether plants need sunlight OR water to photosynthesise.
Something like that...ideas that spark wars are the ones that are important; an idea that isn't worth fighting over isn't worth the ink it's written with...wars that are fought for reasons other than grand ideas are usually pretty pointless.
 
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