·    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.