WORLD WAR I BREAKS OUT!!!

Here is a great site to check out for an interactive overview of World War I.  It's a really nice intro, especially if you are not overly familiar with what happened in the war, why it started, or the geography of Europe at the time.

IF you have a LOT of time (about 9 hours) and are really interested in the history of World War I, I suggest you use the following links to watch a nice documentary on the subject:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Okay, okay...so now that you've watched the WHOLE WAR (yeah, right...), let's step back a bit and take a look at some of the underlying events in World War I.  What was going on????

Most people will say that there are four major contributing factors to World War I:  imperialism, nationalism, militarism, and alliances (NOT an -ism).  What roles do these four things play?

First of all, you have to go back to something we discussed last section:  Social Darwinism.  Remember, we said that Social Darwinism (p. 678) is the theory used by Western nations in the late nineteenth century to justify their dominance; based on Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection...otherwise known as "survival of the fittest"...and was applied to modern human society.  We also said that this would be called Imperialism by the time World War I started to roll around.  Your text says that imperialism (p. 686) is the extension of a nation's power over other lands.  Sounds about the same, right?  There were several reasons that imperialism was becoming a major issue at this time:

1. Countries were looking for economic growth potential with new colonies.  New markets for trade could be opened up AND new sources of natural resources could be found to help fuel industrial growth.
2. There were a lot of intense rivalries among various countries and they tried to gain more territories and colonies to try to get an advantage over their enemies.
3. Prestige was a big factor.  The bigger you were (meaning the more colonies) the better you looked to the world.
4. Yet another -ism rears its ugly head at this time:  racism.  To use the text definition, racism (p. 687) is "the belief that race determines traits and capabilities."  This is not to say that racism did not exist prior to the early 1900's, because it obviously did, but racism was now being exercised on a global scale and used as a reason to conquer other countries, races, and cultures.
5. Some Europeans believed that they had a religious and moral responsibility, often nicknamed the "white man's burden" to bring Christianity to what they considered heathenistic countries.  Of course, when you take Western religions into new territories and countries, you likely also take your culture, your politics, and economic beliefs with you, so captialism and Western democracy were being spread through imperialism.

Some other ideas that are going to really contribute to World War I, especially when coupled with imperialsim, are nationalism and militarism (yep...more -isms). 

Nationalism (an old term from p. 602) is, of course, a strong sense of belonging to one's own nation or culture, religion, language, etc.  Well, at this time, there are several ethnic groups and cultures that don't have the benefit of their own country...but they wanted them.  Slavs in the Balkans and the Austria-Hungary empire wanted their own country, as did the Irish in the British Empire and the Polish in the Russian Empire. 

Militarism (p. 632), which is a reliance on military strength, should be an obvious ingredient in the ugly mix of problems that was starting to build up.  Why would militarism be a problem?  Well, if you rely solely on military strength and domination of others for power, those who are dominated or being pushed aside will eventually push back...which is not going to be a good thing...

That leaves us with alliances.  Well, one way to strengthen yourself against imperialist expansion is to form alliances with other countries.  Alliances are a BIG deal when it comes to World War I, which we will explore in just a bit.  In World War I, there were two major alliances:  the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy; and the Triple Entente of France, Great Britan, and Russia.  These alliances are going to be like a powder keg that is primed and ready to explode, especially when combined with the "sparks" of imperialism, nationalism, and militarism.