The Origins of the Two `World Wars
Historical Discourse and International Politics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10076503 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David S Reynolds (0000-0002-5461-3166, United Church of Christ, corresponding author), David Reynolds (0000-0001-8275-5543, Christ's Church College, Cambridge) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 29-44 |
| Publication date | 2003-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022009403038001962 |
| OpenAlex | W2160225282 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
War is the most wrenching of all political transitions. From peace to war and from war to peace this double movement can have vast geopolitical, ideological and social consequences. The labels we apply to such transitions are as important as the events themselves. Sometimes these concepts are developed retrospectively; often they are taken from the vocabulary of the time. But the labels are rarely neutral, either in their political bias or their analytical implications. Although as historians we now live in an Age of Discourse, scholars have been selective about the concepts they choose to scrutinize as historical artifacts. One major blind spot is the two 'world wars'. It is now almost impossible to imagine the twentieth century without the categories of 'the first world war' and 'the second world war'. Together they define the first half of the century with 'pre-war' and 'inter-war' eras as punctuation marks. They also conjure up the ultimate horror world war three lurid imaginings of which helped to prevent the Cold War from turning hot. Yet, use of the term 'world war' for these conflicts was by no means axiomatic. While some countries applied this label to the war of 1914-18, others did not. Something like consensus only developed in the 1940s. In conceptual terms, therefore, it took the 'second world war' to create the first. But use of the latter term was by no means a foregone conclusion. As we shall see, only in 1948 did the British government formally decide that the country had just been fighting the 'second world war'. Other major belligerents, notably the Soviet Union, China and Japan, continued to use quite different language. To a large extent, the discourse of world war was a German and American construction foreshadowed in their conflict of 1917-18 and its aftermath, and then confirmed in the ideological struggle between Roosevelt and Hitler in 1939-41. As such, it may be understood as both product and procreator of globalization. These terminological issues have attracted surprisingly little attention from scholars. Most histories of the two great conflicts usually take their titles for granted.1 In this short article I can only be suggestive raising questions
Geopolitics · Ideology · Interwar period · Just war theory · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · World War II · History · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Military History and Strategy · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact
| Citations per year | 0.24 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2005 - 2020 (16) |
| Highly cited | No |