The Causes Of Ww1

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What were the causes for the Great War? In this essay it will discuss the causes of The Great War. The four main causes are the competition for Colonies or Empire, The Arms race, the Alliance System, these three are long term causes and they have caused a lot of tension over a long period of time. And the final cause is the killing of Franz Ferdinand, this was a short term cause the trigger of the event. The Arms race was a long term cause of World War 1 because it caused tension across Europe. Each country in the alliance system was re-militarising there selves, we know this because overall Germany, Britain and Russia spent £175 m on ships (Dreadnought) and Germany’s industrial production was bigger than Britain’s so they could make more weapons, this meant they must have been trying to get the biggest army and navy and planning to go to war at any time. This is a cause of World War 1 because there was a lot of tension in Europe because of theses 2 super armies from both alliances keep concerning each other when one Empire gets bigger than the other, and they would be happy to go to war at any time to gain more land for their Empire. Competition over colonies to gain countries to expand countries Empire was a long term cause of World War 1. In 1870 there was a “scramble for Africa”. Countries across Europe were trying to gain as much countries in Africa as they could, to try and expand their empire. Britain and France had the largest Empires by the start of the 1900’s, but France and Germany had an argument over morocco in 1906 over who should own it, but it was already in the French colony. This was a cause of World War 1 because countries and alliances needed to keep gaining countries to keep the tension between the 2 alliances who’s got the bigger Empire. The forming of the two alliances to support their countries in the alliance was a long term cause of

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