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European and Global geopolitics of the early 20th century.
Europe was at its height of hegemony and dominance over the rest of the world, having the most modern technologies and ideas that set them ahead of the rest of the world. Nationalism in Europe was still large.
[Europe Before World War One](http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8042.pdf
What Can 1914 Tell Us About 2014 -
Europe was run by monarchs and empires, with only three nations in Europe being republics at the time. All of the European great powers were focused on matters abroad like the Scramble For Africa, and the Boxer Rebellion in Qing Dynasty China. However, these only served as mere distractions. It was only a matter of time that another grand scale conflict between the great powers of Europe was to come. Alliances between great powers began to shape the two opposing sides of this upcoming war.
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The Americas at this point, were mostly under the sphere of influence of the United States. Latin America was quite peaceful in regards to external conflicts, as most of the countries were dealing with internal issues. The United States was an emerging great power at this point, but they took an isolationist approach to the rest of the world. The United States, with the Monroe Doctrine, did not want to get involved with European Imperialist Wars.
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Similarly to Africa, most of Asia was controlled by European powers aside from the exceptions of Qing dynasty China, which instead of conquering, Europeans simply exploited their internal instability for lucrative trade deals and to show the Chinese that they were no longer the dominant force in even Asia. The other exception was Japan, which had in a way, become a European styled absolutist, imperialistic state, so they could not be conquered. Japan wanted to stand equal to European powers.
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The German Empire, the single state that threatened the power balance of Europe, wanted to challenge Britain in the Oceans to protect her own colonies in Africa, and to end the comfortable position Britain had over the rest of Europe. In response the British began to grow their navy to stay ahead of Germany’s rapid naval build up. This caused tension between the two European superpowers. This tension would harm the two countries relations so badly, that it seemed irreversible.
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The Boxer Rebellion occurred in Qing Dynasty China, shortly after an anti-foreigner party gained control of the Imperial government. This was met with distaste from the foreign European Powers, so with the help of Japan and the United States, they set up the Eight-Nation Alliance. Qing Dynasty China, with their backward technology and inefficient military, the Qing was defeated. The result was further humiliation of the Qing Dynasty as well as territorial and monetary concessions to the victors.
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The Russo-Japanese War was an Asian conflict that, from the Russian point of view, was supposed to be a quick and easy war to win to restore the peoples’ faith in the tsar. The war turned out to be an international embarrassment for Russia, putting their military incompetence on full display. Japan won the war, which gave them a large courage boost as well as a firm grip over Manchuria, Korea, and the island of Sakhalin.
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The Triple Entente was an alliance between the powers of France, Britain and Russia against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy’s alliance, the creatively named “Triple Alliance.” These alliances set up who was to fight who in the upcoming Great War.
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Austria-Hungary, a multi-ethnic empire with a small powerful minority (Austrians and Hungarians) had already controlled Bosnia since 1878. It was the decision to annex Bosnia in 1908, that would set the Russian Empire and Serbia against Austria-Hungary. Furthermore, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia without the approval of the other great powers of Europe, leading those powers almost fully isolating Austria-Hungary from large affairs. Austria-Hungary was really only left with Germany as an ally.
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By 1910, The Scramble of Africa was about finished, and really only about 10% of Africa was not directly or indirectly controlled by Europeans. The Scramble of Africa, was a plan created by famed German chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, to stall European tensions on the mainland to prevent a large scale war in Europe. Effectively, it was a distraction that all European powers could focus on, rather than focus on each other. With the Scramble over, the great powers were back at each other’s throats.
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The Second Moroccan Crisis was another German attempt to break France and Britains warm relations with each other. However, when Germany tried to challenge their relationship the British again stood with France against Germany, with Germany backing down from Morocco for the last time. In the end, this only pushed Britain and France closer together against, to what they perceived as the greatest threat to Europe, Germany.
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The Qing government was quickly overwhelmed when a rebellion backed by the military took control of 15 provinces within China. China from here on would abandon the traditional form of government and pursue modernization and westernization.
In the end though, China would be run by a military dictatorship from this and face instability until the collapse of this government. -
The First Balkan War started as a coalition of Balkan countries (Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece, and Albanian rebels) against the Ottoman Empire who controlled much of their ethnic peoples that they longed to save. The war was an Ottoman defeat, putting the already struggling state even further behind the Europeans who once feared them. Most of the Empire’s remaining European land was partitioned between the victors. However, some of the borders were not satisfying for some nations.
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This war was much shorter than the first. Caused by the Bulgarian tsar unsatisfied with the territorial gains from the first war, Bulgaria waged war against Serbia and Greece for the region of Macedonia. Bulgaria’s momentary successes were routed, and Bulgaria’s neighbors the Ottomans and Romania joined against them. The result was a Bulgarian defeat. This left Bulgaria bitter, while Serbia could now focus on their other foreign controlled territory, Bosnia within Austria-Hungary.
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World War One itself was major, it shaped the geopolitical climate of the modern world to what it is now. In World War One there were many major events during the course of the war that shaped future events. Of course, the outcome of World War One played a major factor in the future course of events.
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Gravilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. This is largely blamed as the event that caused World War One. As a result Austria-Hungary, furious at the murder of the heir to the throne, saw Serbia as responsible despite the lack of evidence. Serbia actually agreed to most of the terms, but in the end Serbia could not meet all the terms and cut communications with Austria. Germany sent Austria the infamous “Blank Check,” which pledged German support to any decision Austria makes.
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Austria-Hungary, after Serbia failed to agree to the demands of the ultimatum in the one-month time span, invaded Serbia. With Russia as an ally of Serbia, the war escalated to no one’s surprise. By August 3rd, it was Germany and Austria-Hungary vs. Serbia, Russia, and France.
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Germany’s Schlieffen Plan had the intention of knocking France out of the war early. The plan required the German Army to go around France’s defenses on their shared border, through neutral Belgium. The plan was executed on August 3rd, and Britain joined the war on the entente’s side on August 4th. Germany’s Schlieffen Plan failed, and now Germany was forced to face more resistance, and Britain was now a belligerent in the war.
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With the war largely turning into a stalemate early on as fronts stalled, both sides enlisted the help from other nations, opening new fronts. Japan joined the entente once they declared war on Germany to take their Asian Pacific colonies.
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The Ottoman Empire at first was torn on whether or not they would join the war on Germany’s side or to stay neutral. Some pro-war politicians in the Ottoman Empire provoked Russia, and at that point there was no turning back. The Ottoman Empire would join the war on the side of the Central Powers, surrounded by enemies.
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Germany’s plan to deal with Britain was to starve Britain and France of imported goods like food and war resources. They used unrestricted submarine warfare against the Western Entente in hopes of starving them out of the war. Germany declared the waters around the British Isles a war zone, where they would sink any ships. This policy would eventually lead to the sinking of the Lusitania, a ship carrying many Americans on the ship, which swayed American public opinion against Germany.
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Italy, actually an ally of the Central Powers before the war, both sides tried hard to convince Italy to join the war on their side. Italy, with resentments to Austria-Hungary and the nationalistic idea that Italy should control the whole of the Adriatic Sea, with much of it controlled by Austria-Hungary. With all that considered, despite Italy’s former alliance with Germany, they joined the war against the Central Powers, the former Triple Alliance.
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Austria-Hungary up to this point was stalled in their advances against Serbia and neighboring Montenegro, an ally of Serbia. The Central Powers enlisted the help of Bulgaria, expecting them to agree to join on their side, as Bulgaria still wanted to reclaim their lost territory from the Second Balkan War. Bulgaria agreed to join the Central Powers on October 12th, and with Austro-Hungarian and Germany aid, easily overwhelmed Serbia and Montenegro and capitulated them.
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The Republic of China, a military dictatorship at the time, collapsed shortly after the death of Yuan Shikai, the dictator of China, and a brief restoration of the Qing Emperor. Local army groups, or cliques, gained a lot of regional power, finally the all started to act independently of the central government, which after Shikai’s death had little real power over China. Each clique, led by a powerful warlord, fought each other for control over China. China would not reunify until 1949.
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The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret treaty between the British and French to divide up the Ottoman Empire’s lands as they see fit, which mostly benefited them. This was kept secret to not lose the Arab’s will to fight against the Ottomans which was soon about to begin.
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With promises from the British saying that once the entente wins the war with Arab help, Arabia can form their own large unified kingdom out of the Ottoman held territories. This is considered by some as the first showing of Arab Nationalism, the idea that all Arabs should be unified under a single state.
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Germany, worried that the United States may join the war against them, needed to set up a distraction against the U.S. Their plan, start a second Mexican American War. Germany sent a telegram to Mexico offering them United States land if they declared war on the U.S. This telegram was intercepted by the British, and quickly shown to the Americans afterward.
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Outraged by the Zimmerman Telegram, The United States president Woodrow Wilson, someone who advocated for peace, declared war on the German Empire. This was a horrific turn of events for Germany, and the Germans needed a way to defeat France in a timely manner before large numbers of American troops showed up.
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The October Revolution, or the Communist Revolution in Russia, was caused by a largely upset Russian population that looked towards the Bolsheviks led by Lenin as the only way out of the pointless losing war. This led to Russia’s surrender, and they were forced to sign a harsh treaty with the Germans that forced Russia to lose a large share of its resources. The Bolsheviks had not completely won yet, the Russian Civil War would continue until October 1922.
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The belligerents of the war were all greatly exhausted fighting this 4 year long gauntlet of a war, much of the populations of each European country was revolting and going on strikes. At the closing months of World War One, it seemed that Central Powers were on the back foot, and by November 11th they had all surrendered one by one. The result was an Entente victory over the Central Powers. The fait of the Central Powers and their empires was to be decided by the victors.
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I will go into much lesser detail in the events from here on, as going in depth would just be too long. I will cover important treaties as well as any big global events afterward with an end point of World War Two for time’s sake. The First World War left many European countries in ruins, all of them having to rebuild, and all facing some instability and unhappiness among the population. The war mainly benefited Britain and France and their empires, even at the expense of some of their allies.
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This was the treaty that formally ended the war between the Entente and Germany. Germany faced territorial loses, a great loss in national pride, and a mandatory war reparation cost of 132 billion gold marks ($33 billion dollars today’s money) which after a costly war, was impossible to pay off. The government that took hold of Germany was the infamous Weimar Republic, an inefficient government that could do little for the nation, giving rise to extreme political parties in Germany.
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Caused by great joy of the end of World War One, booming economies, and new liberal ideas that would cause major reforms internally for nations, the 1920’s was defined as a time of bliss after the sorrow. In America women gained the right to vote, and America was now truly considered by all as a great power of the world. It was a great high point for western culture. It would all come to an end near the end of the decade though.
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The Treaty of Sevres was the treaty that divided up the Ottoman Empire between the Entente. This treaty also revealed the once secret Sykes-Picot Agreement two the rest of the world. The Arabs were betrayed of their promises, as Britain and France divided up northern Arabia. The Turks of the previous Ottoman Empire were condensed into a small rump state centered around Ankara, however they would later fight the War of Turkish Independence and regain much of their ethnically Turkish land.
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Italy, after coming out as a victor in World War One, was dissatisfied with the gains from the war. The Adriatic coast of Austria-Hungary was mostly given to the newly independent Kingdom of Yugoslavia. On top of that, Italy had a weak government and struggling economy which was perfect for a man like Benito Mussolini to take power. Mussolini was the man to invent fascism, and he brought that idea and displayed it to the world shortly after he became prim minister of Italy in 1922.
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The Republic of China, or the Kuomintang, had used to tolerate and work with the Chinese Communist Party, or the CCP, to overthrow many warlords and restore order in the rest of China. However, ideological differences split them in two factions. The Kuomintang was seemingly at war with itself and all of the still independent regional warlords.
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While not a result from World War One, the Great Depression made the struggling nations like Germany, Austria, Hungary, and more even more weak and unstable. With everyone’s economies shooting down, Germany, Austria and the losers of World War One could not pay the war reparations. In Germany, they would experience hyper-inflation of their currency making basic life needs like bread, require more and more money that was slowly becoming more worthless.
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The smaller war in between the two larger Sino-Japanese conflicts, the Japanese Invasion of Manchuria was a quick war lasting shorter than a year. This war allowed Japan to acquire a larger foothold in China, as the war exulted in the provinces of Manchuria being turned into a Japanese puppet state called, Manchukuo.
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With the population upset and hungry, and the government failing to really do anything about it, much of the population looked towards the nationalist socialists (Nazis) as the solution from their nation’s shortcomings. Adolf Hitler promised to restore Germany back to its former glory, and to remove the undesirable races that lead to the fall of Germany in the First World War, like the Jews, as he claimed.
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The Second Sino-Japanese War was the last and largest conflict between Japan and China. This war would halt the first stage of the Chinese Civil War, as the Kuomintang and the CCP would join forces along with the other warlords to stop Japan’s invasion. Some consider this the start of World War Two, as the conflicts eventually run parallel with each other.
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Nazi Germany annexed Austria through a referendum with a goal of united all Germans under one banner. This aggressive attitude was tolerated once before by the former Entente powers, as France did nothing once Germany remilitarized the Rhineland. Britain and France, wanting to avoid another large scale conflict, as well as hoping that Germany would only focus on destroying the Soviet Union, went with the diplomatic approach of appeasement. They let the Nazis gain more power with those hopes.
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Nazi German had grown considerably thanks to Britain and France’s diplomatic strategy of appeasement. Hitler had on more territory to try and appease for, it was the Polish Corridor, a historically German land that would connect the German territory of East Prussia to the mainland. After Poland refused to cede the Polish Corridor to Nazi Germany, the Germans invaded. Britain and France came to the support of Poland, and declared war on Germany, beginning the Second World War.
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