WI: The 1910s without the Great War

Assuming a period of normality, and not cheating and having an alternate World War, how would the decade of the 1910s have progressed had there not been a Great War? Included in that is the idea of the 1920s in this world, and subsequent history.
 
Progress would have depended on who you were & where you stood in the decade. As in any decade there were losers and winners.

The Aurtro Hungarian Empire was undergoing fresh ethnic tensions as the agricultural labor migrated to the urban centers looking for work. I remember my European studies professor reading bits describing the angst of German middle class in a Bohemian city as low wage 'slavs' replaced them as the majority.

Britains Empire was reaching equilibrium in growth, industrial efficiency, asking dominance, ect... Maybe it could have revigorized all that, but the changes, as before, would have been disruptive & painful.

Imperial Germany was on its way to marginalizing the aristocracy & possible liberal middle class dominance. Socialist growth was fueled by the shift of low wage agricultural workers to urban centers.
 
An Easter Rising analogue might have been avoided without the First World War, with Home Rule being implemented unimpeded.
Might see Ireland remaining in the UK, or at least less bad blood when they go independent.
 
It's interesting that there have been a number of speculations that Nation X was headed for violent internal conflict (usually of a labor-management or Left-Right kind, but sometimes on ethnic-religious lines, as in Ulster) if the Great War hadn't broken out. George Dangerfield famously made this his thesis for the UK in *The Strange Death of Liberal England* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strange_Death_of_Liberal_England and Soviet historians--noting a great increase in the number of political strikes in the years just before the war--argued that Russia was ripe for another revolution in 1914. (Some non-Soviet historians, without going so far, have agreed that Russia was becoming dangerously unstable by 1914; see Leo Haimson's article "The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917" in the *Slavic Review* of December 1964 and March 1965, which I mention at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/386068f3c94872d4 )

I would not be surprised if there were similar speculations for Germany, but I am not sufficiently familiar with German historiography to know which if any German historians have made them, and just what their arguments were.

Very likely much of this kind of speculation is overblown. Strike waves do not usually lead to revolution, and historians like Richard Pipes and Robert B. McKean have rejected the notion that the 1914 St. Petersburg general strike would have been the threshold to revolution if the War had not interfered. And I doubt that many historians would be as apocalyptic about the UK's prospects for violence in 1914 as Dangerfield was. But we really should remember that 1914 before the assassination of the Archduke was not the "never such innocence" paradise so many people have seen in retrospect--it was, even apart from the danger of a World War, a tense era.
 
There would still have been a few local squabbles in the Balkans. Greeks, Bulgars, Serbs all had competing ambitions. And probably a carve up of Turkey when it tried to massacre the Armenians. History of China very different as Western Powers relatively united and didn't take their eyes off the ball due to distractions in Europe. Yuan Shikai probably doesn't dare/isn't allowed to overthrow the Emperor. And Tsar Nicholas was running out of luck, major disruptions in Russia were more or less inevitable. Irish Home Rule was never going to go smoothly. Best options, four county exclusion or an Ulster rebellion. Jaures probably not assassinated in France. Count Sturgkh quite likely to still get assassinated by some socialist or anarchist and the assassination much more of an international cause celebre than it was OTL with the war on.
 
Without war:
1) business can focus on consumer goods
2) millions more people alive
3) increase in and use and faster development of automobile / agricultural tractors
4) increase in OTL development of colonies (i.e Germany would have extended a railway all the way to lake Chad)
5) increase in leftist/socialist trends with out the forced patriotism of war (however no communist revolution)
6) faster implementation of air conditioning
7) Completion of Baghdad railway
8) The religion of Christianity around the globe increases, no cynicism of war, increased charitable giving for missionaries
9) Likely split of Portuguese colonies, which should keep German expansionists busy ingesting that for a while
 
My first remarks only considered the years 1914-1922. Looking over a slightly longer term, to 1940. A massive economic adjust will still occur in the 1920s & 1930s. Areas of critical economic growth of the previous fifty years were matured and no longer the source of high growth/high return. Coal energy, railroads, early generation steam ships, & other steam technology for mechanical power. The industrial models of the 19th Century were on the verge of being replaced as large scale investment targets by new technologies. Whenever this occurs there is considerable economic dislocation as people fail to adjust to the new order and lose wealth.

This of course affects labor. Skilled and semi skilled agricultural labor becomes surplus & the trend was to move to the urban centers where they were instantly converted to unskilled low wealth labor. Britain and France were far along in this trend & had reached some equilibrium and ability to accommodate remaining migration to urban centers/jobs. Germany, other Central Europe nations, and the US did not hit the peak of this labor conversion until later in the 20th Century. Some demographics data places it in the 1920s for the US, and possibly Germany.

The fragmented & relatively inefficient banking model of the 19th Century was well past its expiration date. The US had adopted a similar model to the British centralized banking system, & other economies were moving in that direction. However banking was still too dominated by elderly men who were clinging to practice and investment strategies more appropriate to 1890 or 1860.

The Great War aggravated the conditions of the Great Depression, but did not cause it in any way. That particular train wreck was pretty much inevitable. precisely how it might play out ATL I'll not try to predict. Suffice to say that sometime between 1920 & 1940 there is going to be a period of 'economic voltility', and some extended years of low wages and general misery.
 
The Great War aggravated the conditions of the Great Depression, but did not cause it in any way. That particular train wreck was pretty much inevitable. precisely how it might play out ATL I'll not try to predict. Suffice to say that sometime between 1920 & 1940 there is going to be a period of 'economic voltility', and some extended years of low wages and general misery.

You would think there would at least be some diversification that Europe is not all shot up and you could have strong German or French or British economies to offset what every messed up thing happens in the USA or elsewhere. Perhaps with air conditioning and anti malaria drugs you do start getting significant emigration to African and Asian colonies you didn't have before with actual export markets being created (or even along the Baghdad railway). Maybe you could actually create stronger automobile and electronics (consumer radios), i.e higher tech and wage industrial sectors to satisfy a larger consumer market. There is millions of people alive that need stuff that didn't before. And even though there is war, nobody is disarming so maybe, military tech and spending will be significant.

Still I see what you are saying. There is always a contraction. And work force adjustments will have to occur.
 
From what I've accumulated on this era it appears there were a larger number of technologies or industries maturing & new taking over in this changeover than in previous. A greater concentration if you will, in a relatively short time. That the rural>urban migration peaked at this point in key nations added to the 'distubance'. I'm still unsure exactly what was going on in banking, other than so many bank managers/owners in the US were badly prepared for what happened.
 
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