2014 marks the centenary of the start of the First World War. Already, articles, books and TV programmes have appeared to commemorate this cataclysmic event. And as 28 July, the date on which the Austria-Hungary Empire issued an ultimatum to Serbia approaches, we can expect interest to rise, especially in Europe.

Although a hundred years have passed, the war still evokes an abiding fascination. The sheer scale of the slaughter is scarcely imaginable: over 16 million were killed, including 10 million combatants on both sides, and some 20 million were wounded.

One reason for these enormous losses was the introduction of new weapons and technology. Aircraft, tanks, submarines, machine guns and gas were deployed for the first time in a major conflict.

The trench warfare that developed after the initial German thrust into France slowed down was lethal for hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were made to charge fixed defensive positions.

What led to the war is still disputed by historians. An interlocking system of alliances, and a balance of power strategy, had kept the peace in Europe for a century following the Napoleonic wars.

Apart from the Crimean and the Franco-German wars of the 1870s, Europe was largely at peace for a hundred years. The Concert of Europe, established in 1815 after the defeat of Napoleon, had been largely successful in defusing crises through a mixture of diplomacy and bluff.

After Bismarck united a collection of Germanic states to form the German Empire in 1871, there was a drive to win recognition as a major power along with Great Britain. Power and prestige in those days were measured by the number of battleships and colonies an empire possessed. Germany, a land power, had few of either, and was determined to catch up with its British rival.

Russia, ruled by Tsar Nicholas II, was the most backward empire in Europe. Nicholas II, out of touch with his people, was trying to stem the tide of populist sentiments.

Allied to France and Britain, Russia was the weak link in the Triple Alliance. Nevertheless, it constituted a threat to Germany’s eastern flank, forcing its military to fight a war on two fronts.

One of the books timed to emerge in the First World War’s centennial year is Margaret MacMillan’s The War that Ended Peace: the Road to 1914.

This is history written on a large scale as the author traces the ambitions and politics of the principal countries involved in the conflict. With a clinical eye, she focuses on key events in the years preceding the outbreak of war.

Basically, she discusses the factors that led to the breakdown of the system that had been largely successful in maintaining peace for a century. One major destabilising factor was Germany’s vast shipbuilding programme that threatened Britain’s supremacy on the high seas.

As an island empire with colonies around the globe, Britain was obliged to maintain a large fleet. German, on the other hand, craved its ‘place in the sun’, and to attain it, had decided to match the British fleet.

Another factor that hastened the onset of the war was the imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire. European powers eyed its colonies, and jostled to position themselves for a land grab when the feeble Ottoman Empire finally broke up.

The Serbs had already freed themselves, and nationalists were trying to establish a Greater Serbia encompassing the Slavic population of Eastern Europe. It was a group of these nationalists who assassinated the crown prince of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife while on a visit to Sarajevo in Bosnia on 23 June. This was the match that ignited the tinderbox and led to war.

The alliances that had kept the peace now fanned the flames: Serbia had an understanding with Russia to protect it, while Germany was allied to Austria-Hungary.

France, although not connected in any way to the emerging conflict to its east, was nonetheless treaty-bound to come to Russia’s defence. And Britain, while it had no formal agreement with France, had nevertheless indicated that it would help its erstwhile enemy in case the Germans attacked it.

It is interesting to note that the rulers of Germany, Britain, Austria-Hungary and Russia were all related by blood. However, this did not prevent them from being in opposing camps when the crunch came. Three of the four empires fell by the end of the war.

Why does this war matter a hundred years later? Largely because the changes to international boundaries that were made, although they have lasted a century, are now under strain.

Defeat in the war finally caused the demise of the Ottoman Empire, and its Middle Eastern colonies were bundled together and divided between France and Britain under the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

Modern Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon all emerged out of the Treaty of Versailles after the German defeat.

After the war ended, the world was horrified at the bloodshed, and there was a resolve never to allow such a conflict to break out again. As a result, the League of Nations was formed and the Great War, as it was then known, was also considered to be the war that was to end all wars.

But ironically, the harsh terms imposed on a defeated Germany led directly to the Second World War barely two decades later.