Long And Short Term Causes Of World War

Long and short term causes of World War 1

Monica Benet

1001 525 343

T.A: Evan Dokos

Edward Hananiwa Ho

03/29/2016

Introduction

The Great War broke out on July 28th 1914 and ended on November 11th 1918. It was considered to be the war to end all wars because of the effect it had on a global scale. The direct and indirect factors that caused WW1 to break out can be summarized by 5 major issues. This includes, Militarism, Nationalism, Alliances, Imperialism and finally assassination. Although all these factors contributed tremendously to the break out of WW1, Nationalism is the primary cause that instigated global tension. As new countries such as Germany were unified it brought a threat to the current balance of power in the early 20th century. This caused a domino effect as the thirst for power and independence rose.

Long term causes

Imperialism occurs as a nation gains power through controlling and exploiting smaller nations by the acts of colonization1. The power nation claims control over these smaller nations through acts of invasion, political pressure, war and military conquest. Once occupied the new territory is seen to be a colony of the “mother” country. The main benefit of imperialism is that the power country gains economic status by acts of free trade, and extracting all resources that the colony provides.

Preceding to World War 1, Britain was seen as a dominant imperial power, occupying one quarter of the globe. Not far behind was France also establishing many colonies all across the globe through the act of imperialism. Lastly, Russia had many colonies and political control in many nations of Eastern Europe and some parts of central Asia...

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