Mr. Dormer
Global Studies 10
5/08/15
Nationalism and Imperialism played a huge role in the outbreak of World War I. Nationalism is the modern concept that people who share the same customs, culture, language, and history should share the same government. It became the most powerful European political ideology of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Imperialism is taking over a country or territory by a stronger nation with dominating political, economic, and social life of the nation. Nationalism caused economic competition for the European continents. Imperialism caused a role by causing tension and expanding European conflict throughout the entire world. New nations of Italy and Germany challenged Great Britain …show more content…
“These nations had all become intensely egocentric - so intense was nationalism that the states or powers were inevitably spoken of as if they were individual persons - became a sense of national self-satisfaction was achieved only at the expense of another nation.” (Stokesbury 14) In Europe, economic competitions between nations were very strong and this created a lot of tension for the other nations. Britain controlled of all the manufactured goods and Germany didn’t control that much. Germany’s new modern factories made an increase in production compared to Britain. After Germany finally got a bigger output of manufactured goods, it angered the British and they felt they needed to get revenge. When the Treaty of Versailles was released, the “war-guilt” clause blamed the war on Germany. The Allies forced Germany to sign it. It required Germany to pay for all damage caused by the war to the other nations. Britain joined the war because it would make them a powerful nation. France was in the war as well because they wanted the Alsace-Lorraine. Many other nations such as Italy, Japan, and China joined for this reason because they wanted to gain back territories they lost in the past. Nationalism sparked many nations into the war because it was a competition and trying to receive more land for their