Music recorded in 1910
The year 1910 saw the simultaneous reorganization of the empire and the institutionalization of mass society, laying the foundations for the future world order. In Europe, the death of Edward VII (1841–1910) on May 6, 1910, saw the British throne pass to George V (1865–1936), and the relationship between monarchy and constitutional government was reexamined amid tensions in parliamentary politics. In Portugal, the 5 October Revolution overthrew the monarchy, and the First Portuguese Republic was established under a provisional government headed by Teófilo Braga (1843–1924). At the southern tip of Africa, the Union of South Africa was established on May 31, 1910, under the South Africa Act 1909, establishing the framework for a unified state as a self-governing territory within the British Empire. In East Asia, the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty was concluded in August 1910, and the annexation was promulgated on August 29th. In the Americas, opposition to the long-ruling regime of Porfirio Díaz (1830–1915) grew, and Francisco I. Madero (1873–1913) called for an uprising in his Plan of San Luis Potosí, which began on November 20th, 1910, and marked the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.
Changes were not limited to politics. In a move to institutionalize international cooperation, Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) founded the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910, fostering a network of research and diplomacy that treated war as an avoidable institutional problem. A contemporaneous polemical work, Norman Angell's (1872–1967) 1910 edition of The Great Illusion, expanded the debate over the relationship between war and economic interests. On the social institutional side, William D. Boyce (1858–1929) and others incorporated the Boy Scouts of America on February 8, 1910, expanding the framework for organizing youth in the age of urbanization. In the legal system, the United States enacted the Mann Act (White-Slave Traffic Act) on June 25, 1910, strengthening controls on movement and sexuality as federal law. In medicine and education, Abraham Flexner (1866–1959) published Medical Education in the United States and Canada in 1910, commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and promoted the consolidation and closure of schools and educational reform, calling for the standardization of science-based medical education.
Natural phenomena and disasters made visible the vulnerability of modern cities and the ripple power of information. In Paris, a major flood on the Seine River (January 1910) paralyzed the city's transportation, water supply, sewerage, and railway systems, reaching a water level of 8.62 meters on January 28. In western North America, a devastating fire known as the "Big Blowup" spread on August 20–21, 1910, burning over 3 million acres and resulting in numerous deaths. In the sky, Halley's Comet returned in 1910, and in May, when the Earth was predicted to pass through its tail, social unrest and the flow of scientific knowledge intersected, creating a tumultuous environment. The combination of science with newspapers, advertising, and products, and the amplification of fear and curiosity through the same circuits, was a precursor to the 20th-century media environment.
In the cultural sphere, Russian literary giant Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) passed away on November 20, 1910, and questions surrounding religion, ethics, and the state continued into the next century. On June 25 of the same year, Igor Stravinsky's (1882–1971) ballet The Firebird premiered in Paris, and the performing arts created a new magnetic field connecting national imagination with urban consumer culture. Recording and playback technology also continued to improve as a home entertainment device, and in early 1910, the National Phonograph Company's journal, "Amberola," began promoting itself in an effort to expand its sales channels. The year 1910, when politics, institutions, disasters, science, art, and sound media all modernized at the same speed, can be said to have marked the process by which the world was converging into a single news space as a concrete event.
