In Class Assignment 1

With reference to origin and purpose, assess the values and limits of charts 1-6 for historians studying the causes of WWI.

Charts 1 through 6, published in the UK in 1988, offer information about the industrial and military capabilities of eight different countries that participated in the First World War. These charts are valuable in that they provide specific numbers for various statistics regarding each country. This could give historians an idea of the economic causes of the war, in addition to pointing out a global increase in military power in the time leading up to World War I. However, this does not give any indication of which countries are competing with each other and which are allied, and the charts do not say why the numbers changed in the way that is shown.