The reduction of the Ottoman Empire in Europe is nearly completed by the two successive military conflicts known as the Balkan Wars.
In the first, the Ottomans lose almost all their European possessions, including Crete, to Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, and the newly created state of Albania.
In the second, fought between Bulgaria and the remaining Balkan states (including Romania) over the division of Macedonia, the Ottomans intervene against Bulgaria and recover part of eastern Thrace, including Edirne.
The irredentism of the Megali Idea, which has remained a strong force in Greek society since independence, gains new momentum from the liberation of territory surrounding Greece and from changes in Great Power policy in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The results are conflict with the Ottoman Empire in Crete and with the Slavs in Macedonia, along with territorial gains in Thessaly and Arta.
The heightened tensions in the Balkans reach their climax in the Great War, which is sparked by the assassination of the Austrian heir-apparent by a Serb in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on June 28, 1914.
By this time, the Ottomans have lost more than four-fifths of the territory and more than two-thirds of the population of their European provinces.
The Allies begin as Britain, Belgium and France.
Turkey and Bulgaria will soon join the Central Powers, and Russia and Italy (and eventually, the US) will join the Allies.
The war will spread from Europe to Asia and Africa, making a world war of the long-anticipated Great War.
Military operations in the Great War extend from Northern Europe through Russia, the Balkans and the Middle East to Germany’s African colonies.
Germany blockades British shipping and declares unrestricted submarine warfare.
When the First World War provokes acute shortages of tungsten, molybdenum is used on a massive scale to make arms, armor plating, and other military hardware.
The war, which pits the Central Powers—mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—against the Allies—mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States, ends with the defeat of the Central Powers, which Bulgaria had joined, and yet another reconfiguration of the Balkan polities, including the emergence of an independent Albania and the virtual creation of a Greater Serbia in the guise of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
Russia and Japan reach an accord over China.
During and after the First World War, the United States pursues a policy of direct intervention in Latin America, variously occupying Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama, and, during the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican cities of Chihuahua and Vera Cruz.
Movements in art, literature and philosophy present an aggressive, pugnacious approach to art and language.
The movement by American women to gather in ladies’ clubs leads to their finally getting the vote in the 1920s.
