Militarism
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there was a period of intense military competition between the major European powers, as each nation sought to outdo their rivals. The budget spent on the strengthening of armies and navies increased at an alarming rate, and came at the expense of other aspects of society.
Although nearly all of the European countries were committed to stockpiling weapons and increasing the size of their standing armies, perhaps the most striking example of militarism at this time was the arms race that took place between Germany and Great Britain at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.
Germany looked enviously at the size of the Royal Navy, which was by far the largest and most powerful in the world. She was determined to catch Britain up and in the eighteen nineties passed a series of naval acts to raise the incredible amounts of money needed to build a fleet of battleships.
To begin with, Britain turned a blind eye towards Germany’s efforts of building up her navy, but by the turn of the century she had become concerned enough to commission the building of a new super battleship, HMS Dreadnought.
Germany retaliated by passing two further naval acts, raising the money to build dreadnoughts of her own, which resulted in a fierce naval arms race between the two European powers.
Alliances
By 1914, Europe had become a hotbed of alliances and political intrigue. Two nations in particular stood out: Germany, an economic Goliath, with the largest army in the world, and Great Britain, who still very much ruled the waves and had built up an empire that Germany was incredibly envious of.
Royal family ties did not seem to make the uneasiness in Europe any better; if anything they probably made the situation worse. Three cousins now held the power in Europe: King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II, and although the British King and Russian Tsar had quite a warm relationship, the same could not be said of their German cousin, Wilhelm.
Imperialism
By the second half of the nineteenth century, many of the major powers in Europe had expanded their empires around the world, through a policy of imperialism—gaining political and economic control of territories across the globe. Great Britain, in particular, had become rich and powerful thanks to her new colonies, much to the envy of the other European powers, and none more so than Germany.
Following his ascension to the throne in 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm II adopted a particularly aggressive policy towards imperialism, known as Weltpolitik. A relatively new nation-state, having only been unified in 1871, Germany was late to the imperial game and so was desperate to begin building up her own empire.
Nationalism
The second half of the nineteenth century saw a huge rise in nationalism throughout Europe, as more and more nation-states were created on the continent, in the decades following the Springtime of the Peoples, in 1848.
While the likes of Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Serbia were recognised as new nation-states, citizens of other European countries looked on enviously, hoping that they too might one day gain independence. Nowhere was this cultural revolution of national identity more apparent than in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Bosnians and Poles all sought self-rule to some extent or the other.