Industrialization: causes, impacts, and global development

Industrialization at the Time of World War One

The First World War is often associated with the line of demarcation between the "pre-modern" and "modern world," but that is probably more attributable to the fact that its outcome determined much of the geographical, political, and national boundaries that exist into the current era. It is also likely related to the tremendous increase in military lethality of the world's first mechanized war. However, most of the technology that was incorporated into warfare for the first time (at least on a large scale) during the so-called "Great War" had already been developed decades before. As always, technological development accelerated greatly during the war. That rapid development also contributed to the perception that the post-war world was much more modern than the pre-war era, especially once many of those accelerated technological progress trickled down to civilian society. In truth, by the time war broke out in 1914, the most dramatic changes that we associate with the modern world were already well underway.

Prewar Development of Infrastructure and Transportation:

One of the most significant inventions of the late nineteenth century was the development of better building materials such as steel, (and Bessemer steel in particular) that made possible the first large modern manmade structures including some of this nation's most distinctive bridges and the first so-called "skyscrapers" that still stand in New York City. Similarly, shipbuilding had already progressed to the point that powerful steel-covered dreadnoughts could project national military might across the globe. Meanwhile, passenger liners routinely crisscrossed some of the largest bodies of water on the planet and revolutionized international industrial trade on a scale that was more similar to current international trade than to any previous eras in human history.

Railroads had already opened up interstate travel in a way that was never possible by horseback, or for that matter, by rail until the modernization of the American railroad system shortly before the turn of the twentieth century. Automobiles had already been in production in several countries for at least a decade before 1914 and Henry Ford had already revolutionized industrial production methods in that industry that were immediately incorporated into the wartime production efforts on both sides of the Atlantic in connection with arms and munitions production. The rapid development of aviation technology during the war also contributed to the perception that the modern era began with World War I, but the basic technology had also been invented a decade earlier and would have continued to evolve on its own, although less rapidly than in wartime.

Communications Media and Energy:

By 1914, the telegraph had already shortened the time that news took to travel across the globe from weeks to minutes, and telephones were already in existence, although not yet widely available to most. Photography was invented a half century earlier and by 1914, moving pictures recorded permanent records of modern society, including more than four years of the most influential war in human history at that time.

Coal, steam, and oil power were already in wide-scale use throughout modern industry and transportation, but by 1914, electricity was also becoming more and more available to ordinary citizens, as were indoor plumbing and municipal services such as sanitation, mass transportation in the cities, and police agencies.