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Your Smartass List of

Causes of WWI Specialist Terms

   

  

     

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  • open section  Militarism
    • Not just an arms race, but also a government's attitude of mind, seeing war as a valid means of foreign policy. Often includes the influence of government by the generals
  • open section  Hague Conferences
    • Called by Tsar Nicholas II in 1899 and 1907 to discuss arms limitation; they failed to achieve disarmament, but did set up the Hague Court and agree rules about prisoners of war.
  • open section  balance of power
    • The theory that having two hostile alliance blocs of roughly equal power will achieve an equilibrium which will somehow keep the peace
  • open section  Splendid isolation
    • The intention of Britain in the 19th century to stay out of European conflicts
  • open section  Dreadnought
    • New large British super-battleships of the early 20th Century
  • open section  reservists
    • Men, trained, but living as civilians, but ready to be called up if there is a war
  • open section  Entente Cordiale
    • ‘Friendly Relationship’ between Britain and France, signed 1904
  • open section  Imperialism
    • Countries who believed that they were superior thinking it was alright to conquer and rule others – particularly if they were inhabited by races they thought inferior
  • open section  Herzegovina
    • Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 – GCSE books usually shorten this to Bosnia
  • open section  Panslavism
    • The ethnic and political movement which sought to mobilise and unite all the Slavic races of south-east Europe into one country (e.g. ‘Great Serbia’)
  • open section  Weltpolitik
    • ‘world politics’ – the imperialist foreign policy of Kaiser Wilhelm II
  • open section  autocracy
    • Where a country is ruled by one man
  • open section  chauvinism
    • unreasonable belief that your own country, race or gender is the best or most important
  • open section  jingoism
    • Out-of-control chuvinism that demands an aggressive/bellicose foreign policy
  • open section  annexation
    • Conquest ofa place to attach it to your own country
  • open section  mobilisation
    • When you call up your reservists and set your army on a war footing
  • open section  Revisionists
    • Historians who seek to overturn an established ‘classical’ interpretation of a particular history
  • open section  Junkers
    • The military upper classes of Germany before 1914
  • open section  bellicose
    • Wanting war/ militarily aggressive
  • open section  Ujedinjenje ili smrt
    • ‘Union or Death’ – the proper name for the terrorist group popularly known as the ‘Black Hand’