Militarism- policy of building up strong military forces to prepare for war.
Alliances- agreements between nations to aid and protect one another.
Nationalism- pride in or devotion to one’s country.
Imperialism- when one country takes over another country economically and politically.
Assassination- murder of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Explanation:
Militarism- The late nineteenth century was an era of military competition, particularly between the major European powers. The policy of building a stronger military was judged relative to neighbours, creating a culture of paranoia that heightened the search for alliances. It was fed by the cultural belief that war is good for nations. Germany in particular looked to expand its navy. However, the ‘naval race’ was never a real contest – the British always s maintained naval superiority. But the British obsession with naval dominance was strong. Government rhetoric exaggerated military expansionism. A simple naivety in the potential scale and bloodshed of a European war prevented several governments from checking their aggression.
Alliances: A web of alliances developed in Europe between 1870 and 1914, effectively creating two camps bound by commitments to maintain sovereignty or intervene militarily – the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance.
The Triple Alliance of 1882 linked Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. The Triple Entente of 1907 linked France, Britain and Russia.
A historic point of conflict between Austria Hungary and Russia was over their incompatible Balkan interests, and France had a deep suspicion of Germany rooted in their defeat in the 1870 war. The alliance system primarily came about because after 1870 Germany, under Bismarck, set a precedent by playing its neighbours’ imperial endeavours off one another, in order to maintain a balance of power within Europe.
Nationalism- Nationalism was also a new and powerful source of tension in Europe. It was tied to militarism, and clashed with the interests of the imperial powers in Europe. Nationalism created new areas of interest over which nations could compete.
Imperialism- Imperial competition also pushed the countries towards adopting alliances. Colonies were units of exchange that could be bargained without significantly affecting the metro-pole. They also brought nations who would otherwise not interact into conflict and agreement. For example, the Russo-Japanese War (1905) over aspirations in China, helped bring the Triple Entente into being.
It has been suggested that Germany was motivated by imperial ambitions to invade Belgium and France. Certainly the expansion of the British and French empires, fired by the rise of industrialism and the pursuit of new markets, caused some resentment in Germany, and the pursuit of a short, aborted imperial policy in the late nineteenth century.
Assassination- Ferdinand and his wife were murdered in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Bosnian Serbian nationalist terrorist organization the ‘Black Hand Gang.’ Ferdinand’s death, which was interpreted as a product of official Serbian policy, created the July Crisis – a month of diplomatic and governmental miscalculations that saw a domino effect of war declarations initiated.
The greatest cause of the war was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The assassination precipitated a rapid descent into World War I. First, Austria-Hungary gained German support for punitive action against Serbia. It then sent Serbia an ultimatum, worded in a way that made acceptance unlikely. Serbia proposed arbitration to resolve the dispute, but Austria-Hungary instead declared war on July 28, 1914, exactly a month after Ferdinand’s death. By the following week, Germany, Russia, France, Belgium, Montenegro and Great Britain had all been drawn into the conflict, and other countries like the United States would enter later. Overall, more than 9 million soldiers and nearly that many civilians would die in fighting that lasted until 1918.
Abraham Lincoln's two inaugural speeches differ in many ways. His first speech was to urge the southern hemisphere not to secede, and his second to address the post-war protests.
<h3>What was so special about Lincoln's second address?</h3>
Lincoln's second address was not about happiness or joy. Instead, he provided Lincoln's insight into the causes and significance of the war.
"The scourge of war", he explained, was best understood as divine punishment for the sin of slavery, a sin of which all Americans, North and South, were guilty.
Thus, Abraham Lincoln emphasized on uniting the North and South in his second speech.
