Did Imperialism Cause World War 1

There are many key factors that played a large role in the buildup to World War I, and Imperialism was one of the main four. During the late 1800s and late 1900s tensions between powerful countries rose due to imperialism. Imperialism is a system where a country increases their power and wealth, becoming a powerful nation through means of controlling, exploiting, and gathering territories and colonies outside of their own border. Imperialism is related to other main causes that paved a way for World War I, such as Militarism and nationalism.
Imperialism caused tension for European powers because they wanted their place in the sun, meaning becoming a world power which meant more power and territory through colonization and Russia needs more

It is however related to with other significant factors including nationalism and militarism, which eventually lead to the arms race between the European powers. Militarism is having a strong military and glorifying it, maintaining it and preparing it to be used in an aggressive way. This belief that war was inevitable lead to the idea of always keeping a military army ready in preparation for war. This is a major factor that contributed to World War I in 1914 because this lead to the competition between nations for military superiority, in troop size and number of weapons, called the arms race. Also, the plan to or willingness to use military strength to solve political problems was the exact opposite of diplomacy. The European countries had just modernized, which meant new weaponry and new technology. The arms race was caise when it began in 1891 and Germany had the biggest increase in its military, spending lots of money and energy into developing an army, that they were sure could outnumber and overpower its rivalries at that time. Germany was more insecure with its military because Triple Entente had larger troop sizes and were able to grow their troops and military strength faster than Germany. This contributes to “better now than later” idea to go to war. Germany and Britain had a naval race and as Britain started producing Dreadnoughts, when Germany was aware it began to do the same. In 1906, Britain creates one, then 2 years later, Germany creates one, sets of a naval race to 1914 of increasing dreadnoughts, but Britain was always more supirior than Germany and so it could not keep up. This led to Britain’s aggressiveness in 1914, when it declared war on Germany. Technology contributed to new weapons and the strength of these new weapons and each nation felt like they had to keep up with others and have the same machine guns for example. Germany felt