1910s

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Ford Model TSinking of the TitanicWorld War ISpanish fluWestern Front (World War 1)Eastern Front (World War I)Russian RevolutionBattle of the Somme
From left, clockwise: The Ford Model T is introduced and becomes widespread; The sinking of the RMS Titanic causes the deaths of nearly 1,500 people and attracts global and historical attention; Title bar: All the events below are part of World War I (1914–1918); French Army lookout at his observation post in 1917; Russian troops awaiting a German attack; A ration party of the Royal Irish Rifles in a communication trench during the Battle of the Somme; Vladimir Lenin addresses a crowd in the midst of the Russian Revolution, beginning in 1917; The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 kills tens of millions worldwide.

The 1910s (pronounced "nineteen-tens") was the decade that began on January 1, 1910, and ended on December 31, 1919.

The 1910s represented the culmination of European militarism which had its beginnings during the second half of the 19th century. The conservative lifestyles during the first half of the decade, as well as the legacy of military alliances, were forever changed by the June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The archduke's murder triggered a chain of events in which, within 33 days, World War I broke out in Europe on August 1, 1914. The conflict dragged on until a truce was declared on November 11, 1918, leading to the controversial and one-sided Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919.

The war's end triggered the abdication of various monarchies and the collapse of four of the last modern empires of Russia, Germany, Ottoman Turkey, and Austria-Hungary, with the latter splintered into Austria, Hungary, southern Poland (who acquired most of their land in a war with Soviet Russia), Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, as well as the unification of Romania with Transylvania and Bessarabia.[a] However, each of these states (with the possible exception of Yugoslavia) had large German and Hungarian minorities, creating some unexpected problems that would be brought to light in the next two decades.

The decade was also a period of revolution in many countries. The Portuguese 5 October 1910 revolution, which ended the eight-century long monarchy, spearheaded the trend, followed by the Mexican Revolution in November 1910, which led to the ousting of dictator Porfirio Díaz, developing into a violent civil war that dragged on until mid-1920, not long after a new Mexican Constitution was signed and ratified. The Russian Empire had a similar fate, since its participation in World War I led it to a social, political and economical collapse which made the tsarist autocracy unsustainable and, succeeding the events of 1905, culminated in the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, under the direction of the Bolshevik Party, later renamed as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution of 1918, known as the October Revolution, was followed by the Russian Civil War, which dragged on until approximately late 1922. China saw 2,000 years of imperial rule end with the Xinhai Revolution, becoming a nominal republic until Yuan Shikai's failed attempt to restore the monarchy and his death started the Warlord Era in 1916.

Treaty of Versailles

Much of the music in these years was ballroom-themed. Many of the fashionable restaurants were equipped with dance floors. Prohibition in the United States began January 16, 1919, with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Best-selling books of this decade include The Inside of the Cup, Seventeen, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

During the 1910s, the world population increased from 1.75 to 1.87 billion, with approximately 640 million births and 500 million deaths in total.

Politics and wars[edit]

World map where is all empires and colonies in 1914, just before the First World War.

Wars[edit]

Internal conflicts[edit]

Major political change[edit]

Vladimir Lenin, Leader of the Bolshevik Party during the Russian Revolution

Decolonization and independence[edit]

Assassinations[edit]

Prominent assassinations include:

Disasters[edit]

Sinking of the Titanic.
Halifax Explosion
  • The RMS Titanic, a British ocean liner which was the largest and most luxurious ship at that time, struck an iceberg and sank two hours and 40 minutes later in the North Atlantic during its maiden voyage on April 15, 1912. 1,517 people perished in the disaster.
  • On May 29, 1914, the British ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland collided in thick fog with the SS Storstad, a Norwegian collier, near the mouth of Saint Lawrence River in Canada, sinking in 14 minutes. 1,012 lives were lost.
  • On May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by U-20, a German U-boat, off the Old Head of Kinsale in Ireland, sinking in 18 minutes. 1,199 lives were lost.
  • On November 21, 1916, the HMHS Britannic was holed in an explosion while passing through a channel which had been seeded with enemy mines and sank in 55 minutes.
  • From 1918 through 1920, the Spanish flu killed from 17.4 to 100 million people worldwide.
  • In 1916, the Netherlands was hit by a North Sea storm that flooded the lowlands and killed 19 people.
  • From July 1 to July 12, 1916, a series of shark attacks, known as the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, occurred along the Jersey Shore, killing four and injuring one.
  • On January 11, 1914, Sakurajima erupted which resulted in the death of 35 people. In addition, the surrounding islands were consumed, and an isthmus was created between Sakurajima and the mainland.
  • In 1917, the Halifax Explosion killed 2,000 people.
  • In 1919, the Great Molasses Flood in Boston, Massachusetts killed 21 people and injured 150.

Other significant international events[edit]

Science and technology[edit]

Technology[edit]

British World War I Mark V tank

Science[edit]

Economics[edit]

Popular culture[edit]

Sports[edit]

Literature and arts[edit]

Below are the best-selling books in the United States of each year, as determined by The Bookman, a New York-based literary journal (1910–1912) and Publishers Weekly (1913 and beyond).[17]

Visual Arts[edit]

The 1913 Armory Show in New York City was a seminal event in the history of Modern Art. Innovative contemporaneous artists from Europe and the United States exhibited together in a massive group exhibition in New York City, and Chicago.

Art movements[edit]

Cubism and related movements[edit]
Expressionism and related movements[edit]
Geometric abstraction and related movements[edit]
Other movements and techniques[edit]

Influential artists[edit]

People[edit]

Business[edit]

Henry Ford

Inventors[edit]

Politics[edit]

Authors[edit]

Entertainers[edit]

Charlie Chaplin
Lillian Gish
Mary Pickford

Sports figures[edit]

Baseball[edit]

Babe Ruth, 1915

Olympics[edit]

Boxing[edit]

See also[edit]

Timeline[edit]

The following articles contain brief timelines which list the most prominent events of the decade:

1910191119121913191419151916191719181919

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ See Dissolution of Austria-Hungary § Successor states for better description of composition of names of successor countries following the splinter.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Dictionary of Genocide, by Samuel Totten, Paul Robert Bartrop, Steven L. Jacobs, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008, ISBN 0-313-34642-9, p. 19
  2. ^ Intolerance: a general survey, by Lise Noël, Arnold Bennett, 1994, ISBN 0773511873, p. 101
  3. ^ Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society, by Richard T. Schaefer, 2008, p. 90
  4. ^ “The Mcmahon Correspondence of 1915-16.” Bulletin of International News, vol. 16, no. 5, 1939, pp. 6–13. JSTOR, JSTOR 25642429. Accessed 8 Nov. 2023.
  5. ^ Sole, Kent M. “THE ARABS, A PEOPLE BETRAYED.” Journal of Third World Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 1985, pp. 59–62. JSTOR, JSTOR 45197139. Accessed 8 Nov. 2023.
  6. ^ Barnett, David (2022-10-30). "Revealed: TE Lawrence felt 'bitter shame' over UK's false promises of Arab self rule". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2023-11-08.
  7. ^ Wilson, Samuel Graham (1916). Modern Movements Among Moslems. United States: Fleming H. Revell Company. pp. 49–50.
  8. ^ Friedel, Robert D (1996). Zipper : an Exploration in Novelty. New York: Norton. p. 94. ISBN 0393313654. OCLC 757885297.
  9. ^ "A Non-Rusting Steel: Sheffield Invention Especially Good for Table Cutlery" (PDF). The New York Times. 1914-01-31. Retrieved 2017-05-11.
  10. ^ "Bread-toaster" (Patent #1,387,670 application filed May 29, 1919, granted August 16, 1921). Google Patents. Retrieved 30 January 2018.
  11. ^ Brinkley, Douglas (2004). Wheels for the world : Henry Ford, his company, and a century of progress, 1903-2003. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780142004395. OCLC 796971541.
  12. ^ Watson, Greig (2014-02-24). "World War One: The tank's secret Lincoln origins". BBC News. Retrieved 2017-05-11.
  13. ^ MBTA (2010). "About the MBTA-The "El"". MBTA. Archived from the original on 26 November 2010. Retrieved 8 December 2010.
  14. ^ O'Conner, J.J.; Robertson, E.F. (May 1996). "General relativity". www.st-andrews.ac.uk. University of St. Andrews. Retrieved 2017-05-11.
  15. ^ "Gerade auf LeMO gesehen: LeMO Bestand: Biografie". www.dhm.de (in German). Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum. 2014-09-14. Retrieved 2017-05-11.
  16. ^ Demhardt, Imre (2012) [1912]. "Alfred Wegeners Hypothesis on Continental Drift and its Discussion in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen" (PDF). Polarforschung. 75: 29–35. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-10-04.
  17. ^ "Annual Bestsellers, 1910-1919". 2006. Archived from the original on 2011-10-16.

Further reading[edit]

  • Blanke, David. The 1910s (Greenwood, 2002); popular culture in USA online.
  • Craats, Rennay. 1910s (2012) for Canadian middle schools online
  • Chisholm, Hugh (1913). Britannica Year-book 1913. pp. 1 v. (worldwide coverage for 1910–1912)
  • Cornelissen, Christoph, and Arndt Weinrich, eds. Writing the Great War - The Historiography of World War I from 1918 to the Present (2020) free download; advanced coverage of major countries.
  • Sharman, Margaret. 1910s (1991) European history for middle schools. online
  • Uschan, Michael V. The 1910s (1999) a cultural history of USA, for secondary schools. online
  • Whalan, Mark. American Culture in the 1910s (Edinburgh University Press, 2010).