be a little bit confusing sometimes

and i think the reason is is the world was very different

leading up to World War I than it is today.

and to some degree the modern world we live in was shaped

to a large degree by war one and later world war two

and just to get a sense of what our modern world looks like

and especially what modern Europe looks like, this is a map of modern Europe.

But the interesting thing about this map is instead of being the traditional map

that you normally see where you just see the country boundaries

the state boundaries this has a state boundaries right here

in these little gray lines they show the where where

France and say Switzerland or Germany or Italy begin

but overlayed on top of that we see where the languages are spoken

so this is actually much more focused on where the people speak French

where people speak German

and i think that you all noticed for the most part throughout most of europe

today's boundaries or modern boundaries closely closely match up

to where languages are spoken.

There a few areas where this isn't clear, there is more of a disconnect with

Catalan and Spanish

and actually that is leading to uh... some issues,

but for the most part in modern europe the country boundaries and the linguistic

boundaries of the national boundaries kind of match up.

If we go, if we rewind to the world entering into world war one,

things were very different.

Some of the boundaries we recognize.

We recognize, we recognize the United Kingdom and well, Ireland has since been carved out,

but we recognize that as not being that differently than it is today.

Spain is not that different,

France is not that different,

Italy is not that different,

Germany is a good bit different.

In fact if you take Germany the German empire entering into World War I

or in the early nineteen hundred's around

1914,

between them and the Russian empire they essentially they essentially were

swallowing up a bunch of linguistic groups

a bunch of linguistic groups right over here that now have their own independent states.

The other thing that you might notice is this huge, this huge state called Austria Hungary

often called the Austro-Hungarian empire.

And people say Oh you know there's uh... you know I'm familiar with

some of these nations that have the word Austria Hungary in them,

but i'm not, you know "what is the Austro Hungarian empire" and what's interesting about

it is that it really was an empire

it was really trying to cobble together all of these folks that

spoke all different, all of different types of ethnicities.

This is kind of a zoom in of the austro-hungarian empire leading

into world war one

And the austro-hungarian empire is probably the most

important thing to understand if we're trying to get a sense

of how world war one started.

Because leading up to World War I in 1908, the austro-hungarian empire

formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina,

and that's another confusing thing for many of us but that's actually one country.

It's called Bosnia and Herzegovina or I guess for the

austro-hungarian that was i guess one region that they annexed

and what's interesting about that is if you look at the linguistic map, you see

that this whole region right

over here speaks a very similar, essentially they are dialects of Serbian

Croatian and Bosnian.

They're all very linguistically an ethnically connected

so this whole region right over here this whole region right over here is

linguistically and ethnically connected

and we will see is is that this desire to to connect people with similar

ethnic or linguistic roots was well huh linguistic

backgrounds is what led to a lot of what

happened in world war or at least was the sparked that fuel to

the people sometimes say the powder keg of world war one

the other thing that was very different or the other i

guess country or nation or empire that we are not used to today

is the Ottoman empire

so if we go today we see the could the country of turkey which

is kind of on the anatolian peninsula so

this is turkey this is turkey right over here this is

modern-day turkey

but entering into world war one in nineteen fourteen turkey was essentially part

of the remnants of the Ottoman empire

so this right over here is what the ottoman empire look like

this is this is right over here is roughly modern-day

turkey

but the Ottoman empire consisted of modern-day turkey

and much of the modern middle east so much of a

specially much of the arab especially the arab

world syria iraq lebanon uh...

much of what we're modern-day israel is

some of saudi arabia

this was really the dying state of the ottoman empire did

At it'€™s peak it controlled much of the muslim world

a controlled northern africa as well as all the stuff that

you see here

and even a little bit and even a little bit of persia and

actually a good bit of the balkan southeast europe and even grease

at the peak of its on an empire

now i'm talking about going hundreds and hundreds of

years back into the past

so when we entered the world war two

we don't have a world where people kind of our

where states are defined by linguistic boundaries or by ethnic

boundaries

to a large degree we have these empires that has existed that

existed as we exited out of the eighteen hundreds

and this empires were not just in europe like the austria, austro-hungarian

empire

or not just in the middle east

like the ottoman empire

right over here is a kind of an empire map at around that point in time

and you see probably the most dominant feature here

is the british empire that's in this pink color

so braided that's

that's united kingdom great britain would just be would just be

this right over here

you throw in ireland you get the united kingdom the

great britain was in control of the indian the entire indian subcontinent

it was essentially although nominally Egypt was somewhat independent

great britain had a huge amount of influence here

obviously places like canada and australia and New Zealand were under the control of

or part of the british empire

well a lot of people don't realize is that significant amount of africa as well

a significant amount of africa was also was also under british control

and what we have running up into world war one

is kind of a race for empire and arms race between the major powers of europe

in particular you have great britain or or the united kingdom

that obviously had a vast empire

the son never sets on the british empire

was a better setting on this empire that we just saw here

and the german empire was also starting to flex its muscle and starting and starting

to militarized

and the more than german side of the british ruled rising

the more that the british added that the more the british the more

the germans and one or two after militarized and vice versa

and you said this arms race

and they're all trying to build a empires

so the germans the there you they were present in africa

you have the french who are present in much of africa

and you have to remember all of this in context some of this empire building was frankly

just about ego and just about spreading someone's

influence supplanting their power uh...

a lot of it was uh... based on kind of ethnic beliefs about civilization

uh...

i guess is a rationalizations to kind a take control of other people's resources

and a lot of it was we were in a world where access to resources

in particular access to row materials and especially oil uh...

could to some degree define whether a a power was a power at all

and so with that i think we have a pretty good basis for uh... that

the state of affairs as we enter into world war I