Which empires collapsed by the end of WWI?

• A. British Empire and French Empire.
• B. German Empire and Persian Empire.
• C. Japanese Empire and Chinese Empire.
• D. Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire; the Russian Empire also collapsed in 1917-18.

Answer: (D)

World War I destabilized multi-ethnic empires and sped up their collapse as nationalist movements, military defeat, and revolutionary pressures overwhelmed old ruling systems. The Austro-Hungarian Empire unraveled because its many ethnic groups pressed for independence, and by 1918 it had broken into separate nations rather than a single united state. The Ottoman Empire faced crushing military losses and territorial disintegration, and after the war it was dismantled and partitioned, with its old imperial structure fading away in the following years. In Russia, revolutionary upheaval in 1917 toppled the imperial regime, leading to the emergence of the Soviet state and the end of the Russian Empire’s long-standing imperial rule. The other options pair empires that either did not end by the war’s end or had already changed in ways that don’t fit the question, making this set the best match for empires whose governing structures effectively ended around World War I.