Why did the World War break out in the summer of 1914?

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Alejandra Cossio Martínez

Why did the World War break out in the summer of 1914?

The First World War seemed to be inevitable. It was a mixture of complex situations and problems that every time were becoming bigger and involving more and more countries. Like any other war, this war was about power. This was a crucial moment to gain something or to lose everything and European countries knew it. This War was the catastrophic result of defective decisions (Ferguson, Niall, 1914: Why the World Went to War, p.3) made all around Europe which influenced the whole world since all the most powerful countries were in Europe.

There were many problems in aspects in Europe, although it seemed like if it was a time of peace. Any of those problems had the potential of causing a war. Each Great power felt that their vital interests were somehow involved so many countries entered the war. There was no way of avoiding it. The assassination of the Prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the detonator of this. Vienna saw the opportunity of gaining German support with this, showing that even in an event like this, a murder, countries wanted to gain something.  

When the Great War was in its beginnings, it was the age of imperialism, a time when many countries were trying to build empires through the world. The problem was that they found themselves crashing with each other, disabling them to achieve what they wanted.  These situations were producing tensions, there was no country to trust in, and they were suspicious and afraid of the others. This was because all of them wanted the same more at the same time.

Nationalism was an important issue. Events such as the French Revolution had spread in almost all Europe the concept of democracy, extending the idea that the populations that were sharing the same ethnic origins, language and same politic ideas had the right to form independent states. However, this was totally ignored by the imperial forces which decided the destiny of the European issues in the Vienna Congress. Many nations which wanted autonomy were submitted to other states or they were divided. The Revolutions and mobilizations of the XIX century, achieved to revoke great part of the impositions accorded in Vienna. Nevertheless, the nationalist conflicts kept without solution in some areas of Europe and this is what provoked tensions at the beginnings of the XX century in Europe. Each country felt that their country was over the other ones, that it was the best one. They wanted their nation to be above all the others and they placed primary emphasis on promoting their culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations.

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The nationalist feeling was also present in the economic ambit. The Industrial Revolution, that begun in Great Britain at the end of the XVIII century, in France at the beginnings of XIX and in Germany from 1870, caused a great increase of manufactured products, so this countries were forced to be looking for new markets abroad. Africa was the place in where the politic of European expansion was best developed but also where the respective interests of colonies were in conflict quite often. The dominion over African territory caused economical rivalry between France, Germany and Great Britain. Therefore, this ...

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