It is quite safe to say that the history of Western World, and thus its present, has been strongly shaped by war during the last dozens of centuries. With some exceptions, the mosaic of kingdoms, republics and dictatorships has been very fluid, and has changed very often around military supremacy.

Which war do you think that has had the most deep and lasting impact in the Western world? Which war do you think was the main turning point in the path to modern world?

World War I.

The great European empires were weakened or destroyed, beginning the decline of European imperialism and colonialism. WWI spawned the Communist tsunami and the rise of Fascism. The USA began to take an international view of the world. Japan became a major power. The peoples of Asia, Africa, and India yearned for self-determination. The foundation for the current troubles in the Middle East was created during and after WWI. The women's movement (particularly in the USA) gained momentum during the upheaval. The failure of the League of Nations led to the creation of the U.N. -- which ain't doing too hot.

I'd type more but my fingers are tired...

I think there can be little doubt that the war which has had the greatest impact on the present day Western world has been the Second World War (AKA Great Patriotic War, Continuation War, etc). It has defined our current borders, relationships between countries, alliances, and has even been the cause of the creation of a whole new country (Israel) which has been. let's say, the centre of much interest over the years...

But possibly the greatest influence on the world as a whole was the Russian Revolution, which created the East/West split, and was the basis for the entirety of Western (and most of the world) politics thereafter.

'The Great War', the First World War, is still remembered as 'Great', and had a massive impact on nations and attitudes worldwise, but I'd dispute that those attitudes remain based on the First war, and not the Second.

WWII lead to the UN, Nuclear Weapons, and the oppurtunity to bring Nazis into any discussion - particularily on the internet.

Seriously though... Since WW2 we have seen little or no armed conflicts lareg enough to be called wars here in western europe. Up until then you would have fighting and invasions all the time. WW2 lead to a strong alliance between the major European nations and the European Union. Who would have thought that at some point a war between old mortal enemies such as France, Germany and the UK would become a silly concept.

WW2...

I don't think it is possible to say any one war has had the most impact. But if I had to choose, I'd say the 2nd Punic War.

The Persian War. Had the Greeks not defeated the Persians the "West" as we know it would not exist at all.

Western history is a long time.....

But to continue the thread, as far as the 20th Century is concerned, I'd say World War I. Besides being a big war in and of itself, it set the stage for WWII, the Cold War, and the current never-ending Arab-Israeli conflict. Thus one could even say the GWOT traces it's origins to WWI.

I've even heard some historians talk about WWII as a continuation of WWI, the combined conflict referred to the Great War of the 20th Century.

In history, events are rarely isolated from others. Thus I could ask what the origin of WWI was, and say that had the most impact on Western history. And now, it's the 21st Century... history - and events - continue on.

- as

I don't think we can say that at all. While, true, history is a continuous stream back to the dawn of civilisation and beyond, conflicts from antiquity cannot be said to have so great an influence on the modern day, simply because so much has, and could have, happened between then and now. The cultures have had lasting influence, but the battles, and their outcomes? No-one can truly say. Many cultures have come and gone - but remain influential. Defeat or victory is less important the further away you view them from.

Great question. Its a tough call. I agree with Pete(Belli) for the most part.The suggestions that it was a more ancient War (Punic,Persian,ect..) have some real validity.
The more I read and (study?) I find it hard to separate the First and Second World Wars. I think the Russian Civil War is more a part of the First World War and the end of the Monarchies and Great Empires.
I'm reading War of the World by Niall Ferguson and I think thats coloring my thinking at the moment. Ferguson lumps the whole period 1904-1953 and calls it The War of the World. Starting with the Russo-Japanese War and going through the Korean War.
If I have to pick just one War though I will go with The Great War 1914-1918. This planted all the seeds for the Russian Civil War and World War Two. The Russian Civil War in fact began without much of a pause after the First World War ( the Russians never completely stopped fighting they just stopped fighting the Germans).

Then I'd argue it would be the Russo-Polish War, for it is safe to say that stopped the Bolsheviks from bringing their revolution to Germany.
Things would have looked very different ther after.

By this logic taking a wrong turn five minutes ago is worse than taking a wrong turn five hours ago. History is NOT a continuous stream. Consider events even on a smaller scale (more recent). Had Hitler died in early 1938, prior to Krystallnacht, the outbreak of WWII, and the Holocaust, imagine how different the world might have looked a mere 70 years later. To say that the defeat of the Greeks and conquest of Eastern Europe by the Persians would have no impact on future events because "history is a mighty river" is ridiculous. The "Golden Age" of Athenian politics and culture occurred AFTER the Persian War....You're trying to say that conquest by the Persians would have had little or no effect on that, or on subsequent events long term? I can't accept your proposal of historical predetermination...and I was raised Presbyterian. When I first read this post, my first thought was also the Persian War.

Quite true. Which is why I Did Not Say That. Actually read what I said. The impact cannot be said to have the most impact in Western History (remember? The subject of this thread?), because events between then and now could not be determined. The further into history a conflict was, the less we can know what the outcome of the alternatives would or could have been. The importance cannot be as well determined. And I never mentioned rivers.

These speculation questions are always fun, but I'm not sure what concrete conclusions come from it.

I'm a high school Spanish teacher and just finished going over Moorish influence in Spain a few weeks ago. Maybe that is why my (current) answer to the question would be Poitiers (or Tours, if you like).

The problem, though, is that leaps of causation can't really be verified. Whether or not the battle "saved" Christian Europe is up for debate. It certainly solidified Carolingian rule. Coudn't we say, though, that without the Greek victory over Persia, this wouldn't have even been a possible outcome?

Victor David Hanson in The Western Way of War ranks Poitiers as one of the most important battles in history. He tends to see it as a validation of the democratic process of citizen levy and drill rather than in broader cultural terms, though.

I guess in that sense, defining "imact" would be important.

Kevin

The ongoing Thousand-Year War that more or less began with the Crusades.
http://www.chaostan.com/yearswarA.html

I think the War of the Worlds was most important. Not only did it serve to highlight the importance of our microorganisms, it represents a clear warning to any other alien invaders that they better not even try.

The invasion of Europe by the Mongols. If they had not retreated it could have been a whole different world history.

The battle of Poitiers, where the Francs stopped the Arabs from advancing beyond the Pyrennees. Europe might have become Islamic had they failed.

Another vote for WWI

-WW I erased the old monarchies and reshuffled Europe politically
-WWI paved the way for facism and boljevism
-Europes geography and demografy was reshuffled completely
-The second world war was more or less a direct result of WW I

Not sure which war would / could have prevented WW I from happening.

Interesting question for a history university exam.

I guess we will never be sure about the right answer.

Just because you find that the results of wars longer ago would have been less knowable doesn't make them less impactful. The metaphor he drew is an apt one for your hypothesis that somehow the passage of a great amount of time makes the impact of a war less meaningful. I would in fact argue exactly the opposite. We could make a reasonably educated guess as to what would have happened if Germany had conquered England and/or Japan had never been decisively defeated.

It is much more difficult to say what would have happened if the Persians had defeated the Greeks or if Hannibal had destroyed Rome. Either of these events would have had a dramatic effect on history. How far were the Romans from developing steam technology? Perhaps a unified Persian or Carthaginian empire would not have been subject to the same corruption and downfall as the Romans and we would have had an industrial revolution 2000 years ago. Or, in contrast, perhaps either of these empires would have fallen apart immediately leaving Europe in shambles with no tradition of philisophical thought or Pax Romana giving Western Europe it's self-identity (deserved or not) as the hub of civilization.

The question is of course so vague as to be nearly meaningless, such as "who is the greatest person of all time" or what-have-you, but I suppose it is a decent enough topic to bounce back and forth.

Western thought is the direct inheritor of the Greek philosophical and intellectual pursuits of antiquity. Had the Greeks fallen to the Persians, their culture may have been very different and all of Western thought would be different. Western thought, as we know it today, is entirely rooted in Thermopylae.

This philosophy comes down to us as a functioning, consolidated ideology of national or imperial stature because of the Romans. The defining wars of the Roman age were the Punic Wars, which cemented their rule throughout the Mediterranean basin and gave us their history as dominant.

The fall of Rome could have been the end of Western civilization had it not been for the consolidations of new empire under Charlemagne. This created a monarchy and feudal foundation of Europe for almost another 1000 years, enabling Christianity to become the dominant cultural religion.

It is the rise of wealth and technology after a millenium of feudal existence that provokes a couple of centuries of warfare from approximately the middle 1700s through the middle 1900s which represents the coming to terms with the end of feudalism and the rise of new economic models. The Christian values coupled with Greek thought of antiquity preserved through consolidation of monarchies established by Rome and Charlemagne are brought together in the struggles of the American and French revolutions, Napoleon's campaigns in Europe, the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II ... all largely powered by the rise of industrial power and the liberty of wealth.

Without these 4 major components, the Western civilization that we know today would look very different.

For more information, consider reading up on it.

I will go with the napoleonic wars

The interesting thing about World War II is that the primary cause of it is the resolution of World War I. That resolution was rooted in the established practice of warfare from Napoleonic times, which is the hottest conflict of the Age of Imperialism. It is in World War I that imperialism finally gives way to capitalism, but liberalised economic models largely come about through liberalised political models ... whose defining conflicts are the American and French revolutions.

In 500 or 1000 years, people will not look back on the time from 1750 to 1950 any differently than we look back on the Punic Wars. They will see this as the rise of industrial economies and the wars the inevitable result of sweeping economic and political forces. To them, World War I and World War II will hardly be considered different things at all...

While there was a semblance of parity between East and West when the Persians invaded Europe, Alexander's conquests established the dominance of Western thought throughout the "civilized" world (historians' term, not mine), an environment that exists to this day.

Yet another vote for WW1. The American War of Independence was an inevitability (in the sense that the US becoming self-governing was an inevitability, rather than it requiring a war to bring about); the war may have hastened the inevitable by 50 years and can be said to have helped shape the American collective psyche, but WW1 did that and more for pretty much most of the economically-developed world.

The Napoleonic Wars were simply an extension of conflicts of the previous 250 year - little more than a series of re-drawing borders in a way that had little profound effect, like shuffling the seating order at a dinner party. (An argument *can* be made for the importance of the Napoleonic Wars, but only by reference to the expansion of Western - and chiefly British - imperialism; Britain made massive colonial gains during the period, efectively bringing into being the world order that WW1 swept away. But WW1 had even more wide-ranging effects, including the Depression of the early 30s and setting the stage for an obvious sequel.)

I can't accept the Punic Wars as having much of a historical impact at all. You could make pretty much the same claim on behalf of Alexander's conquests in terms of moulding the Roman drive for empire, and over the course of the next few centuries Rome squashed plenty of other very capable military adversaries.

No, it has to be WW1 for me. For reasons that would take far too long to explain, it really was a war that changed everything and set the stage for the rest of the remarkable century.

Of course. Everything you mention about the traditional tolerance for subject empires and the enlightenment and success of Persia is entirely true. And of course, it is impossible to know what might have been had things worked out differently. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the Romans would have idolized the Persians instead of the Greeks and ridiculous experiments with things like democracy would have been relegated to the footnotes of history.

Really, the biggest failure in traditional acknowledgments of Western civilization (and therefore, in my all-too-brief summary) is the massive contributions from the East. The Greeks owed a huge debt to the Persians in making them who they were, both as rivals and as trade partners. The Islamic world made huge contributions in wars with the Moors and as intellectual powerhouses. Chinese contributions through trade throughout history gave huge technological advantages to the West and even in later years, it was competition among Western powers to exploit East Asia empires as imperial domains that helped precipitate the crisis of imperialism and even the World Wars.

Whether fighting or trading, the East has been hugely influential on the West. Really, 'western civlization" is largely a conceit of Western scholars. Today, we study 'world history' if we want to get the real picture.

Please, feel free to argue semantics and verbage. I don't pretend to be an expert on any particular field, so I don't have the need to demonstrate anything resembling a superior knowledge.

In any case, the fact remains that Western Civilization is the prime mover of society today. Languages used for international relations, historical timelines, and even global monetary interests are all based on the Western traditions. At what point did that become the accepted norm, and when were those roots planted? It may not be a military campaign that brought that about.