It’s completely reasonable to say that we only know the upshot of events after we see them. Many things are not understood at the time.
But many contemporary understandings are basically correct.
If you do a Google Books search for the phrase “first world war” in the range 1914–1935[0], you’ll find that many people were using it basically as we do. They grasped that Versailles set up another war, and that globalization meant it too would involve all of Europe (i.e., “the world”). We see more now, but they had the basics. We could have that good an understanding of manufacturing.
I’m not trying to refute your point, only to temper it.
Interesting. You get about 7,830 results for First World War there.
Some of these may be spurious - "Psychology of the Great War: The First World War and Its Origins" (new material this edition (C) 1999" - is that the original title?
By contrast, you get About 532,000 result for "great war" which is what I thought it was referred to before there was a need to number the great wars.
Comments
It’s completely reasonable to say that we only know the upshot of events after we see them. Many things are not understood at the time.
But many contemporary understandings are basically correct.
If you do a Google Books search for the phrase “first world war” in the range 1914–1935[0], you’ll find that many people were using it basically as we do. They grasped that Versailles set up another war, and that globalization meant it too would involve all of Europe (i.e., “the world”). We see more now, but they had the basics. We could have that good an understanding of manufacturing.
I’m not trying to refute your point, only to temper it.
0. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22first+world+war%22&btn...
Interesting. You get about 7,830 results for First World War there.
Some of these may be spurious - "Psychology of the Great War: The First World War and Its Origins" (new material this edition (C) 1999" - is that the original title?
By contrast, you get About 532,000 result for "great war" which is what I thought it was referred to before there was a need to number the great wars.