European Imperialism

The conflicts of World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII) were primarily formed from empires that established their dominance through the forging of connections and alliances as well as conflicts and hierarchical relationships between people of different backgrounds and cultures. Empires are associated with many elements, with imperialism and power playing a dominant role in both world wars. However, in the sense of imperialism as ‘expanding power beyond the intrinsic ethnic boundaries of the nation’, it is clear that not all empires before and during the World Wars were actively imperialistic to the same degree (Payne 1995, p. 36). European imperialism was a more direct contributor to WWI than WWII and this led to capitalist rivalries between
The Marxist-Leninist perspective was also supported by Konne Zilliacus (in Lee (ed) 1963) who argued that ‘no European nation went to war in 1914 because of treaty obligations, moral issues or the rights of smalls nations, but to defend imperialistic interests which consisted of economic benefit and monopoly capital’. Therefore, European imperialism was a more direct contributor to WWI and led to capitalist rivalries and an imbalance in power and the consequences of this are significant upon WWII.
The conflicts of WWII were heavily influenced by the competition and balance-of-power tensions between the major powers that continued on from WWI. The end of WWI saw the collapse of ‘imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Russia – each lay shattered and deep economic problems such as the collapse of the world trade, unstable currencies, unemployment and mounting debt also aroused concern’ (McDonough 1997, pg. 46). The defeat of Germany meant that it no longer posed as a colonial threat thus, allowing Britain to begin it’s the reversion to reclaiming the middle positionwithin the European balance of