Alliances that divided Europe into competing camps

Nationalistic feelings

Diplomatic failures

Imperialism

Competition over colonies

Militarism

Assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand

United States enters the war

Russia leaves the war

Woodrow Wilson

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Colonies’ participation in the war, which increased demands for independence

End of the Russian Imperial, Ottoman, German, and Austro-Hungarian empires

Enormous cost of the war in lives, property, and social disruption

Forced Germany to accept responsibility for war and loss of territory and to pay reparations

Limited the German military

League of Nations

Defeat in war with Japan in 1905

Landless peasantry

Incompetence of Tsar Nicholas II

Military defeats and high casualties in World War I

Bolshevik Revolution and civil war

Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy

Joseph Stalin, Lenin’s successor

International cooperative organization

Established to prevent future wars

United States not a member

Failure of League because it did not have power to enforce its decisions

During World War I, Great Britain and France agreed to divide large portions of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East between themselves.

After the war, the “mandate system” gave Great Britain and France control over the lands that became Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine (British controlled) and Syria and Lebanon (French controlled).

The division of the Ottoman Empire through the mandate system planted the seeds for future conflicts in the Middle East.