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One of the reasons that's most cited as to a cause or

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the cause of why World War One turned
into a world war as opposed to just a

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regional conflict in Southeast Europe

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is the alliance system

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that was developing in the decades
leading up to World War One.

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And to understand that, i've distilled a bunch
of the alliances that occurred in those

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decades leading up to World War One. This is just a distilled version, there are

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many other alliances that were tangentially related, but I'll try to distill down the ones

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that were directly related to

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all of the dominoes falling

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in 1914, that led to all
of Europe being essentially at war with

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each other.

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So to understand that, we have to rewind
75 years. So World War One

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it starts in 1914;

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75 years before that, in 1839, you have the Treaty

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of London,

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and the Treaty of London did many things, but Article 7 is what's

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relevant to the beginning of World War One,

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where Britain agrees to protect the neutrality of the Belgium.

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And, if you're skeptical you might say: "Hey, this
is a 75 year old treaty, why

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does this matter anymore?" and that
actually would be a good question.

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Really all of these alliances, it's a
very healthy debate you can have as to

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whether these are the direct causes of why one of these powers declared war

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on the other, or whether these were just
excuses, these were kind of a legal pretext

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for saying "Oh i need to declare war" and in reality they really did want to

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declare war for a whole set of reasons, to kind of

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keep the other persons' empire and check,
to flex their military muscle, to go after

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more territory in their empires,

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who knows what it might be?

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But needless to say

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1839 was a legal basis

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for the British Empire to protect

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to protect

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Belgium.

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Now you fast forward forty years, you get to 1879.

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You have a

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newly born German Empire out of the
Franco Prussian War in 1871.

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That newly born German Empire, they just had a...

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essentially it's an extension of Prussia, fundamentally a

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German kingdom,

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they just had a war with France, they took
some very valuable territory from France,

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they're paranoid that France wants to
get back at them, they're paranoid about

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they're paranoid about the Russians,
and they have some connection with the

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Austrians, or the austro-hungarians I should say,

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and so in 1879, they sign the Dual Alliance Treaty

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between Germany and Austria-Hungary to
protect each other if Russia attacks.

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They have this common enemy right over
here: Russia.

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So they're going to... let me do some different color...

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They're going to protect each other.

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So this makes the new German
empire feel a little bit better about

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its position in Europe in case they
were to get into a war with either of

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these characters.

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Then in 1892,

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you can imagine if you ever play a game of Risk,

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or if you play the game of Diplomacy,
which is actually based on what happened

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in World War One,

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if you see some people that you might be at war with starting to become friends,

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you want to look for other friends, other
alliances that you can form in case they

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declare war on you.

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So in 1892, you have an alliance between the French and the

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Russians, the Franco-Russian Military Convention, so this is an alliance... let me do

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this in the magenta colour again.

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You have an alliance

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between France

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France

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and Russia.

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And then finally in the early nineteen
hundreds, 1904 to

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1907,

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you have a series of agreements, "ententes" essentially means "agreements",

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agreements between the British Empire and
France, between the British Empire and

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the Russian Empire,

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to essentially get on good terms with each other. These weren't as formally

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bonding that "Hey, if someone's going to
attack you, i'm going to attack them", but

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they were essentially able to resolve a lot of
their issues on what's going on in

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their other imperial conquest

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and they formed what is called "The Triple Entente", the triple agreement

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between

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Britain, between the British Empire,

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and right here i just circle the
United Kingdom, France

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France and Russia.

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And on the other side of that, you had the Triple Alliance: you have Germany,

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you have Austria-Hungary, and you also have...
you also have Italy.

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Now the reason why, even though entering into World War One, Italy was formerly

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part of the Triple Alliance, and there were treaties between Italy and Germany to

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become part of this triple alliance,

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the reason i don't focus on those, is once the war started, Italy did not go on

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the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

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It went on the side of the allies, on the
side of the Triple Entente.

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But this will give you a good background
for why

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what would seem like a regional
skirmish in Southeast Europe

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turns into a pan-Europe and eventually pan
global war.