Conscription

   Compulsory military service, in principle for all adult males, was increasingly the practice of all serious Great Powers in the late nineteenth century. With the exception of Britain and the United States, who were both secure against sudden invasion by land, all major powers accepted the notion that the triumph of Prussian armies over Austria in 1866 and France in 1871 pointed to the prudence of universal military training. The maintenance of large numbers of reservists capable of supplementing the strength of the professional army on short notice became the norm. The movement toward larger armies had been inaugurated by the French Revolutionary concept of the levée en masse and Napoleon’s successful use of large conscript forces, but the prospect of general war in Europe retreated over the next half century to reemerge with united Germany’s challenge to the continental balance of power after 1871.

   Conscription’s appeal to national governments thereafter gathered further strength from the intensification of Great Power competition within Europe. The popular appeal of European nationalist movements, along with the increasing commonness of men in uniform, meanwhile contributed to acceptance of the idea that service to the nation and experience of war was the rite of passage to manhood. Militarization of European society was thereby nurtured. Even socialist movements often used military symbols and values to further youth recruitment. Conscription among the rival powers also ratcheted up the prospective scale and cost of a European war, although after 1914 the reality was far worse than anyone had anticipated.

   See also <>.

   FURTHER READING:

    Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999;

    Strachen, Hew. The First World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

   CARL CAVANAGH HODGE