OPVL - WWI Charts

With reference to origin and purpose, discuss the values and limitations of the charts for historians studying the causes of World War One.

These four charts are from the same source, a historical book written by Paul Kennedy in 1988. The book was published by Fontana Press in the United Kingdom. The charts were made and included in this book as a way to express the values of different military aspects. These charts are valuable because they provide specific numbers for the different things, including the number of naval and military personnel, the tonnage of warships, and then numbers for the industry of the different world powers. These charts have limitations, one of them being that there are no citations for where the numbers came from. These numbers provide a lot of valuable data and opportunities to compare and contrast the different world powers through the years, but without proper citation of where this information came from the reliability of them decreases.