The Great War left more than 20 million soldiers dead and 21 million more wounded, which can be attributed to trench warfare and the number of countries involved in the war. Though the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the direct precipitating event leading to the declaration of war, there were many other factors that also played a role in leading up to World War I WWI. In the s, several European nations had empires across the globe, where they had control over vast swaths of lands.
The expansion of European nations as empires also known as imperialism can be seen as a key cause of World War I, because as countries like Britain and France expanded their empires, it resulted in increased tensions among European countries. The tensions were a result of many colonies often being acquired through coercion.
Then, once a nation had been conquered, it was governed by the imperial nation: many of these colonial nations were exploited by their mother countries, and dissatisfaction and resentment was commonplace. Nationalism was one of many political forces at play in the time leading up to World War I, with Serbian nationalism in particular, playing a key role. Serbian nationalism can be dated to the mid- and lates, though two precipitating nationalism events are directly linked to the start of WWI.
In the Balkans, Slavic Serbs sought independence from Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, and in , they tried to gain control of Bosnia and Herzegovina to form a unified Serbian state. With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, Serbian nationalism continued to rise, culminating in the assassination of the Archduke of Austria in by a Bosnian Serb and officially triggering the start of the Great War.
Ferdinand was chosen as a target because he was to be the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On the day of his assassination, the Archduke traveled to Sarajevo to inspect imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, former Ottoman territories acquired by Austria-Hungary in While Ferdinand was traveling in an open car in Sarajevo, Princip fired into the car, shooting Ferdinand and his wife Sophie.
