With the passing of the centennial of World War I there has naturally been a lot of interest in the conflict. The modern countries of Saudi Arabia and Yemen were among those created from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between France and Great Britain with the acquiescence of Imperial Russia determining the modern borders of Syria and Iraq are just a few of many such examples. We are still living with the effects of decisions made in the heat of that conflict and in its direct aftermath. Naval engagements likewise ranged throughout the globe. Major land campaigns were conducted all over the map, from the fields of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Alpine mountains, the coasts of Turkey, the Caucasus, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and more.

This was a truly global conflict which was far from limited to the muddy fields and trenches of Western Europe that have persisted in the popular imagination. In the course of the war, no less than three major empires fell and were dissolved and new countries were created with the stroke of a pen or born in fire and blood. They should not be expected to last forever, either.This past August we marked the centennial of the Great War, a cataclysm that forever altered our political map. Pugliese says only a couple of decades ago, nobody could picture the Soviet Union ceasing to exist, which also changed the lines on the maps. “We might think that borders are sacred and sacrosanct and immutable, but history has told us that they aren’t,' said Pugliese. He says most people do not understand that maps are often times arbitrary and usually do not correspond to culture and politics. Stanislao Pugliese is a European history professor at Hofstra University in New York. The peace lasted longer, but as soon as the Soviet Empire fell apart, new conflicts broke out. Even the Second World War did not solve all the border problems. The peace lasted merely a couple of decades and a new conflict was already brewing. “Suddenly people throughout the Middle East and the center of Europe found themselves living in a world where they didn't know what country they belonged to it wasn't quite clear what the borders of those countries would be a whole lot of small wars were breaking out between different national movements trying to grab territory, and so it was in fact a very difficult time for people,' said MacMillan. The old empires had provided a degree of stability, so many had trouble adjusting to life under a different rule, says Margaret MacMillan, professor of international history at Oxford University. “They tended to be historians, geographers and classically trained Oxford academics for example, who were not necessarily aware or mindful of creating a new economically integrated and viable European world,' said Heffernan. The new nations welcomed their new independence, but Heffernan says experts who advised national delegations during the negotiations were not economists. It took about five years and several treaties to dismantle the three empires. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, this vast zone to the southern part of Europe, is divided up into a range of smaller states,' said Heffernan. 'Poland was reconstituted in the East the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are established. Historians say many of the border changes - agreed upon after the war - were made for political rather than economic reasons, creating new problems whose impact can be felt even today.Īfter four years of carnage and more than 16 million dead soldiers and civilians, three empires that had lasted for centuries - Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman - gradually ceased to exist and many new nations emerged, says Mike Heffernan, professor of historical geography at the University of Nottingham.

A century ago at the beginning of the First World War, the maps of Europe, Asia and Africa looked much different than they do today.

Map of the world after ww1