First Industrial Modern War?

[GarretJax]

I was doing some reading on the Austro-Prussian war and how it was considered one the first modern industrial war in Europe, due to the extensive use of railroads, breech loading muskets/artillery, and also more modern supply and logistical methods. I know that similar tactics were used in the American Civil War though, including telegraphs and balloon aerial surveillance and before that some of this technology was used in the Crimean War as well. Are there any earlier examples of wars that say increased used of these technologies? I personally couldn't think of anything prior to the Crimean War (though the logistical blunders in that war should be noted).

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I would argue that the first modern war was the Napoleonic Wars. Both France and Britain used their limited industry against each other and their newly created modern economics.

[hellheaven1987]

The first industrial war probably is the internal conflict within Revolutionary France, which all parties industrialized prisoner execution to purge their opponents.

In other words, the first thing French mechanized was execution device.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Modern in the sense of a national, total war? Probably the French revolutionary wars, which first saw armies formed by wholesale conscription of citizens, fighting not for some individual but for the nation itself. Didferent from earlier concepts of fighting for a city state or tribe, because of the new concept of a republican nation state.

First industrial war? Probably the American Civil War, which was very much decided by the North's ability to keep churning out equipment, supplies and men.

[Slaytaninc]

I've heard the Crimean War offered up since it involved railroads to some significant degree and rifles started to supplant smoothbores. I think it also saw breech-loading cannon.

[hellheaven1987]

I've heard the Crimean War offered up since it involved railroads to some significant degree and rifles started to supplant smoothbores. I think it also saw breech-loading cannon.

Only British as far as I know.

[Aymer de Valence]

Crimean War

Also looking at it from another angle; the first war to be publicised like never before. The striking photographs helped with that immensely.

[Spear Dog]

If industrial is the key word it would have to be WW1, as that was the first time the productive capacity of the industrial estate became the key factor in the war. Volume of output and access to increasing demands for resources made it a global conflict. Innovations in weaponry were met with innovations in armour steel that was met by innovations in weaponry met by innovation in armour, and so on - particularly in the Navies.

[Roma_Victrix]

I was doing some reading on the Austro-Prussian war and how it was considered one the first modern industrial war in Europe, due to the extensive use of railroads, breech loading muskets/artillery, and also more modern supply and logistical methods. I know that similar tactics were used in the American Civil War though, including telegraphs and balloon aerial surveillance and before that some of this technology was used in the Crimean War as well. Are there any earlier examples of wars that say increased used of these technologies? I personally couldn't think of anything prior to the Crimean War (though the logistical blunders in that war should be noted).

These conditions (i.e. logistical support with railways to ferry troops and supplies, breech-loading weaponry, mobilization, etc.) most certainly existed in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, if not in the Austro-Prussian War just several years before it. The American Civil War, however had all of these conditions as you rightly mention. After these conflicts the two Boer Wars in Africa fought by the British against the Dutch Boers introduced field tactics such as stationary trench lines that came to typify the long drawn-out battles of WWI. What's interesting from the American Civil War onward is the increasing importance of sniping tactics as well, with sniper rifles and snipers' skills drastically improving as the decades progressed. That certainly changed the chivalrous notions of engaging in battle that filled the heads of soldiers who initially fought in the American Civil War.

[Gatsby]

In my opinion no one war can really definitively be singled out, several wars introduced a new concept each that we now associate with industrial war. You can say the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the ACW, the Austro Prussian War or even WW1 and not be wrong.

[GarretJax]

I guess my original question was kind of broad and vague. I know in a lot of wars from the 1790s-1914 newer and newer industrialized technology was introduced. I guess I was looking for a moment in time where technology became such a dominant factor that armies became overwhelmingly efficient to the point where traditional tactics of the 1600-1700s had to change. I guess you could trace that back to the trench warfare that took place in Petersburg at the end of the American Civil War. I'm not sure if similar trench warfare took place in the Austro-Prussian or Franco-Prussian Wars (mostly because they were both over very quickly).

I'm very familiar with the American Civil War, but I guess I was looking to see if there was an earlier war in Europe or elsewhere in the world, in which columns standing in open fields and firing at each other wasn't the primary fighting style prior to the 1865. I did a little reading on the Crimean War and it looks like they might have used trenches, but that was also a siege of Sevastopol, so that might be a bit different. I know the French and Austrians fight some wars in Italy in the early 1860s? Looks like I just need to brush up on my reading.

Also looking at it from another angle; the first war to be publicised like never before. The striking photographs helped with that immensely.

I think that's a really good point as well. Wars certainty changed when the press got more involved. You can see in both the Crimean war an all subsequent wars that sometimes officers let political and publicity pressure them into doing things that might not have been militarily sound.

[Condottiere 40K]

It's the ACW.

Observation balloons, railways, rifling, repeating carbines, Gatlings, mass conscription, ironclads. The North only won because they could outmanufacture the South and blockade their ports.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Nuh uh, twas the Napoleonic Wars. Observation balloons, massed use of various types of guns, mass conscription, steam ship experimentation, secret projects like submarines and torpedoes, the fact that Britain had more rifles because they could produce more. We also have the first use of telegrams used by Napoleon in a military role together with other forms of massed communication and information gathering and an espionage war the ways of which had not yet been seen.

Britain and France both had a competition of manufacturing which ultimately Britain won because they had the raw materials from their colonies and had mobilized what little manufacturing they had all while facing the social issues that came with that. Where as Napoleon was increasing industrialization from the extremely little that he got from Louis XVI and France started learning all about creating industry, having to deal with a lack of material and facing the social issues for the first time. Aside from all that we have Britain and France testing new economic theories about exploiting resources and finding new markets and international trade (as it was previously believed that only trade within the empires themselves were beneficial). Now both Britain and France were fighting a truly modern economic war where both countries would try to sell their products to others. The fact that Britain's blockade did not crush the French economy and the fact that Napoleon's limited counter blockade as wreaking havoc on the British market shows us something almost unseen in the way of economics until the exact same scenario repeated itself in WW2.

It's pretty easy to see how the market provided for industrialization to begin in the first place and then in an almost circular manner then sustain the economy. It's also easy to see how the Napoleonic Wars started the whole concept of modern wars, where I would put less emphasis on the industry itself but instead on how the events of the war shaped and created the industry. Using that same sort of pattern but with a much larger understanding of economics and industry was what allowed for the wars to get bigger is all.

[YuriVII]

Sometime in the 19th, either Crimean or American Civil Wars. Evolution of warfare in the 19th Century was so gradual that its hard to point to an exact war and say "that's the one".

Someone said Napoleonic, and as for industralism I would disagree, though it was the first war that harnessed the political idea of a unified nationstate going against another. I think its the first total war as well, harnessing all sections of society to fight the enemy.