The Causes of the World War I - Essay Example

Nevertheless, the abrupt cause of the war was entrenched in the conclusions reached by statesmen and generals during the July Crisis of 1914, which saw the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by an irredentist Serb (Ferguson 1-11). The conflict came after a long and complicated series of diplomatic collision between the Great Powers including France, the British Empire, Italy, the Austria-Hungarian Empire, Germany, and Russia over colonial and European concerns in the decade before 1914 that had precipitated a high tension.

Consequently, these diplomatic collisions can be traced to amendments in the balance of power in Europe since 1867. The more abrupt cause for the war was tensions over territory in the Balkans. Russia and Serbia competed with Austria-Hungary for territory and power in the region and they pulled the rest of the Great Powers into the collisions through their various coalitions and treaties. In November 1912 Russia, mortified by its incapacity to support Serbia during the Bosnia crisis of 1908, announced a major reconstruction of its military (Harrison 30-45).

The start of World War I has exceedingly been attributed to imperialism. Countries such as France and British Empire amassed great wealth in the late 19th century through direct control over foreign trade in foreign resources, territories, markets, and people. Further empires, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, and Germany held high hopes of controlling foreign trade too. Their humiliated dreams and United Kingdom guidelines of strategic omission precipitated tensions. Furthermore, the limits to natural resources in many European nations began to gradually change the trade balance and made national industries hunt for new territories rich in natural resources.

Profit-making interests contributed considerably to Anglo-German competition during the scuttle for tropical Africa. This was the landscape of the sharpest disagreement between particular German and British money-making interests. There have been two divisions in Africa. One was concerned with the real obligation of political limits across the continents during the last section of the nineteenth century. The other, which in reality began in the mid-nineteenth century, was comprised of the so-called business partition.

Rivalries between the Great Powers were aggravated beginning in the 1880s by the scramble for colonies, which caused much of Africa and Asia to be under European decree in the subsequent quarter century (Keenan 50-78). 

Consequently, in Russia and Germany mainly, military institutions started to have an immense influence on public doctrines. This enlargement in militarism helped set in motion the countries concerned with war. Nationalism is another thing that scholars have attributed to the cause of World War I. Much of the cause was primed on the need of the Slavic people in Bosnia and Herzegovina to be dissociated with Austria-Hungary but, instead, be associated with Serbia (Keenan 82). As time passed by, countries all over Europe made joint defense unions that would draw them into battle.

Thus, if one country was attacked, allied countries were compelled to defend them. For instance, before World War I, the following alliances existed: Russia and Serbia, France and Russia, Japan and Britain, Germany and Austria-Hungary, Britain and France and Belgium. When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia retaliated in defense of Serbia. Germany seeing Russia rallying its navy confirmed war on Russia. France was then pulled into the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Germany declared war on France through Belgium drawing Britain in against Germany. 

Subsequently, Japan entered the war. Soon after, the United States and Italy drew in on the sides of the allies (Ferguson 101-120).