Some political systems were considered a belle époque because of the prosperous life that attracted those with a bountiful supply of money. However, others were not considered a belle époque because there were areas of the world that were impending an actual revolution. Most places entered into the world war. Some, like the Ottoman empire, only experienced one episode of the war in a series of military conflicts. The world war in Russia was the product of the insolubility of the problems of domestic politics. In places like Mexico, China, and Iran, the war played no important or significant role. Why did the world war not play a role in some areas, but play a major role in others?
Western bourgeois societies were also being drawn into the global revolutionary upheavals. The bourgeois century took on a beginning. It destabilized its periphery in a few different ways.
1. It undermined the old structures of its economies and the balance of its societies.
2. It destroyed the viability of it established political regimes and institutions.
The first effect of these accounts for the difference in historical impact between the Russian and Chinese revolutions and the Persian and the Turkish. The second impact was more visible because the area consisted of a bunch of ancient empires. Many thought these ancient empires would decline, which many like China, Persia, and The Ottoman Empire did.
WWI affecting some countries and not others is based on their geographical location as well as their polictical connections with the core countries in the war.
ReplyDeleteI.e., Mexico is far away from Europe geographically as well as far away politically as there were not that many entangling relationships between Mexico and other countries. Latin America became a hot spot for competition and problems later though [e.g. Cold War - Cuban Missile Crisis]