The Causes of World War One

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World War 1 Summative There were four main causes of World War One which include alliances, imperialism, militarism and nationalism, but in my opinion, though all causes contributed greatly to World War 1, the causes that had the most effect on starting the war were nationalism and imperialism. I believe Imperialism played a huge part in causing World War 1 because the great powers of Europe all wanted to make money selling their natural resources, but when they ran out there was a huge conflict for resource rich land and expanding their respective countries. This created a great deal of tension between the great powers of Europe which threatened European war years before World War 1 started. The wealthiest European country at the time, Great Britain, made a lot of money selling its resources. Other European powers believed this was because Great Britain owned a lot of territory in 1900-1914 such as Canada, Australia, India, many countries in Africa and other counties in Oceania, South America and Asia and they wanted the countries Britain controlled and the money that came with it. Another cause that played a huge role in the start of World War 1 as the triggering incident was caused by nationalism. Austria-Hungary controlled Serbia, which citizens of Serbia didn’t like, including an organized Serbian gang called the “Black Hand”. The Black Hand planned to kill the Arch-Duke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary while he was visiting Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The assassination went comically wrong and wasn’t successful until the next day when Ferdinand’s car made a wrong turn, resulting in the car passing by a restaurant where a member of Black Hand, Gavrilo Princip, was eating a sandwich. Princip then took the ... ... middle of paper ... ...hich is because they won the war. “History is written by the Winners” (believed to have been said by Winston Churchill but may be of unknown origin) - if the Entente had surrendered instead of the Alliance then we might have completely different perspectives regarding World War 1. In 1915 Germany used chlorine gas, a dangerous weapon, on Canadians (Germany had a very prosperous chemical industry). In order to stop the chemical attacks Newfoundland’s Dr. Cluny Macpherson invented the world’s first gas mask. If Macpherson’s parents didn’t send him to school he wouldn’t have been able to go to university and wouldn’t have had the knowledge to make the gas mask. If Germany had this powerful weapon, able to destroy many soldiers at once, they might have been able to break the stalemate of trench battles and then the outcome of the war might have been very different.

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