Why World War I Began Essay

As history shows, a war can be a detrimental cause of loss of life, property and spirit. Unfortunately for the entire world, there have been two mass world wars throughout history. The first world war happened between July 1914 and November 1918. There were a couple of causes to why this war started, but the immediate cause of it would be because of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Although this was the immediate cause, other factors also came into play as to why the war began. These factors include: the alliances made during the war, imperialism, militarism and nationalism. When looking at it from a whole perspective, World War I began because of these factors and without them, there may have not been a world war. In June 1914, World War I began because of the assassination of the Archduke of Austria. The Archduke was assassinated by a Serbian Nationalist that goes by the name of Gavrilo Princip. On the …show more content…
Imperialism is when a country increases their power and wealth by taking over countries that did not have the ability to stop them. This type of contingency happened all across Asia and Africa. European countries would go into countries within Africa and Asia, taking them over and utilizing their resources and the raw material these countries provided. European countries exploited countries of lower statures for years, even before the war began. “From 1875 to 1902 Europeans seized up to ninety percent of the African continent” (Coles, P. 596). Due to the fact that all of Europe had been using the concept of imperialism to better their country, confrontation was already prevalent because every country wanted all the raw material they could gain for themselves. When the word the a world war was beginning got out, the countries that partook in imperialism had no problem fighting against each other because they already had this underlying tension between each