Some historians have argued that the First World War was the logical, Essay

Some historians have argued that the First World War was the logical, perhaps inevitable, outcome of the revolutionary changes of the nineteenth century - Essay Example Some of the causes of the WWI include; imperialism, militarism, nationalism and the alliance system but the paper will discuss the first two factors. Industrial revolution which began in Britain meant local market was not enough for industrial products. Britain thus began looking for markets and labor by colonizing other nations and other countries like France followed suit such that in the nineteenth century, Britain had over five continents while France occupied large areas of Africa (Sammis, 2002). This led to rivalry among nations and scramble for remaining lands especially by Germany leading to formation of alliances in preparation for an inevitable war. For example, Germany allied with Austria so as to get a route to conquer Asia. Militarism was another long term cause of the war. Countries were engaged in aggressive military preparedness making war inevitable. Great Britain had a very large navy and Germany wanted to outdo it hence engaged in creation of arms and in retaliation, Britain improved its naval base by use of modern technology hence an arms race began that made impending war seem inevitable. For example, Britain built dreadnoughts in 1905-06 to counter Germans arms (Best et al. 2008). The arms race increased the fear of war leading to the alliance system in order to defeat enemies and continued arms race between the allies. For example, arms race between Franco-Prussian and German-Austria hence more innovative weapons like machine guns created that aided the war. WWI was the most destructive in history due to the scale of the war and use of ferocious weapons and styles. The use of machine guns, modern artillery and rifles, submarines, airplanes, gas, and tanks left many soldiers dead. The use of trench warfare did not help much as it meant total destruction for the soldiers; either kill or be killed (Stone, 2009). As a result, the war left over 15