HST 504 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Agadir Crisis, Military History Of South Africa, Allies Of World War I
12 Sep 2012
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The blame game: origins of the great war contended that the war aims of the imperial german government and its widespread supporters were expansionist. The second reich had planned and pursued a grandiose plan to assume control over most of europe, north. Since the beginning of the early 1890s, the german military, economic and political elites had supported a strategy that promoted the acquisition of new territories, sources of raw materials and markets. Firstly, colonial acquisitions came to be perceived as the most genuine indication of having achieved great. Public opinion encouraged the belief that only through the establishment of a vast empire could a state really fulfill its nationhood. These ideas were often fuelled by the press and various colonial associations, clubs and societies. Many emerging ideologies concluded that a state would acquire colonies or it would cease to exist. Secondly, many of the great powers felt the consequences of imperial overstretch.
