Concept:
- The path to 1914 is easier to follow as a chain in which each link makes the next one worse: a change in ideas, a weak empire, rival small nations, and finally great powers taking sides.
- Tracing that chain shows why the disaster was not an accident.
Step 1: The first link was a change in what nationalism meant.
Up to 1871 nationalism in Europe went hand in hand with demands for constitutions, a free press and the rights of citizens. After the unification of Germany and Italy the same word came to stand for something narrow and intolerant.
Nationalist groups now measured success by what their own country could seize, not by the liberty it could win.
Step 2: The second link was a crumbling empire in a mixed region.
The Balkans held many peoples, broadly known as the Slavs, spread over what are today Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro. Much of it lay under the Ottoman Empire.
Attempts by that empire to reform itself failed, and as it weakened its subject peoples began to break away one after another.
Step 3: The third link was jealousy among the newly assertive nationalities.
Each Balkan people argued from history that it had once been independent and had later been subjugated, so each claimed territory on that basis. Since these claims overlapped, the region filled with bitter rivalry, and every group hoped to gain at the cost of its neighbours.
Conflict became constant instead of occasional.
Step 4: The fourth link was the entry of the great powers.
Russia, Germany, England and Austro-Hungary were already competing over colonies, trade, navies and armies. Each wanted to check the influence of the others in the Balkans and to extend its own.
So every local quarrel was picked up and backed by a major power, and a small dispute could no longer stay small.
Step 5: The chain closed in 1914.
A series of wars broke out in the region, and with the great powers committed on opposing sides, the final crisis pulled the whole of Europe in. The result was the First World War.
Final Answer: Narrow nationalism supplied the motive, the collapse of Ottoman authority supplied the opening, rival Balkan claims supplied the quarrel, and imperial competition among the great powers turned that quarrel into the disaster of 1914.