This year is the centenary not just of the outbreak of the First World War, but of the dawn of a new paradigm of war.
Previous wars had been limited in two senses. Many -like the Crimean or the Franco-Prussian Wars -had been carefully managed ‘cabinet wars’, limited in time and space by tightly defined objectives.
Others -like the Napoleonic or the American Civil Wars -might have outgrown their origins and taken on a life of their own, but only ever involved a minority of society, mainly younger men enrolled in fighting forces.
But 1914 broke the mould. It placed the productive power of the Industrial Revolution at the service of national, imperial, and economic rivalries. It mobilised destructive power unprecedented in history, and sucked entire societies into the vortex of war. It unleashed processes of violent change that none could control.
This is our world -a world shaped and reshaped by a century of modern industrialised warfare. 1914 represents the true beginning of modernity.
This month we begin our in-depth coverage of the First World War with an analysis of the only terrorist attack that matches 9/11 in historic significance: the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.
Also this issue, we mark the publication of MHM contributor Nick Hewitt’s new book The Kaiser’s Pirates with an article on Imperial Germany’s maritime guerrilla war in 1914/1915, while David Porter analyses anti-tank tactics during the Second World War, Robbie MacNiven asks whether Montrose was Scotland’s greatest general, and Brian Burfield looks at the role of disease as Medieval warfare’s ‘deadliest enemy’.