Evaluate the relative importance of nationalism, imperialism, and militarism to the eventual outbreak of World War I

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Evaluate the relative importance of nationalism, imperialism, alliances and militarism to the eventual outbreak of World War I

Darya Zhexembayeva

Even though many years have passed from the World War I, people still can't get an exact answer to what of the 4 factors had the most impact on this event. This essay is going to be about nationalism, imperialism, militarism and alliances.

In essay's opinion, all of the 4 things listed above played a big role on the beginning of the war. However, one of the biggest problems in that time was imperialism, which partly caused World War I. The first signs of the Great War appeared in 1871, when the France lost the battle with Germany. German Empire had a big growth of nationalist feelings, because while they won, the country though that they are the best, and others are nothing. They wanted to colonize the big part of the world, wanted everyone to follow their rules and speak their language, to accept German culture. But France wanted revenge and they got it.

In XIX-XX century's capitalism began to turn into imperialism. Nearly the whole world was divided between greatest empires- Germany and France. Despite they both already had accomplices (Britain, which supported France and Austro-Hungary, supporting Germany), countries negotiated secretly from each other, asking smaller allies for help. The inequality of political and economical development between the countries became more noticeable. USA and Germany step by step became nearly as powerful as old capitalist countries, Britain and France were. And of course, the goal of Britain and Germany was similar: they both wanted to conquer Africa, while the territory was pretty big and also amount of raw materials like diamonds. Another reason they wanted Africa so much was that it wasn't difficult to take over it, because this country was undeveloped, there was a lack of military power. One more similarity in interests was that in 1906 Germany and France had an argument about who will have Morocco, which lead to the more strained relationship between Empires. But the sultan of Morocco asked Kaiser Wilhelm for help in protecting France's attempts to own the country. But Kaiser's tries to keep Morocco safe were useless, because France and Britain forced him to give up in the end.

But this wasn't as easy as it seemed to be. Different Empires wanted to take over the same territories, which caused the problems between Britain and France, Britain and Russia, Austro-Hungary and Italy but all of them were less important than Germany and her main enemies- Britain, France and Russia. To solve this issue, in 1882 Austria-Hungary, Italy and Germany formed the Triple Alliance, which originally was intended against Russia and France, but later they added one more enemy- Britain. On the other side of the world, France and Russia had to do something to save their countries, so in 1891 they formed Franco-Russian Alliance. When the Britain had to make relations with Russia and France, these countries included British to their Alliance, and the Triple Entante was formed. But Britain and France supported Italy's interests to Africa too much, so weakened its connection to the Triple Alliance, which meant that Germany shouldn't expect a lot help from Italy as an ally in the future war.

Essay thinks that the turning point of the World War One had become the murdering of the successor of the Austria-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand. For example if Serbians wouldn't kill him, Austria-Hungary could change its mind and cancel the war, trying to decide everything in a peaceful way. But when the heir, being in Bosnia together with his wife, was killed by Gavrilo Princip, who was a terrorist already, the only one possible solution was to declare a war.

In 1908 Balkans was replenished with Bosnia, while they had the permission of Austria. But this situation made Serbia angry, because they wanted to have this territory. At first, Russia wanted to help Serbia, but then it decided to stay away from this. Despite Serbia didn't get Bosnia, it still was a powerful country, and it wasn't enough: they wanted to conquer Austro-Hungary.

Of course, every country wouldn't join either France or Germany because they were asked to. All empires had some benefit from the union with others. For example France wanted to implement its plans about taking their lost in past lands-Alsace and Lorraine back. Italy, even being in agreement with Austro-Hungary, wished Trentino, Trieste and Fiume would again belong to them. Germany only wanted to defeat Britain and France, so no one will prevent them conquering the world. imperialism war alliance nationalism

As you can see from the essay, there is no exact answer to the given question. More or less, every point had an impact on the war-militarism, nationalism, alliances and imperialism- together all of them caused World War I. This essay thinks that historians will still continue arguing about this, while no one from people, who are alive, knows exactly what happened 92 years ago.

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