A Century of Broken Dreams: Twilight of the Empire

At the beginning of the 20th century, Europe seemed to be at the peak of its imperial age. The major powers were balanced, colonial and industrial civilizations were flourishing, and society generally believed that order and progress would last forever. But beneath the prosperous surface, class conflicts, imperial struggles, gender oppression, and conflicts between old and new ideological trends have long been undercurrents, and the seeds of the turmoil of the times have been sown. Six different families belonging to Britain, Germany, Russia, France, the United States, and Italy are selected as narrative vehicles: declining British aristocrats, German industrial workers, Russian revolutionaries, Italian families struggling to survive, American idealistic politicians, and French literary craftsmen who adhere to humanistic ideals. They hold their own simple ideals, believe that personal struggle can fight fate, and pursue dignity, justice and human warmth in the era. The Sarajevo incident triggered the First World War, and industrial war crushed the etiquette and order of the old era. Countless people have fallen victim to the game of hegemony; the war has also forced women to step out of the family and further awaken in the midst of suffering. The end of the First World War did not mean the end of suffering. Traditional empires such as Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary collapsed one after another, the old European aristocratic system collapsed, and the era of capital came. Most of the innocent and beautiful ideals of a generation were shattered in the torrent of reality. The ups and downs of the six major families show the tearing apart of society, the disillusionment of ideals, and the transformation of human nature from 1910 to 1923, writing a grand epic of the end of the old civilization and the painful birth of the new world. History will not accommodate individual ideals, but it will push humanity and civilization forward through repeated fragmentation and reconstruction.