What Role Did The Alliance System Play In Causing The First World War?

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What Role Did The Alliance System Play In Causing The First World War?

In this piece work I am going to be describing the Alliance System and how it helped to cause the First World War. This is a very important part, because there were many other little things that were put together to creating the First World War, this include agreements, rivalry and murders.

In Europe there was 6 powerful countries – these countries were divided into 2 opposing Alliances – which is none as an “agreement between the 6 countries. The “Triple Entente” (Entente is a French word meaning Friendship) which contain of; Britain, France and Russia and the Central Powers or “Triple Alliance” which contain of; Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, This was formed in 1882. In the promise of an Alliance was if on was under attack the other 2 countries will come and help. Each country was heavily armed with soldiers and weapons and each one had reasons of distrusting other European countries. The Alliance System came up for the reason of the 6 powerful countries feeling threatened by each other, they would rather have 3 on each side rather than having 1 country against 5 other countries, this would have been known as an unfair war, so it was decided to create the Alliance. They all obviously wanted to bigger Empire and they would go about anything to get it.  World War I was caused in part by the two opposing alliances developed by Bismarckian diplomacy after the Franco-Prussian War. In order to diplomatically isolate France, Bismarck formed the  in 1872, an alliance between Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. When the French occupied Tunisia, Bismarck took advantage of Italian resentment towards France and created the  between Germany, Italy and Austria- Hungary in 1882. In exchange for Italy's agreement to stay neutral if war broke out between Austria-Hungary and Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary would protect Italy from France. Russia and Austria-Hungary grew suspicious of each other over conflicts in the Balkans in 1887, but Bismarck repaired the damage to his alliances with a Reinsurance treaty with Russia which allowing both powers to stay neutral if the other was at war. However, after Bismarck was fired by Kaiser William II in 1890, the traditional dislike of Slavs kept Bismarck's successors from renewing the understanding with Russia. France took advantage of this opportunity to get an ally, and the  was formed in 1891, which became a formal alliance in 1894. The Kruger telegram William II sent to congratulate the leader of the Boers for defeating the British in 1896, his instructions to the German soldiers to behave like Huns in China during the Boxer Rebellion, and particularly the big- scale navy he was building all contributed to British distrust of Germany. As a result, Britain and France overlooked all major imperialistic conflict between them and formed the Entente Cordiale in 1904.  in 1907 after they had reached an understanding with Britain's ally Japan and William II had further alienated Russia by supporting Austrian ambitions in the Balkans. The Triple Entente, an informal coalition between Great Britain, France and Russia, now countered the Triple Alliance. International tension was greatly increased by the division of Europe into two armed camps.

Germany – there goal was to make a empire, in fact and empire bigger than Britain; so before 1870 Germany had been collecting small independent states this includes the most powerful of them all – Prussia. In 1870 the Prussian statesman Bismarck had won a war against France, after this he united the many German states into a new and powerful German empire. German took the important industrial area of Alsace-Larraine. Germany knew that they had now had enemies so there was no better way to form an alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy to guard them from the revenge attack from the French. Germany was growing; they called themselves the new Germany. Germany was especially successful in industry; in fact, in 1914 the German industries had overtaken Britain and they were second in the world just after the USA. The German leader had great ambitions for German. The Kaiser of Germany wanted Germany to be the world power and should have overseas colonies just like France and Britain so they introduced colonies in Africa.

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Kaiser Wilhelm was only 27 when the German history was becoming a world power. He was very famous for his energy and excitement but he was very unpredictable. He was very keen on military parades and love been photographed in military uniform. He chose military people to most of his important positions in his government. He was very ambitious; he wanted Germany to be the greatest power in Europe and to be known by all the states older than Germany. He was involved in the Germany plans for war.

Britain V Germany - Britain owned a quarter of the ...

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