Between 1871 and 1914 there was a arms race between the various colonialist economic powers. This process was known as Armed Peace, being that the great incentive to the armament industry had as a great laboratory of tests conflicts in Asia and Africa, whose objective was the expansion of the colonial empires.
In this colonialist interest, Germany and Italy had been left behind in relation to France and England, because of the late unification of the first two countries, which forced them to invest in colonialism to catch up with the others. powers.
Furthermore, policies of alliances between the imperialist nations were carried out. Of the main ones, the triple alliance, formed by the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy, the latter of which became neutral at the beginning of World War I, and Triple Entente, making up the England, France and Russia alliance. The common interests of the Triple Entente against the Triple Alliance were as follows: France maintained a resentment against Germany for its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War that cost it the rich region of Alsace-Lorraine; Russia was opposed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Balkan region, where the Yugoslavs, South Slavic peoples, of the same ethnicity as the Russians, lived.
There was also capitalist competition, which led Germany to rival England as the main economic power of the continent, in addition to disputes for consumer markets and producers of raw materials in the areas colonial. There was also the rivalry of German finance capital against the English, in addition to the danger posed to England by the German naval force.
A dispute over colonial territory in Africa intensified animosities between the countries. THE Moroccan question, as one of the imperialist disputes in Africa became known, pitted France and England against Germany, withdrawing the right of exploitation of the location by the Germans, achieved in the Madrid Convention of 1880. This break with the agreement caused the German Kaiser Wilhelm II to land in Tangier, in 1905, creating an impasse with the other powers and promising to maintain Moroccan independence from French rule.
Another focus of conflicts that would lead to World War I was the Balkan question. The region located between the Black and Adriatic seas was made up of peoples of various ethnicities and dominated by the weakened Turkish Empire. This region was the target of disputes between the two alliances because it was a strategic point for the routes for the flow of goods that the powers Europeans intended to build, such as the construction of a railroad by the Germans, which would link their country to the Middle East, the source of several raw material. It was in the Balkan region that there were also nationalist conflicts that led to the assassination of Archduke Francisco Ferdinando, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His death started the First World War.
Take the opportunity to check out our video lesson related to the subject:
