Let’s say the European powers enter into some form of Detente in the early 1900s that miraculously leads to democratization and avoids both World Wars.
How does the world look different at the turn of the millennium?
Does Europe still have their colonial empires? Is technology more or less advanced? How do global demographics look?
I don't think it was unlikely. All that would need to have changed would have been for German Emperor Frederick III to have lived for another twenty years, and liberalized his country along the lines of Britain (his wife was Queen Victoria's oldest daughter, and he greatly admired Britain). This was pretty much what he wanted to do, though success was hardly a sure thing. He certainly wouldn't have been as aggressive and clumsy in his foreign policy as his son was.
I don't know if any of the colonies would still exist today, but they would certainly have lasted longer. It would also have been less traumatic; in particular, the horrible Bengal Famine of 1943 would probably not have happened, so Indian independence would likely have happened later and more peacefully, and with less economic disruption. One near certainty is that Europe would have remained at the forefront of science and industry far longer, instead of having that leadership abruply transferred to the USA in the WWII years.
This is impossible with the conditions that you've set. You're not taking the mindset of the time period into account.
Prior to the World Wars, there was a romanticized notion that war is where boys become men in a good and glorious exercise. War only really transformed into a necessary evil and a last resort after multiple generations were traumatized by bloody massacres, machine guns, a side of WMDs, and the exposure of fascist war crimes.
That plus colonial empires means that some sort of flashpoint will explode.
To be fair a good deal was done to avoid WWII. All the wrong things mind you, but the trauma of the Great War drove democratic governments to excessive tolerance of Germany after Hitler formed a government.
World War II as we know it could only really be avoided with a successful SPD.
If they were able to cut a deal for unemployment insurance and public works, the Weimar Republic could have survived.
Alternatively, Britain could back up France in 1935, allowing the latter to oppose Germany retaking the Rhineland.
I dont think ww1 alone was enough to push europe out of its existing militaristic mindset though, so maybe if we avoided ww2 then a different ww2 still would have happened sooner or later
You literally had people like Lord Halifax fomenting cabinet crises even after the war had started.
Unlikely maybe, I disagree that’s it’s impossible, the concert of Europe shows that Europe did value maintaining relative peace among the great powers.
I think it’s definitely within the range of plausibility that Europeans come together and agree to keep war fighting out of Europe proper at least to avoid the instability it would cause.
Europe did not value peace, they valued the balance of power.
Bismarck, the master of European diplomacy, used war as a tool still to get what he needed.
War before ww1 was a limited affair where people die, but ultimately most come out a real man. It was still an intrinsic part of diplomacy. With this kind of mindset, the world wars were eventually bound to happen when population growth , industrialization and technological advancement would ultimately transform how wars are fought, and viewed.
I've wondered about this. I think colonialism will last longer. In some cases more Europeans will become colonists. It opens the possibility of the holocaust happening outside of Europe. Some colonies will break away, but at much higher cost in blood.
America would be poorer, as it wouldn't have the same access to world resources. Japan will have the opportunity of acting as liberator, if it doesn't get bogged down in China.
You may want to know that, outside the West, people don't think of Holocaust as the "big bad".
In the non-Western world's perspective, even in this time, many believe they've been getting "Holocausted" for centuries by imperialism. "Imperialism/colonialism" is to the East what Holocaust is to the West.
Hundo-p!
Britain killed over 3 million people in South Asia during WW2—and they weren't even at war!
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas—a bunch of whom were eradicated so thoroughly we don't even know their _names_—would also beg to differ with the Eurocentrism of the WW2 discourse
As I recall, the biggest body count due to mass murder, whether direct or in direct, were Mao, then Stalin, then Hitler. Unless you're talking percentages of the population, in which case Pol Pot wins. For my money, Montezuma & Genghiz Khan win the prizes for out & out evil brutality.
I'm not denying the crimes of the west and I'm not saying you should either. However I do think this idea that the west is a plague on humanity is dishonesty on the same level as the White Man's Burden rubbish Europeans used to tell themselves. It's the same fairy tale, just in reverse, and I'm certainly not going to waste time on it.
Do you really not know about the many, many ethnic cleansings and/or genocides around the world during the centuries of colonialism? Are you just ignorant or are you British?
Yes I do. I also know about the many crimes against humanity that have been committed the didn't involve westerners. Unlike you, I think those are just as bad.
In any case I did say I won't waste time on this and I did mean it. If you insist on having the last word, knock yourself out, but you will probably be talking to yourself.
The scenario is utopian, and I'd point out that we'd need to try harder to make this work; a series of deals that see France allow Germany to unify in exchange for Germany agreeing that Alsalce Lorraine is French, and similar deals with Italy over something like Trieste could give enough goodwill that Europe isn't filled with vendettas and ambitions that demand war.
Europe really can't prosper in peace. Austria Hungary doesn't have that long to live, and the Ottoman Empire has already undergone at least one collapse in 1910. Still, the frameworks for Germany and Italy could be extended to Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia and perhaps Armenia and Kurdistan.
We'd see a lot of the mechanics at work in this world; Young nations would frequently and deliberately try to arrange VIP Marriages to win supports for their countries. In this sort of framework, Ireland is also bent into a well married, forgiving but somewhat proud new nation. This sort of behavior even influences the USA, who has an interesting tally of Cuban, Mexican and Filipino brides. There's no Woodrow Wilson administration, and Latin America grows over this benign streak.
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Still, even if this setup is peaceful into the 1920s, Russia has serious problems that she can barely keep on top of. Without WWI, she can dedicate the resources to maintain order, but Finland, Poland, and many others want out. This could be a slow burn, particularly as the Ottomans and Austrians going down will happen first, but it will not be ignored that nations worked out how to get eight new nations in Europe without war and in increasing prosperity. Why can't the Poles have a country?
Much of Europe would disagree with Russia on this. Poland could become, like the others, a proud but humble nation that never threatens war. But Russia is too backward and too repressive to seriously consider this sort of compromise. It's also worth considering that another nation watches Russia's failure to play along with growing interest: Japan is flat out going to colonize given the chance, but the entire avenue of expansion of IRL is not acceptable--China is weak, her warlords flippable, but Japan would face an unbeatable coalition if she tried IRL's behavior of attempting to eat China, so instead, the game is well slower, with Manchuria being a zone of Japanese 'Interest'.
We would probably not have a WW2, so much as Russia's collapse becomes the confused breakdown of the prior decades. Russia will not accept Polish and Ukrainian Marriages and Concessions for independence, this will mean war, and the list of peoples that want out of Russia is considerable. Throw in that Japan will try some kind of massive landgrab, and Russia faces a test of survival, while subject peoples begin an independence struggle or, perhaps, accept switching to Japan's henchmen.
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Weapons technology is perhaps 25 years behind IRL, but domestic tech is 25 years ahead. This is a very dovish timeline, albeit one where we don't have a European Union so much as we have a Super Hapsburg Family Dynamic: "Grandma says lets build a space station". And the United States, after prolonged hibernation, finally decides to pass universal health care. Because, seriously, why not?
Japan forms the Asian something Sphere, while raping Korean woman and murdering Chinese civilians.
No idea why Japan would democratize
How did Europe handle German being treated as a unwanted child despite suddenly becoming a regional and global power. They just all decided to change course, let go of the old status quo, power, influence and economic advantages they had?
Europe would be drastically different demographically. Neutral countries such as Netherlands and Denmark grew their populations by 2.7-3x over the twentieth century, the major European countries on the other hand stagnated. As a simple counterfactual, German population in 1900 was roughly 56 million, in 2000 it was roughly 82 million, if it instead followed the Dutch trend its population would be around 168 million. Of course a lot of it will immigrate off to the US, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil, but by present day the German population would be around 130-140 million. Similarly Mendeleev projected the Russian population to be 600 million by 2000. Of course there would still be some upheaval, and of course demographic transition still kicks in, but it isn't inconceivable to have a Russian population of around 500 million by 2025. Countries such as Hungary (which saw one of the biggest cataclysms) with a population of ~9 million today could be behemoths with 50 million people.
Colonialism is probably not going away, tiny Portugal held on to its colonies alone against the entire world, a France with 75 million people and without the trauma of the world wars could easily keep its colonies to the present day. China would probably never become a world power, this is a world where Belgium and Hungary have much higher diplomatic weight than China.
I've actually been exploring an alternate history scenario where WW1 is really "over by christmas" (although the POD goes all the way back to Joseph Chamberlain having an earlier stroke), where I've been thinking about all the little and big differences that such a timeline would have. For instance - computers are developed by the insurance industry for making actuarial tables (which needs 100% perfect reliability), not the military industry for code-breaking and calculating artillery strikes (which need speed, as a 100% accurate result is useless if it's one day late and the enemy has moved), so the more reliable electro-mechanical paradigm is perfected (early pure electronic vacuum tube computers were notoriously unreliable, you needed an army of technicians to run around replacing bulbs), which becomes more advanced and reliable over time, by 1990s you have standard closet sized commercial electro-mechanicals that do the function that OTL IBM mainframes did. Interestingly transistor technology still develops parallelly, but it is to make radios and later radiophones (mobile phones). Only later over the 90s and 2000s the two paradigms are merged.
Humans are the most violent species.wars have been there throughout our history
Russia gets industrialized, which it was doing at a breakneck speed before ww1 and what made germans fear. As russia has much greater population, if it gets on par with other powers tech-wise, it will steamroll germany and do the ussr-style eastern block satelites, but without communism it doesn't get poor and inefficient and goes on painting map paradox style. Maybe, we get to Orwell's 1984-esque world where we have naval British-american alliens, continental russian holdings, and japan-lead asia that lives in a weird balance.
No world wars -better world in every way. No Communism, Fascism, overhasty decolonisation or loss of the best of a generation
A bunch of stuff takes longer to happen without the wartime needs for it. Rockets, radar, and unfortunately medical stuff we learnt because of psychos and sadists having humans to experiment on.
One important thing to remember is that in Germany, for example, democratization happens largely due to war and revolution. Universal male suffrage was the extent of democracy in Imperial Germany, but Kaiser Wilhelm II was aiming to return to a more autocratic monarchy. The War bringing out total warfare made more of the civilian population feel it, women’s economic emancipation as they made up for the loss of labor power when men were conscripted, and the unpopularity of the war bringing the SPD further into power were necessary for democratic rule to be brought to Germany. Many of these things may have happened under the Kaiser, but they couldn’t have been fully realized without the revolution of 1918-19.
It’s also wrong to think of Weimar as a failing democracy until the late 20s. The other western powers realized Germany was struggling to repay their reparations, and while French occupation of the Rhineland was a major contribution to German nationalism, conservative chancellors also intentionally denied assistance and wanted autarky. It’s this that pushes Germany further down the path to economic ruin after their recovery post 1923. Furthermore, President Hindenburg refusal to create a coalition with the SPD allowed the Nazis to rise in support due to worsening economics and hatred of the republic. Along with the fact that he communists in Germany had been openly fighting for Bolshevik style revolution, creating a culture of antisemitic “red” fear. The Nazis had less than 40% even during their best performance under Weimar, but much of this was gained post 1930 when the depression had already hit. Between economic woes, communist fear, and an obsession with a conservative government at all costs led to the Nazis, not global pressure from outside Germany. They actively rejected multiple attempts from other countries to help economic recovery.
Instead of a narrative form, I'll use bullets for ease.
1) Decolonization would still happen as more and more populations gain the education to build stronger identities and ideologies, but with a chance that it wouldn't have happened as fast or as completely as it did in our timeline.
2) The social and political fabric out entire civilization is built on would look different in ways you can't really predict with any accuracy because the liberal global order we all grew up under in the west is built on the founding mythology of WWII and the fight against racial hyper nationalism. The desperate need to abandon ethnic and national identities, the feeling of obligation to take in and/or assist "oppressed" or "marginalized" groups, none of that would have the grip it has today.
3) Would be regular, small wars and proxy wars of colonial power vs colonial power, and colonizer vs colonized.
4) much smaller chance of a global communist movement taking hold
It's really just way to big a question, everything you see in the west and much of the east is a trauma response to the world wars
Civil Rights never happen anywhere because Scientific Racism is never discarded as a theory.
This could not happen unless communist revolutions occured before the outbreak of war and prevented it. The problem is that capitalism has to continually grow until it can't grow anymore. All the markets of the countries of WW1 were exhausted. They had skirted war only by expanding into Africa and Asia, and by the 1910s space had run out. War was inevitable to maintain growth. When they can't expand peacefully, they expand violently.
I'm sorry for rejecting the premise, but there's no scenario other than international proletarian revolution that would prevent ww1's outbreak.
Worth noting that colonialism could only be considered peaceful compared to WW1. I get what you meant but damn near all countries expand violently.
This is true. Capitalist expansion and domination is violent at every level and at all times, the only thing that shifts is the temperature:
Or rather stay within the premise of question. If the First World War was avoided, by any (un)fathomable combination of events, the result would likely have been international socialist revolution centered around the two industrial poles of Europe: UK and Germany. Does Anglo Capital make the parasite leap to North America a generation earlier, and can it take root without the War fertilizing the American body politic with Sedition fever.