The Age of Imperialism and the First World War (1870–1918)
What this domain tests
This block runs from the second industrial revolution to the armistice of 1918 and supplies many source questions: statistics, treaties, diplomatic telegrams, cartoons described in text. The exam tests causal explanation - why the powers expanded overseas, and why a Balkan assassination escalated into a world war.
Core content
- Economic base: steel, electricity, chemicals and oil; concentration into trusts and cartels; banks financing industry; leadership shifting to Germany and the United States.
- Imperialism: raw materials and markets, export of capital, demographic pressure, national prestige and a civilising-mission ideology backed by Social Darwinism. The Berlin Conference (1884–85) set the rules for the scramble for Africa; Fashoda 1898; Boer War 1899–1902; Japan's own imperialism after 1868 (Sino-Japanese 1894–95, Russo-Japanese 1904–05).
- Spain: the 1898 disaster in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines and the Generation of 1898; Morocco from 1909 (Tragic Week in Barcelona) and the Annual disaster of 1921.
- The war: Triple Alliance 1882, Triple Entente completed 1907, the July crisis, Sarajevo 28 June 1914, the Schlieffen Plan, Verdun and the Somme, 1917 (American intervention, Russian exit), armistice 11 November 1918, Versailles 1919 and the League of Nations. Spain stayed neutral, and its wartime boom produced the crisis of 1917.
Worked example
Question: why did a regional conflict become a world war? Reasoning: (1) the alliance system turned an Austro-Serbian dispute into a continental one; (2) military planning made mobilisation irreversible; (3) imperial rivalry made each power unwilling to lose prestige; (4) the Balkans supplied the trigger. Give decision dates - the ultimatum of 23 July, the declaration of 28 July, mobilisations of 1–3 August - to prove command of chronology.
Traps
Confusing the Berlin Conference with the Congress of Vienna; presenting 1898 as a war against a European power; placing Spain in the Triple Alliance; saying the United States entered in 1915; mixing Triple Alliance and Triple Entente; giving 1917 as the year of the armistice.