hello,

I am doing an essay (Would the First World War have happend if the Archduke had not been murdered?)But I have no idea where to start!! I have to include some short and long term effect aswell,It also has to involve Imperialism,Nationilsm, Militarism and Alliances!Please can you help me!!

Thankyou,

Hello

Hope this gives a simple break down:



During 1900 & 1914 there was a series of crises and mistakes that created tension between the Great powers. Events before 1914 pushed the Great powers towards war, but events after Sarajevo sparked off the war.


Long term - events before 1914

Militarism: Is the build up of armies throughout Europe and naval race between Germany and Britain over the dreadnought.

Alliances: European powers were aligned to two main alliances. Triple Alliance and Triple Entente.

Imperialism: Empire building eg. Germany wanted a place in the sun, Crisis in Morocco 1905-06 & 1911. Austria-Hungary annex Bosnia 1908-09 (Bosnia/Serbia seek revenge which they get in 1914 with assassination, Russia backs off helping Serbia in 1909 and so were determined not to back off in July crisis 1914)

Nationalism: Belief that their country is better.



Short term:

Assassination is the spark

July Crisis:
Germany gives unconditional support to A-H
A-H issues harsh 10 point ultimatum
Serbia accepts 9
A-H declares war on Serbia
Russia mobilises army

Germany fears a war on two fronts and declares war on Russia, then France.
Germany invades Belgium (Schlieffen Plan)
Britain enters war

I think for this counter-factual essay, your conclusion will want to address the issue of whether - if FF HADN'T been assassinated - there would have been some other spark which set war off?

An easy answer would be to say yes - that the tensions were so great that eventually there would have been a spark which set off WWI.

HOWEVER, a good conclusion would mention that there had been previous sparks before - for example, the Agadir crisis/ the Pig War/ the Balkan War - and they hadn't caused a war.
I think it would be a good conclusion to argue that in fact there was something very special about the assassination of FF (viz. that it was SO personal to Austria-Hungary that A-H HAD to attack Serbia in response) which meant that it alone was a powerful enough trigger to set of WWI.

(You may want to add that, afterward, Gavrilo Princip said that - had he known the effect his assassination would have had - he never would have kiled the Archduke.)

Thanks....

It really helped however what do you mean by ''Serbia accepts nine'' because i'm struggling on the short term causes that we havn't really learnt about

Thankyou again...

On 23 July 1914, Austria-Hungary sent Serbia an ultimatum.
It was A-H's response to the murder of Franz ferdinand almost a month previously.
An ultimatum, of course, is where a country says: 'Inless you do a,b,c...' we will go to war.
A-H's ultimatum had ten demands - you can read them here.
Most of them were things that A-H required Serbia to do to stop Serbian extremists and terrorists endangering A-H.

Serbia accepted NINE of the ten demands.
But it had a problem with No.6:

The Serbian government argued that this was against its constitution.
To allow A-H to take part in Serbian legal processes would in effect be a surrender to Serbian sovereignty - what's the point of having your own country if another country controls the laws there!

So Serbia rejected point 6 only, offering instead to take the matter of point 6 to an international court.
This wasn't enough for A-H, who then declared war on Serbia.

Some historians do not believe that Serbia was genuine in its response. They believe that accepting the nine and being so very reasonable was a trick to make A-H look unreasanable, and to get the suppor of public opinion on Serbia's side.

Thankyou!!