Main content
Course: World history > Unit 6
Lesson 1: Beginning of World War IEmpires before World War I
Austria-Hungary. Ottoman empire. British, German, French and Russian empires. For extra coverage of World War 1 outside the scope of the AP course, click here. Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- at around3:04Sal mentioned the word annexed. What does annexed mean?(381 votes)
- My favorite definition of annexed is basically you stick a flag in a bit of ground and say it's yours without really caring or knowing who was there first that might wanna pick a fight.(70 votes)
- What were the Germans colonies(16 votes)
- In Africa:
German East Africa
Tanganyika
Ruanda-Urundi
Wituland
Kionga Triangle
German South West Africa
German West Africa
Kamerun
Togoland
In Oceania:
German New Guinea
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
Bismarck Archipelago
German Solomon Islands
Bougainville Island
German Micronesia
In Asia:
Kiautschou Bay concession
Chefoo
Tianjin
If you have anymore questions or need more detail, comment below...(36 votes)
- what about the great spanish empire(2 votes)
- Ever since Philip II they were on a slow decline (compared to the other European nations) for several reasons:
1. the defeat of the armada left them less militarily powerful - compared to England and France in particular, who eclipsed Spain in terms of wealth and power.
2. less capable rulers followed Philip and were unable to manage the vast empire as well.
3. a poor tax policy that did not support entrepreneurship and businesses which led to a weaker and less developed economy.
4. lack of investment in infrastructure.
5. their possessions in the "new world" brought much gold and silver but led to high inflation in Spain. Also there was fierce competition for some territories as these became increasingly more difficult and costly to defend. Further, local populations would eventually begin to revolt causing problems for Spain.
6. they were slow to industrialize - this is connected to number 4 above, and left them at a disadvantage compared with England, France, Germany, Netherlands...
7. some want to claim that by kicking out the Muslims and Jews they deprived themselves of a key component of their economy from which they never really recovered.
Just some ideas - hope this helps(18 votes)
- Is Russia in Europe(4 votes)
- Russia is both in Europe and in Asia. About 1/4 of its territory is in Europe, but that part contains about 3/4 of its population. So in a certain sense it is more culturally European, even though most of its territory is in Asia.
I have heard, though I don't know for sure, that they teach in Russia that Europe and Asia are one large Eurasian continent and don't divide it the way we do in the United States. Thus, to Russians, Russia is on the continent of Eurasia.(11 votes)
- Just to be clear World War 1 started because French Archduke was assassinated ?(1 vote)
- He wasn't French. He was Austro-Hungarian(11 votes)
- Wasn't the british empire the biggest to have ever existed? I mean they have australia, canada, usa, india, part of souht america, south africa, new zealand etc?(4 votes)
- I'm assuming you are referring to the early stages of the British Empire?? Yes they were but not when the British had the US.
This data below shows it, 3 of the largest empires.
Its all to their greatest extent.
British Empire: Max land area (million km^2): 33.7 Max land area (million mi^2): 13.07, 22.63% of the world land area, Era: 1922, Max population (millions):458.0 (in 1938), 20.00% of the world population at that time(458 million out of 2.295 billion in 1938.
Mongol Empire: Max land area (million km^2): 33.0, Max land area (million mi^2):12.75, 22.14% of the world land area, Era: 1279, Max population (millions):111.0 in 13th century, 25.60% of world population at that time(110.0 million out of 429 million in the 13th century).
Russian Empire: Max land area (million km^2): 22.8, Max land area (million mi^2):8.80, 15.31% of the world land area, Era: 1866, Max population (millions): 176.4 in 1913, 09.80% of the world population (176.4 million out of 1.791 billion in 1913)
I covered the top 3 largest empires.
For more info:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires#All_empires_at_their_greatest_extent(3 votes)
- Did the Austro-Hungarian empire ever try to take over other territories other than Serbia?(3 votes)
- Yes. The Austro-Hungarians fought with the Germans against the Russians on the Eastern front. They also fought against the Italians in the Alps and against Romania. In some cases they were successful (Romania and Russia) but Italy was a stalemate for most of the war.(5 votes)
- what state started world war 1?(2 votes)
- The sequence is as follows:
Austro-Hungarian Empire declares war on Serbia
In response Russia declares war on Austro-Hungarian Empire
In response Germany declares war on Russia (and probably Serbia as well, but I'm not sure)
In response France joins Russia
Germany invades Belguim (which was neutral) to bypass French defenses
In response Britain joins on the side of France/Russia/Belguim.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was the first nation to declare war, but it only really became a world war when Germany, France (and later Britain) joined in. Germany France and Britain had colonies spread all over the world, unlike Austro-Hungary and Russia.
Of course the treaty of Versailles (which ended WWI) placed most of the blame on Germany, but certainly chronologically speaking that doesn't really make sense.(4 votes)
- why was Germany blamed for ww1 when Serbia and Austria-Hungary were the main instigators for ww1. I can understand the Triple Entente being upset that Germany was ready for war so quickly but they didn't start the war.(4 votes)
- Germany did not start WW1 but they were the most prepared and militarized in WW1. They also were the most influential alliance member.(1 vote)
- On the map that Sal Khan showed about the Ottoman empire, it shows that the Ottomans exerted some influence on Egypt - although they weren't a vassal kingdom. But later Sal Khan shows another map of imperial territories that indicates that the British owned that Egyptian area (by which Sal later stated that Egypt was essentially independent but still heavily influenced by the British at the same time). These two maps both represent the time right before WWI thus they would both seem to show that those two empires were exerting influence on Egypt at that time. So did the British and the Ottomans exert influence on Egypt simultaneously? And how would such be the case (were there any skirmishes that resulted from that etc.)?(3 votes)
- Very thoughtful question. The state of Egypt was very complicated in the past. On paper, it was an Ottoman territory while it was the British military overseeing the region. Britain began to exert influence on Egypt as far as late 18th century after defeating the French expedition to Egypt. Although Egypt was nominally returned to the Ottomans, the British realized its important and intervened in its internal matters. The British installed friendly rulers while quenching the opposition. The Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882 turned Egypt more or less into a British puppet. The Ottomans were slowly losing grip, which officially became separated shortly after the outbreak of WW1.(3 votes)
Video transcript
A lot of people,
including myself, have found the
study of World War I to be a little bit
confusing sometimes. And I think the
reason is is the world was very different leading up
to World War I than it is today. And to some degree, the
modern world we live in was shaped to a large
degree by Word War I and then later World War II. And just to get a sense of what
our modern world looks like, and especially what
modern Europe looks like, this is a map of modern Europe. But the interesting
thing about this map is instead of being the
traditional map that you normally see where you just
see the country boundaries, the state boundaries, this
has the state boundaries right here. And these little gray
lines, these show where France ends and, say,
Switzerland or Germany or Italy begins. But overlain on
top of that we see where the languages are spoken. So this is actually
much more focused on, where do people speak French. Where do people speak German? And the thing that you will
notice is, for the most part, throughout most of Europe,
today's boundaries, the modern boundaries
closely, closely match up to where
languages are spoken. There are a few
areas where there is more of a disconnect
with Catalan and Spanish. And actually, that is
leading to some issues. But for the most part,
in modern Europe, the country boundaries and
the linguistic boundaries or the national boundaries
kind of match up. If we rewind to the world of
entering into World War I, things were very different. Some of the boundaries
we recognize. We recognize the United Kingdom. Well, Ireland has
since been carved out. But we recognize it
as not being that different than it is today. Spain is not that different. France is not that different. Italy is not that different. Germany is a good bit different. In fact, if you take Germany,
the German Empire entering into World War I,
or the early 1900s, around 1914, between them
and the Russian Empire, they essentially were swallowing
up a bunch of linguistic groups right over here that now have
their own independent states. The other thing that
you might notice is this huge state called
Austria-Hungary, or often called the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. And people say, well, there's--
I'm familiar with some of these nations that have the word
Austria and Hungary in them, but I'm not-- what is this
Austro-Hungarian Empire? And what's interesting about
it is it really was an empire. It was really trying
to cobble together all of these folks that
spoke all different-- all the different types
of ethnicities. This is kind of a zoom-in of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire leading into World War I. And the Austro-Hungarian Empire
is probably the most important thing to understand
if we're trying to get a sense of how World War
I started, because leading up to World War I, in 1908,
the Austro-Hungarian Empire formally annexed
Bosnia and Herzegovina. And that's another confusing
thing for many of us, that that's actually
one country. It's called Bosnia
and Herzegovina, or I guess for the
Austro-Hungarians that was now one region that they annexed. And what's
interesting about that is if you look at
the linguistic map, you see that this whole
region right over here speaks a very similar--
essentially, they're dialects of Serbian,
Croatian, Bosnian. They're all very linguistically
and ethnically connected, so this whole region
right over here is linguistically and
ethnically connected. And what we'll see is,
is that this desire to connect people with similar
ethnic or linguistic roots-- linguistic backgrounds is what
led to a lot of what happened in World War-- or at
least was the spark that fueled, that people
sometimes say, the powder keg of World War I. The other thing that
was a very different or the other country
or nation or empire that we are not used to
today is the Ottoman Empire. So if we go today,
we see the country of Turkey, which is on
the Anatolian Peninsula. So this is Turkey
right over here. This is modern-day Turkey. But entering into
World War I in 1914, Turkey was essentially part
of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. So this right over here is what
the Ottoman Empire looked like. This right over here is
roughly modern-day Turkey. But the Ottoman Empire
consisted of modern-day Turkey and much of the
modern Middle East. So much of-- especially,
much of the Arab-- especially the Arab world around
Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, much of what where
modern-day Israel is, some of Saudi Arabia. And this was really the dying
state of the Ottoman Empire. At its peak, it controlled
much of the Muslim world. It controlled Northern Africa
as well as all the stuff you see here and even
a little bit of Persia and actually a good bit of
the Balkans, southeast Europe, and even Greece at the
peak of its Ottoman Empire. And now I'm talking about going
hundreds and hundreds of years back into the past. So when we enter
into World War II, we don't have a world
where people are, where states are defined
by linguistic boundaries or by ethnic boundaries. To a large degree,
we had these empires that had existed as we
exited out of the 1800s. And these empires were
not just in Europe, like the Austro-Hungarian Empire
or not just in the Middle East, like the Ottoman Empire. Right over here is an empire map
at around that point in time. And you see, probably the
most dominant feature here is the British Empire. That's in this pink color. So British, that's
the United Kingdom. Great Britain would just
be this right over here. You throw in Ireland. You get the United Kingdom. Great Britain was in
control of the Indian, the entire Indian subcontinent. It was essentially although nominally Egypt
was somewhat independent, Great Britain had a huge
amount of influence here. Obviously places like Canada
and Australia and New Zealand were under control of or a
part of the British Empire. What a lot of
people don't realize is a significant amount
of Africa as well. A significant amount of Africa
was also under British control. And what we have running
up into World War I is kind of a race
for empire, an arms race between the major
powers of Europe. In particular, you have Great
Britain, or the United Kingdom, that obviously
had a vast empire. The sun never sets on
the British Empire. And it wasn't ever
setting on this empire that we just saw here. And the German Empire was also
starting to flex its muscle and starting to militarize. And the more that the German
saw that the British were militarizing, the more
that the British-- the more that the Germans would
want to militarize and vice versa, and you just
had this arms race. And they were all trying
to build their empires. So the Germans, they
were present in Africa. You have the French who were
present in much of Africa. And you have to remember
all of this in context. Some of this empire building
was, frankly, just about ego and just about spreading
someone's influence, spreading their power. A lot of it was based on ethnic
beliefs about civilization. I guess these were
rationalization to take control of other people's resources. And a lot of it was
we were in a world where access to resources--
in particular, access to raw materials and especially
oil-- could, to some degree, define whether a power
was a power at all. And so with that, I think
we have a pretty good basis for the state of affairs as
we enter into World War I.