20.6: Early Twentieth-Century Cultural Change
- Page ID
- 173014
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During the first few decades of the 20th century, “Western Civilization” struggled to define itself in the face of scientific progress and social change that seemed to be speeding forward ever faster. The older order of monarchy and nobility was finally, definitively destroyed, a casualty of World War I. Never again would kings, emperors, and noblemen share power over European countries. At the same time, the great political project of the nineteenth century, republican democracy, seemed profoundly disappointing to many Europeans, who had watched it degenerate into partisan squabbles that were helpless to prevent the Great War and its terrible aftermath. Further, after World War I, there was a terrific flowering of cultural and intellectual production even as the continent struggled to recover economically. .