World War I triggered on June 28, 1914. World War 1 was triggered on 28 June 1914 by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his pregnant wife Sophie. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the throne of Austria and Hungary. The assassination was planned by a Serbian terrorist group, called The Black Hand and the man who shot Franz Ferdinand and his wife was a Bosnian revolutionary named Gavrilo Princip.
A primary cause of WW1 was a difference over foreign policy. Although the assassination of Franz Ferdinand triggered WW1, that was only the immediate cause. Differences over foreign policy between the major world powers was the underlying cause of the war.
WW1 had many causes:
A tangle of alliances made between countries, to maintain a balance power in Europe, which brought about the scale of the conflict.
The Bosnian Crisis where Austria-Hungary took over the former Turkish province of Bosnia in 1909 angering Serbia.
Countries were building their military forces, arms and battleships.
Countries wanted to regain lost territories from previous conflicts and build empires.
The Moroccan Crisis where Germans were protesting in 1911 against the French possession of Morocco.
World War I was known by a number of different names. Other names for World War 1 include ‘The War to End All Wars’, The War of the Nations, WW1 and ‘The Great War’.
The Americans joined World War 1 after 128 Americans were killed by a German submarine. In 1915, the British passenger sip Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine. In all, 1,195 passengers, including 128 Americans, lost their lives. Americans were outraged and put pressure on the U.S. government to enter the war. President Woodrow Wilson wanted a peaceful end to the war, but in 1917, when the Germans announced that their submarines would sink any ship that approached Britain, Wilson declared that America would enter the war and restore peace to Europe. The United States entered the war on April 6, 1917.
8 million soldiers died in WW1 and 21 million were injured. 65 million troops were mobilized during during the war, 8 million troops died and 21 million troops were wounded. 58,000 British soldiers were lost on the first day at the Battle of the Somme. Chemical weapons were first used in World War I. The chemical was mustard gas.
The United States only spent seven and a half months in actual combat. The U.S. was in the war in actual combat for only seven and a half months during which time 116,000 were killed and 204,000 were wounded. In the Battle of Verdun in 1916, there were over a million casualties in ten months.
By 1918, German citizens were striking and demonstrating against the war. The British navy blocked German ports, which meant that thousands of Germans were starving and the economy was collapsing. Then the German navy suffered a major mutiny. After German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on November 9th, 1918, the leaders of both sides met at Compiegne, France. The peace armistice was signed on November 11th. By the end of the war four empires — the Russian empire, the Ottoman empire, the German empire, and the Austro-Hungarian empire had collapsed because of the war.
In 1919, The Treaty of Versailles officially ended the WW1. The Treaty required that Germany accept full responsibility for causing the war; make reparations to some Allied countries; surrender some of its territory to surrounding countries; surrender its African colonies; and limit the size of its military. The Treaty also established the League of Nations to prevent future wars. The League of Nations helped Europe rebuild and fifty-three nations joined by 1923. But the U.S. Senate refused to let the United States join the League of Nations, and as a result, President Wilson, who had established the League, suffered a nervous collapse and spent the rest of his term as an invalid.
Germany joined the League of Nations in 1926, but many Germans were very resentful of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany and Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933. Italy withdrew three years later. The League of Nations was unable to stop German, Italian, and Japanese from expanding their power and taking over smaller countries. Many believe World War I never really ended, and that World War II never would have happened if not for WW1.
1) The British took several steps between 1763-1774 that alienated its American colonies. The biggest steps taken were the taxes implemented by the British parliament. Laws like the Stamp Act, Townshend Act, and the Tea Act were all laws passed without the colonists consent.
2) Britain felt justified in passing these laws and taxes without the colonists consent because they felt that the reason their government was in debt was due to protecting America during the French and Indian War. From 1754-1763, the British sent soldiers, ammunition, and other resources to North America to help the colonists fight the French. This war caused the British government to go into debt, so they turned to the Americans for assistance since they just protected them from the French.
3) The colonists rebelled against the taxes and laws. They boycotted British goods, attacked tax collectors, and protested until the laws were repealed.
4) The colonists stated that the laws and taxes implemented by the British parliament were unfair because they were passed without their consent. This is the first time that the colonists were taxed by someone other than their colonial legislature. This prompted the rallying cry of "no taxation without representation."
Answer: During Reconstruction freed slaves began to leave the South. One such group, originally from Kentucky, established the community of Nicodemus in 1877 in Graham County on the high, arid plains of northwestern Kansas. That African Americans became American citizens was arguably the signal development during Reconstruction. Only a decade earlier the Supreme Court had ruled in the Dred Scott decision in 1858 that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants—whether or not they were slaves—could never be citizens of the United States. When, during the Civil War, slaves began to flee to Union lines in growing numbers and after the Emancipation Proclamation, it became clear that “facts on the ground” would overtake the Dred Scott decision. However, any resolution of the status of former slaves had to be resolved within the context of American federalism, because until that time citizenship was defined and protected by state law. Therefore, the resolution of the citizenship status of blacks was contingent on the status of the former Confederate states and their relationship with the nation at large.
