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Ww1 Historical Analysis

Decent Essays

The Interpretation of World War One from the 1920’s to the Present
The interpretation of history has changed based on differences such as the time and place of the person who is recording it. These two similar texts being compared are separated by the date the book was written. The older book was written in 1921, by Ferdinand Schevill, and is titled "A Political History of Modern Europe from the Reformation to the Present Day”. The second book, was written in 2007 by Lynn Hunt, is titled “The making of the West: Peoples and Cultures”. In both of these textbooks the history of World War I is discussed, but the way the history is interpreted shows a large quantity of differences. When comparing these two pieces, Schevill’s book appears to …show more content…

This growth in population leads to the idea of marriage reformation. “Reformers thought that improving both the quality of children born and the conditions within marriage would solve the population problem” (Hunt 766). Since populations were becoming too large, many people believed in eugenics, defined as “a set of ideas about the importance of producing superior people through selective breeding and of preventing the disabled and others deemed inferior from polluting one’s nation or race” (Hunt 767). These reformation ideas leads to improved marriage laws throughout Europe. Countries legalized divorce, and Sweden even made men’s and women's control over property equal. Hunt’s text focuses on the social and cultural issues that lead up to 1914, when the war erupts. Schevill’s text takes a different route into the road to the start of the First World War.
In Schevill’s textbook, there is no focus on the social and cultural issues of the Europeans, but instead a focus on diplomatic issues. Schevill titled this chapter leading up to World War I “European Diplomatic Relations from 1871 to 1914”. Schevill gives a detailed look into the European treaties and alliances that would cause the outbreak of the war. One of the important topics discussed leading up to World War One in this text is the European alliances. The text refers to these as the triple and dual

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