ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the world wars: World War One, then called the Great War, its causes and consequences, including World War Two. The Great War began as a local clash between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, triggered by the assassination of the Archduke, by Gavrilo Princip, a young Bosnian-Serb nationalist. The years between the turn of the twentieth century and 1914 witnessed a series of dangerous events that exacerbated tensions among Europe’s major countries. The Anglo-German naval arms race intensified hostility and suspicion and sparked a more general interest in the relationship between war and arms racing. At the individual level, the people can theorize that the war broke out because of anachronistic leaders. A popular explanation at the global system level of analysis since Thucydides explanation of the Peloponnesian War is that war results from a changing distribution of power.
