Assassination
The First World War was a terrible tragedy in which millions suffered but how did it start is what I will try to explain. In Bosnia arch duke Franz Ferdinand hair to the Austrian throne arrived for a royal visit. A lot of Bosnia was exited to see him but among the crowd were six teenage terrorists sworn to kill the archduke they hated him and Austria. The terrorists were stationed at intervals along the riverside route, which their cars would follow on their way to town. All six of the terrorists were armed with bombs and pistols in their pockets, and pills of poison which they had sworn to swallow if they were caught so as not to give the others away. It seemed the plan could not fail. The archduke had been given a lot of threats on his life so he naturally paid no attention to them.
When there cars came into site at 10.15 the cars passed the fist line of assassins waited for him the first teenager get scared and fled. Nearby the next assassin also lost his nerve and did nothing. As the cars passed Camurja Bridge the second assassin saw his bomb took his pill and jumped in the river. The archduke saw the bomb and threw it of his car, but it exploded underneath the car behind and injured several people. There was more confusion as the procession accelerated away fearing more bombs. Meanwhile the police dragged the assassin’s body out of the river his cyanide was old and had not worked.
The archduke was driven to town hall, where he demanded to be taken to visit the bomb victims in hospital. Fearing more bombs the officials decided to take a new route away from the crowds, but this was not properly explained to the driver and there were no police went with the procession.
On hearing the bomb the assassins thought the archduke was dead and left. Except One assassin called Princip who discovered the truth. Unhappy to hear the news he wondered of across the street to a café.
At 10,45 Princip was standing outside the café when the archdukes car suddenly arrived beside him. This was a mistake because according to the new plan the procession should have gone up Appel Quay. When the driver realised he hade made a wrong turn he stopped and started to reverse Princip pulled out an automatic pistol from his coat. He fired two shots one pieced the archduke’s neck and the other hit his wife both the archduke and his wife died.
Austria blamed Serbia and threatened to invade but Serbia was allied with Russia in case of war. Germany was allied with Austria and declared war on Russia.
Colonial rivalry
European nations began to gather many overseas colonies about between 1870 and 1914. This was for a variety of reasons, such as hope of economic gain, taking the raw materials from colonies and selling manufactured groups back to them, the desire of prestige, for religious and cultural reasons, for a feeling of superiority, for military and strategic reasons. During the scramble for Africa Germany gained fewer territories than either Britain and France, both of who had longer traditions of colonialism.
Trouble began in the 1905 Moroccan crisis with a speech by Kaiser Wilhelm II at tangier when he encouraged the Moroccans to seek independents. In an attempt to weaken France and perhaps the new ‘entente cordiale’ the crisis was resolved by the Algeciras conference of 1906, held by Spain, where Britain and other countries supported France, and Germany was humiliated.
In the Agadir crisis 1911, French troops were involved in putting down riotes in a number of Moroccan towns when a German gunboat the panther, suddenly appeared at the Atlantic port of Agadir to evacuate German merchants. It has often been alleged that he had been sent there simply to provide an excuse for an intervention. Both Britain and France took this as a threat. Especially in Britain public opinion was anxious about the growing strength of the German navy. Eventually Germany agreed not to meddle any further in Moroccan affairs, and France gave Germany a small stripe of land from the French Congo.
Sarajavo
On 28 June 1914 the hair to the throne of Austria-Hungary and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia by a member of the Black Hand a gang of Serbian nationalists. Serbia and Austria were now in direct opposition. For a little month nothing happened then it all came in a rush.
Serbia had a choice of giving into Austria-Hungary’s demands or there would be war Serbia gave in to most of the demands but for the ones they didn’t Austria attacked.
Resentment over the Boar War
Wilhelm the second had offended Britain by seeming to sympathise with the Boars both before and during the Boar war 1899-1902, e.g. selling weapons to the Boars and sending a Message of congratulation when the Jameson raid 1895 failed. This insulted britain because he was a grandson of Queen Victoria and nephew of Edward the seventh.
Trade rivalry
Till about 1870 Britain had dominated world trade but both Germany and the USA started to catch up and in some places overtake Britain. Germany had an advantage over Britain by industrialising later so they could learn from British experience and use more up to date equipment, like chemicals, steel making and heavy engineering Germany was displacing Britain because there products were less expensive because they were produced on more efficient machines. Naturally this did not endear German merchants to their British counterparts.
Resentment over Alsace and Lorraine.
Frances humiliating defeat by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War 1870 to 71 increased Frances hostility to Germany because of loss of the boarder provinces of Alsaca and Lorraine. Most French people felt that they needed revenge for this.
In my conclusion I still think that the alliance was the main cause for world war one.