Imperialism is the effort of a country to acquire new territory for itself to build up its empire. This is also called colonialism. The world’s two biggest imperialist were Great Britain and France. Great Britain colonized India, South Africa, Australia and other parts of Africa. France also had established many colonies around the world. Many countries in Europe also like this idea, including Germany. There have been several close incidents when two countries were arguing over new territory. Many almost let to wars between each other. An example of this was when Germany and France had territorial disputes in Africa, which almost led to war. In the end one of the countries back down to help avoid war. Fighting to get new territories all over the world, created great tension between the countries of …show more content…
The U.S. declared themselves as neutral at first because they had no point in joining the war. Even if they did join the war, they would be on the Allied side because of its close economic ties with Great Britain. During the war the U.S. still continued to trade with both sides, but contributing war materials was prohibited while trading. With this in mind the U.S. insisted that citizens may travel safely on any vessel of any country in Europe. This didn’t go as planned when Germany decided to use unrestricted submarine warfare. This lead to the sinking of the HMS Lusitania. Over one thousand passengers were killed, and among those dead passenger was a little over one hundred Americans. This made the U.S. upset but they still neglected to join the war. After this Germany decide to stop unrestricted submarine warfare to avoid having America join the war. Then sometime after that, the british intercepted a message from Arthur Zimmerman from Germany. In the message, it asked for Mexico to start a war with America to help Germany with the war once America got involved. This infuriated the U.S., and with the help of British propaganda and Germany resuming unrestricted submarine warfare, it convince America to join the allied forces. One month before joining the war, Russia had a revolution which force them out of the war, which left America to take their