In 1914, the Philippines were under the control of the United States. Following the Spanish-American War in 1898, the US replaced Spain as the colonial power and continued to engage in hostilities with the native Filipinos who wanted complete independence.
In the Balkans, Serbia had won autonomy in 1817, and southern Greece won independence in the 1830s. But many Serbs and Greeks still lived in the Balkans under Ottoman rule. The Ottoman empire was home to other national groups, such as Bulgarians and Romanians. During the 1800s, various subject peoples staged revolts against the Ottomans, hoping to set up their own independent states.
Such nationalist stirrings became mixed up with the ambitions of the great European powers. In the mid-1800s, Europeans came to see the Ottoman empire as "the sick man of Europe." Eagerly, they scrambled to divide up Ottoman lands. Russia pushed south toward the Black Sea and Istanbul, which Russians still called Constantinople. Austria-Hungary took control of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This action angered the Serbs, who also had hoped to expand into that area. Meanwhile, Britain and France set their sights on other Ottoman lands in the Middle East and North Africa.
