history

Essay #1 : International Conflicts
1.) triple entente, which became a powerful opponent to the triple alliance. These major powers formed these alliances to fight petty little battles within their imperialistic colonies, but in doing so they paved the way for war. Because if one country of one alliance goes to war then all the subsequent countries allied with them are obligated to assist. This brought everyone against each other, whether they wanted to be or not.
2.) The alliances above led to the first moroccan crisis of 1905. When the german chancellor decided to test the boundaries and strength of the british and the French alliance. He did not believe that Britain would be able to rally enough support to aid france in the face of a war. France was trying to install a protectorate of morocco when Kaiser Wilhelm II decided to travel to morocco to try to persuade them to join german if war should break out between france or England. This angered many of the people in morocco because of his sudden and uninvited appearance. German was becoming angered and felt like they were being diplomatically isolated from the rest of Europe. To resolve this issue, the Algeciras conference was called. Here germany signed a compromise in 1906, in which france would give up control of the Moroccan police but retained control of Moroccan political and financial issues. This however, was only a temporary solution to the growing disturbances between the major powers and the tensions between the triple alliance and the triple entente only heightened.
3.) The second Balkan war occurred in 1913, and began over a dispute over the division of the joint conquest of Macedonia. Serbia and Greece formed an alliance against Bulgaria to give them an advantage if the dispute came to war. War unfortunately broke out when the king of Bulgaria told his troops to attack greek and Serbian forces in Macedonia. Bulgaria was not strong enough to defeat the powers of Greece and Serbia and was soon defeated. A peace treaty was signed between the conflicting powers giving Serbia and Greece most of Macedonia to divide up amongst themselves and only a tiny portion to Bulgaria. Albania was also made an independent state and a german prince was put in charge of it. After this war, Bulgaria looked for Austria for support and Serbia, very upset that they were forced to give up Albania, only became more hostile towards Vienna. This war only further increased tensions between powers and war did not seem far off in the future.
4.) The last and final straw that pushed Europe into war was the assassination of archduke franz Ferdinand, heir to the austrian-hungarian throne, on june 28, 1914. Assassinated by gavrilo princip, who was connected to the Serbian nationalist group, the black hand. Ferdinand was assassinated because many people in Serbia were unhappy with austro-hungarian rule and favored the serbs to be in charge. Austria annexed the provinces of bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, which upset governments in the west. It further agitated Serbia because they wanted bosnia to be apart of a pan-slav state and not of that of the austro-hungarian’s.
Essay # 2 : Cultural shifts
1.) There were major shifts in literary works during the 19th century that changed the views and outraged many. Realism was a phenomenon sweeping across Europe and the literature being produced there. Realism is primarily concerned with the accurate portrayal and description of an event or such, as they were, not like the literary period before when everything written was romanticized. Charles dickens’ novel Hard times written in 1854 is a perfect example of literary realism. In this novel the social and economic problems for the workers during the industrial revolution are depicted here, in as real terms as possible. people, especially the upper class, were now able to get a picture of what the lower classes were going through and maybe gain a little bit of sympathy for them in the process.
2.) Of the major philosophical theories to arise during the late 19th century, Charles darwin’s was one of the most important. In his book the origin of the species, written in 1859, Darwin explains how each specie of life, including humans, evolves a little bit every generation. In this work, Darwin puts questions into the heads of the people of Europe by explaining to them that we might not have been miraculously created and placed on earth by god. He argues that all life, humans included evolved from tiny single-celled organisms and over the millions and millions of years have evolved into a upright-walking creature who is vaguely intelligent. This shocked most religious groups, as well as angered them because Darwin was basically telling them that everything they have believed in for so long was false.
3.) Late 19th century saw many advancements in the world of science. In france, marie curie developed a theory of radioactivity, which was a technique for isolating various isotopes. With this theory she concluded that by using these isolated isotopes, they could be conducted as treatments for cancer, something society did not have before. Cancer was virtually untreatable until this marvelous discovery.
4.) Technological achievements made throughout 19th century Europe greatly improved the conditions of people’s lives. For instance, a man named Wilhelm von roentgen, from germany, discovered the x-ray . this x-ray was a new form of radiation that allowed for the physician to photograph the human skeleton and was soon a necessity for physicians to diagnose their patients. This was a completely a new thing in Europe because before the x-ray, doctors sometimes had to guess what was wrong with someone if they came in complaining about something other than the everyday common cold. Now there was a way to physically take a picture of someone’s insides, look at them, and then determine the sickness or ailment.
5.) Impressionist painting began to take off in this era. With this type of painting, the painting never actually represents who or what the object looks like in reality but what he does see in his mind. The artist also relies very heavily on not reproducing something accurately and on the use of color and light as well as his ‘impression’ of its form. Edgar degas’ dance class at the opera (1872) is a great example of impressionist art. Onlookers see this painting and see a beautiful art work hanging on the wall.