1910s
The decade from 1910 through 1919, marked by the First World War, revolution, rapid social change, and the emergence of modern mass culture.
World War I: A global war fought from 1914 to 1918, chiefly between the Allied and Central Powers. The decade’s defining conflict began in 1914 and altered borders, societies, and politics.
Treaty of Versailles: The 1919 peace treaty that formally ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. Its terms embodied the postwar settlement and fueled conflicts over responsibility and reparations.
Modernism: A broad movement in art, literature, and architecture that broke with inherited forms and conventions. The decade’s artists and writers used modernist forms to respond to rapid change and wartime rupture.
Belle Époque: A period of relative peace and prosperity in Western Europe, usually dated from the 1870s to 1914. Its prewar confidence sharply contrasts with the violence and instability that followed in the 1910s.
Russian Revolution: The 1917 revolutions that ended imperial rule in Russia and brought the Bolsheviks to power. Revolution transformed Russia during the war and created the first lasting communist state.
League of Nations: An international organization founded in 1920 to promote collective security and cooperation. It grew from wartime plans to prevent another conflict of the scale experienced in the 1910s.
Dada: An avant-garde movement that rejected conventional logic and artistic standards, emerging during World War I. Its deliberate absurdity expressed artists’ rejection of the culture they associated with the war.
1920s: The decade from 1920 through 1929, associated with postwar recovery, mass culture, and economic change. The following decade inherited the political settlements and social transformations of the 1910s.
Armenian genocide: The Ottoman Empire’s mass deportation and killing of Armenians, beginning in 1915. It was one of the decade’s largest atrocities and a lasting consequence of wartime policy.
Sykes–Picot Agreement: A secret 1916 agreement in which Britain and France planned spheres of influence in Ottoman territories. Its wartime partition plans shaped later borders and political disputes in the Middle East.