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Imagining Future War, 1871-1914
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By Antulio J. Echevarria II
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f imagination is the ability to conjure images and formulate ideas, then the period before the Great War was one of Western society’s most imaginative. More images and notions about «things to come» appeared in this era than in any earlier one. Indeed, this «futurism», or anticipation of what may come, emerged as a profitable enterprise in the years following 1871. Its popularity was due in part to the so-called Second Industrial Revolution (or Technological Revolution), which made all sorts of marvelous inventions possible.2 Each wave of innovations and curiosities served to fuel the imagination of a society that was growing more literate by the decade. New literary genres emerged and combined with inexpensive modes of publishing, from picture books to penny pamphlets, to bring the future to the present. As a result, the future became both a dystopia and a utopia, a source of anxiety as well as a refuge. This dual sense of anticipation was especially evident with respect to the future of war. Pundits, scholars, businessmen, and military practitioners all attempted to understand what inventions such as the machine gun, the submarine, the dreadnought, the airplane, rapid-firing artillery, the wireless, the motorcar, and chemical munitions might mean for the conduct of war. In this way, the «future of war» and the «war of the future» 1 This chapter is drawn from Antulio J. Echevarria II, Imagining Future War: The West’s Technological Revolution and Visions of Wars to Come, 1880-1914 (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007). 2 Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., eds, Technology in Western Civilization: Technology in the Twentieth Century, vol. 2, (New York: Oxford University, 1967).
