World War I (1)

The assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 proved to be the spark that ignited World War I (1914-18). Called "the Great War", it quickly came to involve all the great powers in Europe and eventually most countries of the world and cost the lives of more than 8 million soldiers. Among the causes of the war were rising nationalist sentiment (manifested both in the chauvinism of the great European powers and in the unrest among the subject peoples of multinational European empires), colonial and economic rivalries, the formation of hostile alliance systems, and arms races, all of which contributed to the growing sense of international tension during the prewar years.

Bibliography:

Ramsey III, Robert D., American Academic Encyclopedia.