Effects — Territorial, Political, and Economic

Wars remake the world. When the fighting stops, the political map, the balance of power, and the economies of participants have often changed beyond recognition. IB History asks students to trace these effects carefully and to connect them back to the type of war and the way it was fought. This lesson examines the territorial, political, and economic consequences of twentieth-century conflict, saving social and demographic effects for Lesson 5.

Territorial effects

The most visible effect of war is the redrawing of borders. The First World War destroyed four empires—German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman—and the peace settlements, above all the Treaty of Versailles, created new states across central and eastern Europe such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The principle of