Nationalism |
Nationalism played a major role in causing WWI, especially in the Balkans. The area had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire, modern day Turkey, for hundreds of years, but the empire was in decline, leaving behind a tangled mess of small states that were constantly arguing among each other for land and power. Austria Hungary decided to take advantage of this and, in 1908, took Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia, the most powerful of the new states, protested alongside its ally Russia but nothing was done, due to Austria’s alliance with Germany, the most powerful country, militarily, in Europe. However, in 1912, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro formed an alliance called the Balkan league and in 7 weeks drove Turkey almost entirely out of Europe. Austria could only watch as Serbia almost doubled in size and became a much more powerful country with a large army and plans to turn the Slavic areas in southeast Europe into one big Slavic state. This was bad news for Austria as many of its conquered territories contained peoples of Slavic descent. It had to do something about Serbia, and fast. All it needed was an excuse and when a Serbian nationalist group murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand it was all they needed to go to war.