Mario Paz

Mr. De la Sobera
Modern History 10 A
November 12 2006
Causes of World War I
The causes for this war start with the nationalism spreading out through Europe.
The growth in Economy in between nations brought competitions and conflict. There
was also an arms race which was one of the main causes that break out this war. At
1815, in the Congress of Vienna, they didn’t take much interest in maintaining the
peace. After this congress, Germany and Italy were left as divided states, but later on
they were unified due to revolutions and nationalism.
This war started with the assassination of the arch duke Franz Ferdinand in 1914
committed by Gavrilo Princip. He was a Serb and a member of the Young Bosnia secret
society. He had connections to the Black Hand, which was a secret nationalist
movement of the Serbs who had as an objective to unify the territories of Austria-
Hungary. Austria-Hungary, after the assassination of the archduke had sent an
ultimatum to Serbia. This ultimatum wasn’t respected, so Austria-Hungary had declared
war on Serbia.
Serbia had an allied which was Russia, a strong nation at the time. Austria-
Hungary had send for help to Germany which was a new ally for them, so now Russia
declared war on Austria-Hungary. Two days later, Germany declares war on France by
invading the neutral Belgium so they could reach faster into Paris. Great Britain got
intio war due to that Germany broke the neutrality that Belgium had. All of these
factors were due to the nationalism in these times, but there were also an important
cause such as imperialism.
Imperialism in these times was a fact because of the need of foreign markets
such as Africa and its colonies. There was also an economic rivalry between the big
countries that at those times were: Germany, Great Britain, and France. All of this
countries were considered world powers because of their strong economic and military
system. They wanted to increase their economies by colonizing Africa. There was a
crisis at Morocco which at that time was colony of France, which was given by Great
Britain at 1904. Germany supported the independence for Morocco. The British
defended the French and they prevented war by the international conference in
Algeciras, where they decided to make Morocco a French protectorate. This was a start
of a conflict which will become much greater in the future for these three nations. A
second conflict occurred again at Morocco where the French had violated the treaty of
Algeciras where they wanted to make Morocco its colony.
The alliances were a very important factor before this war because it is
considered also one of the causes. In 1879, Germany and Austria-Hungary made an
alliance to protect themselves from Russia. In 1881, there was an alliance with Austria-
Hungary and Serbia so Russia doesn’t take control of the Serbian territory. In 1882,
there was a triple alliance between Germany and Austria- Hungary with Italy to stop
Italy from taking sides with Russia. In 1894, there was a French and Russian alliance to
protect themselves against Germany and Austria-Hungary. In 1904, Great Britain and
France formed an agreement called Entente Cordiale. In 1907, there was an agreement
between Britain and Russia, at the same year they made the triple entente that was made
between Russia,France and Britain to respond to the increasing threat from Germany. In
1914, Britain, Russia and France agreed not to sign for peace separately which was
called Triple Entente. As you see, there were a number of alliances and agreement
between the years 1879 and 1914 These were important because they meant that some
countries had no option but to declare war if one of their allies declared war first.