What was Happening in the World 100 Years Ago in 1914?

Many events in 1914 shaped the lives of people for generations. Some of these events were continuations of a long chain of events, while others were spontaneous game-changers.

• 1914 saw WWI start, killing 37 million and changing political maps for a short time. Then 5% of casualties in wars were civilians. Today it is 75%.
• In 1914 the colonial powers “owned” all of Africa except Ethiopia. Now in 2014 - Side effects of globalization, bad politics with MNCs and dictators keep countless millions in the poverty trap.

Photo source:

• In 1914 Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, was aggressively demanding this and that territory for Germany and challenging Rule Britannia. In 2014, it is China challenging Rule Americana and demanding this and that (300 islands and lots of land from about 20 countries.)  
• Global trade was already very high in 1914. The ratio of world trade to GDP in 1914 was 21% but mostly the imperial powers benefitted. In 2014, it is 32% and still only the superrich benefit most. 
• Stainless steel knives appeared in shops in UK, USA. Called rustless steel, they were not successful and were called “knives that don’t cut”.
• Green beer invented. It became a hit, especially for St Patrick’s day.
• 1^st Non-direct blood transfusion – by a Belgian doctor, Albert Hustin.

Now let’s take a look at what was happening in 1914 all around the world:

Russia:

• Tsar Nicholas II is eager to personally lead Russia into the war. Rasputin warns “If Russia goes to war, it will be the end of the monarchy, of the Romanovs and of Russian institutions.” (Alexandrov, 1966).

Photo source: 

• 175 million people live in the Russian empire in 1914. In 2014, population is 143 million, of which 81% are ethnic Russians.
• The capital St. Petersburg is renamed Petrograd.
• Russia is the world’s largest food exporter. In 100 years Russia drops to 157^th rank globally but Russians are fatter than ever and others.  

• Russia’s foreign debt to GNP ratio was 40% in 1914. In 2013, it is 8.4%, compared to 105.7% of USA.
• Russia ingloriously whacked at the Battle of Tannenberg by Germany. The Second Russian Army (230, 000 soldiers) lose to the Eighth German Army (150,000). Germans move entire army corps by train – precursor to Blitzkrieg. 

Germany

• Adolf Hitler paints The Alter Hof in Munich in watercolour.

Photo source:

China

• President Yuan Shi-k’ai dissolves parliament and local self-governing bodies and provincial assemblies and assumes absolute power.
• Locust plagues in east central China and China joins the Universal Postal Union (the events are not related).
• Peking’s first Western-style theatre (First Stage) opens.
• Sun Yat-Sen forms the Chung-hua Ko-ming-tang to replace the Kuomingtang. Members swear oath of allegiance to him personally (like to Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany).
• Republic of China, Tibet and Britain agree in the Simla Accord that China will not interfere in the administration of Outer Tibet.
• Chinese foreign debt is a mindboggling $835 million = $19.417 trillion in today’s money. Compared to $ 16.440 trillion foreign debt of USA today.
• Chinese population in 1914 is 441 million. Now it is 1.35 billion.

Mexico

• The Mexican Revolution continues. 
• Tampico Affair – USA occupies Veracruz cutting supplies from Germany and Mexico severs diplomatic relations with USA.
• US General Pershing with 5000 soldiers invade Mexico and for 9 months try in vain to capture El Centauro del Norte General Pancho Villa (who felt he was betrayed by USA).

Photo source: 

India

• 315 million people live in India. Now = 1.23 billion.
• Efforts to “civilize” India by Macaulayism continue. "We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.”
• Indian Copyright Regulations come into force. 
• 60% of India ruled directly by Britain and 40% through alliances with native rulers.
• Komagata Maru incident - 340 Sikhs, 12 Hindus and 24 Muslims of Indian origin arrived at Burrard Inlet, Vancouver, Canada on May 23, 1914, from the Indian sub-continent on the ship Komagata Maru (Guru Nanak Jahaz). Racist immigration policy denied entry to 352 passengers and forced to depart. 3.5% of Canada are Indo-Canadians in 2014.
• Hindu-German Conspiracy. Plans for a Pan-Indian rebellion against the British Raj with domestic and foreign help (e.g. German embassy in San Francisco).
• Gandhi leaves South Africa for the last time after achieving his goals there – abolishing the £3 tax (£200 today) and arrears on former indentured labourers and recognition of Indian marriages.

Photo source:

• Famous Indians born in 1914: Field Marshall Manekshaw, Baba Amte, G. P. Sippy, Jyoti Basu, Captain Lakshmi Sahgal.

UK

• In 1914, 44% of global net foreign investment was coming from Britain. France accounted for 20%, Germany 13%.
• The first colour film showed in Britain – TheWorld, the Flesh and the Devil.  
• House of Lords rejects women suffrage. All suffragette prisoners released unconditionally. Women get to vote on equal terms as men in 1928.

France

• Henriette Caillaux, wife of former French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux shoots Gaston Calmette, the editor of Le Figaro because he threatened to publish Caillaux's love letters to her while he was still married to his first wife. Henriette is later acquitted.

Photo source:

• France decimates (executes every tenth soldier) a regiment of its Tunisian soldiers for retreating. 
• Soliciting gay French men during WWI would ask other men “Parlez-vous Allemand?” [Do you speak German?] as homosexuality was associated with Germanness (probably due to the Eulenberg scandal).
• Algerians no longer need travel permits to France. 300,000 men (1/3^rd of Algeria’s male population) were transferred to France for the war efforts. 
• The 1,7 million people of Algerian ancestry are still considered 2ndclass citizens in France. 

Photo source 

                                                                                                

USA

• Federal government is much smaller in 1914, spending 2.7% of GDP or $ 1.005 billion (it spends 20.6% of GDP or $ 3.5 trillion now)
• The world’s first airline St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line opens service with heavier than air aircraft.
• The Ford Motor Company announces a revolutionary 8 hour at $5/ day wages in place of $2.40 for a 9-hour day. Assembly line for Model T introduced.
• Mother’s Day proclamation signed by President Woodrow Wilson.
• Panama Canal opened to ships. 500 workers/mile or 27,609 workers (5600 in the US phase) died in the construction due to Malaria, Yellow Fever, Dysentery, Typhoid and Dengue.
• Opium and Cocaine were still legal. The Harrison Act of 1914 required anyone exporting, manufacturing or distributing them to register with the Federal Government and pay a tax (it was not a prohibition). In 2014, USA is the world’s largest consumer.
• Winston Churchill’s (no relative of the British Chruchill) novel The Inside of The Cup was a great success in USA.

Photo source:

Italy

• Mussolini (Il Duce) denounces orthodox socialism because it did not understand that class distinction had become insignificant compared to national identity and loyalty in WWI. He is promptly expelled from the socialist party.
• Only Vatican and San Marino still remain outside unified Italy.

Photo source:

Norway

• Oscar Mathisen sets 500 m skating world record at 43.7 seconds. In 2014 it is 34.03 by Jeremy Wotherspoon of Canada.     

Photo source: 

       Sweden

• 100 years without previously bellicose Sweden fighting a single war as a nation. But Swedes fight on both sides as volunteers and mercenaries. Lars Gyllenhaal and Lennart Westberg's "Swedes at War: Willing Warriors of a Neutral Nation, 1914-1945" details.

Sources: 
Alexandrov, Viktor. The end of the Romanovs. Translated from the French by William Sutcliffe. 1966. Hutchinsons, London.

What was Happening 100 Years Ago in 1913?

1913 was only a year away from WWI – are we on the brink of a similar catastrophe? Currently we have 12 international and 27 intrastate armed-conflicts going on.

One thing has definitely changed in the past 100 years. In 1913, the West was The World: everywhere else was seen as backward sources of raw materials and ground for exploration/exploitation. In 2013, the West is in decline and many ancient civilizations are recovering to take their rightful places. The world is becoming a multipolar world of Facebook users.

Photo source: 

Many events in 1913 shaped the lives of people for generations. Some of these events were continuations of a long chain of events, while others were spontaneous game-changers.

Let’s take a look at what was happening in 1913 around the world:

Russia:

• The Romanov dynasty is busy celebrating their 300^th anniversary, blissfully unaware that in about 1300 days it’s game over for them. 100 years later, the Russian Orthodox Church sanctifies the Romanov family.

Photo source: 

• Russia has not yet recovered from its dismal performance at 1912 Olympics at Stockholm. 159 competitors (all men) got 0 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze (total 5) medals compared to 9 gold, 8 silver and 9 bronze (total 26 medals) of tiny Finland (under Russia then). It took Russia 40 years to recover and compete in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics (as Soviet Union) bagging 71 medals. In 2012 London Olympics, Russia got 82 medals (24 gold, 26 silver and 32 bronze) while Finland grumbled with 0 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze.

Photo source:

• Russia is the world’s largest food exporter. In 100 years Russia drops to 157^th rank.
• Russia’s foreign debt to GNP ratio was 40% in 1913. It is 8% compared to 105.7% of USA in 2012. 

China

• First elections for the National Assembly held. 4-6% of the population were registered as voters. Kuomintang (the Nationalist) party led by Song Jiaoren won majority. Song was promptly assassinated on March 1913, probably machinated by the president Yuan Shikai, who two years later would become the unpopular and weak Great Emperor of China.
• Yuan Shikai borrows £25 million without parliamentary approval to prepare for civil war against the Kuomintang and nationalizes railroads (some owned by foreign capital). 100 years on USA owes $ 1.3 trillion to China.

Photo source: 

• Chinese foreign debt is a mindboggling $835 million = $19.417 trillion in today’s money. Compared to $ 16.440 trillion foreign debt of USA today.
• Britain agrees to end opium exports from India (which it doesn’t, as opium accounted for about 20% of British India’s revenues). China under Mao finally got rid of this opium addiction.  100 years later Chinese people are very busy getting addicted to other things.

Mexico

• The Mexican Revolution continues. 75 presidents in 55 years since independence (1821) – President Madero and vice president Suárez are assassinated. The Mexican public believe that the president was betrayed with the US ambassador’s help. A tradition is born: Everything that goes wrong is promptly blamed on US involvement.

Photo source:

• Mexico becomes the third largest oil producing country in the world, after USA and Russia. 60% of production is owned by Englishman, Sir Weetman Pearson’s company (Viscount Cowdray). 100 years on Pemex, fully owned by Mexico government, is the world’s second largest non-publicly listed company with a monopoly of gas stations in Mexico.

India

• Rabindranath Tagore (Thakur), the first Asian, gets the Nobel Prize for literature, previously given only to Europeans (no American got it before 1930, Sinclair Lewis). He was awarded this prize as an “Anglo-Indian” (which he definitely wasn’t!). The Nobel committee reasoning: 

• “Tagore has been hailed from various quarters as a new and admirable master of that poetic art which has been a never-failing concomitant of the expansion of British civilisation ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth.” 

Photo source:

• The first Indian 40 minute movie Raja Harshchandra released. In 100 years, the Indian film industry becomes the largest in the world.  

Photo source: 

• IT milestone: The first automatic telephone exchange in Shimla, India with a 700 lines capacity (939 million users in 2012), established. Indians perfect the art of shouting in a loud trunk-call voice when speaking on the telephone.
• Enrolment rate for primary school in 1913 is 2.38% in India compared to 3.77% Russia, 8.94% Sri Lanka, 13.07% Japan. 100 years on the rate is 92% but 25% of teaching positions in India are vacant.
• 0.49% of Indians enrolled in secondary schools compared to 0.32% in France and 0.62% in England. In 2012, the rate is 59% but 57% of Indian college professors lack either a master’s or PhD degree.
• Literacy about 10% (compared to full literacy in Japan) becomes 74.4% in 100 years.

UK

• Half of the entire global stock of foreign direct investment is owned and managed by British entrepreneurs, exploiting natural resources and infrastructure by using small, free-standing rather than fully integrated companies. UK is in the 18^th position by 2010. 
• First nationwide film censor The British Board of Film Censors began operating. Nowadays many older people wish they’d censor more.

Photo source:

• The value of British overseas investments 49% of net national wealth. 100 years on it is 65%.
• Stainless Steel is invented by Harry Brearley in Sheffield. 100 years on, no one can imagine a world without it.
• House of Commons rejects women's right to vote. Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst sentenced to three years of penal servitude for demanding votes for women: Women over 30 would get voting rights only in 1918. In 2011, 400 000 people (half of them women) march for an alternative to the current socio-economic system.

Photo source: 

• The first woman magistrate Miss Emily Dawson appointed in London: Only in 2004, is Britain’s first Asian woman magistrate Revinder Johal appointed.
• Margaret Cousins (Irish), suffragette, released form Tullamore Gaols: migrates to India and becomes India’s first woman magistrate in 1922. She was thrown again to prison in 1932 for protesting against the law curtailing free speech in India. The Indians actually never stopped talking.

France

• The Mona Lisa is returned to France by Italy after Vincenzo Peruggia was caught trying to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Mona Lisa was displayed all over Italy until 30.12.1913. Art and cultural property crime is a $6 billion industry nowadays with major government and international agencies fighting against it. 

Photo source:

• Suicide rate in France is 5.46 per 100 000. In 100 years it grows to the third highest figure in non-former Eastern bloc Europe (14.6 in 2010: double that of Britain and USA)
• Hardly any car thefts in France, grows to the third highest car theft rate in the world in 100 years with 301, 539 thefts in 2010.

Photo source: 

USA

• The 16^th Amendment to the constitution allows the Federal government to impose and collect income taxes. 100 years later a new word Taxmageddon is coined as government aims to make every household pay an extra $3,446 annually and collect  $536 billion to stem the deficit tsunami  
• The world’s largest railway station, New York’s Grand Central Terminal is reopened. In 100 years, USA becomes the backwater of railroads compared to Japan, China and other countries.
• The Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 is led by Inez Milholland riding on a white horse, with nine bands, four mounted brigades and celebrities like Helen Keller. Women gained the right to vote in national elections in 1920 (New Zealand in 1893 and Saudi Arabia not yet in 2013). Sarah Palin almost became Vice President in 2008.

Photo source: 

• Battle of Bud Bagsak – The Moro people, wielding spears and Kampilan Swords in the Philippines, including women and children are all killed by US troops led by General “Black Jack” Pershing. “Rather than impose a democratic system for which the people were unprepared, General Wood crafted a paternal system of government”. In 100 years the language would change to include terms like regime change, weapon of mass destruction, war on terrorism, enemy combatant, authorization for use of military force against terrorists, conditional detention etc.

Photo source: 

• The Federal Reserve System as the central banking system is created with three key objectives for monetary policy—maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates: Very good dreams still to be realized 100 years later.

Photo source: Dromedary with one hump in Camel cigarette pack

• Camel cigarettes are introduced. For the first half of the century it actually had a picture of a dromedary (with two humps) on the pack, which has now become a camel with one hump. It should be the opposite but no one really cares.

Photo source: Camel cigarette pack with two humps

•  The hottest temperature ever recorded 134 °F (~56.7 °C) in Death Valley, California. Global warming becomes a hot topic 100 years later.

South Africa

• Blacks are forbidden by the parliament of South Africa from owning or buying land from whites. 100 years later white poverty is blamed on Affirmative action reserving 80% of jobs for blacks and 450, 000 whites (10% of white population) live below poverty level. 
• Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners. He will be arrested many times before he is killed in 1948. 100 years later, Indians have to commit serious crimes to get arrested in South Africa and do not become a Mahatma in India after getting arrested.

Photo source:

Uruguay

• The Uruguayan Air Force is founded. They have not attacked anyone since.

Predictions About the Future Made in 1913 

Photo source

London’s lord mayor, Sir Vansittart Bowater was spot on with his predictions in 1913: 

• A horse will excite far more wonder and curiosity in London city than an aeroplane or a dirigible flying over St. Paul does today
• The drone of great airships, each carrying perhaps many hundreds of passengers, will also probably be heard across both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans
• The channel tunnel scheme may be a commonplace of actuality, with train services running every few minutes direct from London to Paris

NASA scientist James Hansen predicted in 1988 that global temperature rise would be proportional to the rise in CO2 emissions. This is off by 150% in 2011.

Photo source

Another prediction from Scientific American editor Waldemar Kaempfert, in 1913:

• "Over [future] cities the aerial sentry or policeman will be found. A thousand aeroplanes flying to the opera must be kept in line and each allowed to alight upon the roof of the auditorium in its proper turn."


12 year old Edgar Codling of Hillington, Norfolk, UK was very much a visionary:

• Aeroplanes will be seen floating in the air and would be as common as motorcars. They will be used of business and enjoyment too. 

Photo source: 

US government National Intelligence Council (NIC) in 1997 was not that successful:

• “The next 15 years will witness the transformation of North Korea and resulting elimination of military tensions on the peninsula”. 

Additional Sources:

The Transition in Eastern Europe, Volume 1. Olivier Jean Blanchard, Kenneth A. Froot, and Jeffrey D. Sachs, editors. University of Chicago Press, 1994