The Roots of War

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It can never be proved, but it is a safe assumption that the first time five thousand men were ever gathered together in one place, they belonged to an army. That probably happened around 7000 BC - give or take a thousand years - and it is an equally safe bet that the first truly large-scale slaughter of people in human history happened very soon afterwards.

Automatic Weapons – Where They Began

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A machine gun is a weapon that can fire many bullets very quickly, one after another. This is called automatic (or 'burst') fire. The first machine guns were invented in the middle of the 19th century, using different techniques.

Antwerp Road by Henry van Dyke

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Henry van Dyke was born in Pennsylvania, USA, in 1852 and graduated from Princeton University, where he became a professor of literature for nearly twenty-five years. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Paris and US Ambassador to Holland and Luxemburg just before the beginning of the First World War.

Why was the 20th Century so Deadly?

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Although there were many wars in the nineteenth century, they usually took place in the colonies that the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese and Belgians occupied against the wishes of their populations. Sometimes war broke out because powerful European governments forced other countries to co-operate with them for economic reasons. This was known as ‘gunboat diplomacy’. These colonial wars were usually one-sided because Western powers had the advantage of technologically advanced weapons used against people defending their lands with swords, spears and pistols.