If one looks at Power And Plenty, chapter "World Trade 1780-1914", it seems to me that a powerful argument might be made that it was the transformation in the nature of trade itself, from luxury goods to everything, including basic staples, coupled with the catastrophic liberal economic ideology of Smith ism which had just emerged in 1776, which eventually created, and then exacerbated, the tensions which eventually lead to WWI, etc.
One could also advert to more traditional explanations, social change, political vagaries, etc.; but these themselves were being worked on, 'from below', so to speak.
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