Cracking the AP European History Exam, 2012 Edition by Princeton Review

Author:Princeton Review
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307944375
Publisher: Random House Information Group
Published: 2011-09-13T10:00:00+00:00

(B)   was the first firm to sell rail tickets

(C)   received a parliamentary charter in 1887

(D)   introduced package tours to Britain’s middle class

(E)   was the first mass cruise company

13

Global Wars

(1914–1945)

THE FIRST WORLD WAR (1914–1918)

CAUSES OF THE WAR

Although the Versailles Treaty, which marked the end of the First World War, stated emphatically that the Germans and their allies were responsible for starting the war, the reality is a bit more complicated. The following are some of the major reasons why Europe exploded in 1914, setting the stage for a conflict that would shatter the very foundations of the continent.

Political and Social Tensions in Europe

The first decade of the twentieth century witnessed a number of political and social crises around Europe that may have led politicians to willingly pursue a foreign war with the hope that it would divert attention from domestic issues.

Great Britain and Ireland

Great Britain faced the contentious issue of Ireland, which threatened to explode as Nationalist forces began to press for independence while their political opposites, the Unionists, expressed their increasingly determined desire to remain a part of Great Britain. Great Britain was also shaken, as was France, by a growing number of labor conflicts that resulted from the overall stagnation of wages during this period.

France

In France, the Third Republic was in crisis over the Dreyfus Affair that began in 1894 and involved a Jewish officer who was falsely accused of telling military secrets to the Germans. The incident revealed the virulence of French anti-Semitism while also showing the extent to which many in France despised the very idea of a republican form of government.

The “Affair” was also tied to another contentious issue splitting the French public—the question concerning the proper role of the Catholic Church in a democratic French state. Increasingly, by the end of the century, the individuals who governed France were openly hostile to the Catholic Church which they considered to be anti-republican. These politicians worked to exclude the Church from French life by enacting laws such as one that eliminated the Church from primary and secondary education.

Russia

Russia rang in the twentieth century with the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, which, when Russia lost once again, revealed the complete bankruptcy of the Tsarist state. This led to a revolution in the following year. Initially, the goal of the revolution was met—the creation of the Duma, or parliament—that would transform Russia into a constitutional monarchy. Tsar Nicholas II agreed to rule in conjunction with the Duma. Throughout the following years, the Tsarist regime recovered and once again functioned primarily as an unwieldy autocracy.

Germany and Austria-Hungary

The other imperial regimes, Germany and Austria-Hungary, also saw war as a possible means of escaping from a relatively bleak domestic political situation. In Germany, worker agitation was on the rise, and the Kaiser and his inner circle dreaded the possibility of a Socialist revolution, although the threat did not really exist.

Austria-Hungary had to deal with its constant, seemingly insurmountable nationality problems. In the Hungarian part of the empire, the process of “Magyarization,” the mandatory dominance of the Magyar

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