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Even historians still cannot agree on how the First World War began, writes Conor Mulvagh of the School of History and Archives at University College Dublin.
They can broadly agree on what factors were involved but ascribing relative importance to a myriad of long-term and more immediate causal factors has kept academics, veterans, and politicians writing and talking for an entire century.
Long-term causes may actually have had a stronger bearing on the systemic causes of the conflict but attention must first focus on the sequence of events that led from Sarajevo to the outbreak of continental war.
Since a coup in 1903, Serbian nationalists had been working towards the creation of a greater Serbia.
The Balkans had been embroiled in two separate wars between 1912 and 1913 and, ever since the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, the region had been in a near-permanent state of instability and tension.
Bosnia Herzegovina had been annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908 and Franz Ferdinand was in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 to inspect Austro-Hungarian troops in the region.
Gavrilo Princip had been part of a team of operatives plotting assassination on 28 June 1914.
Even historians still cannot agree on how the First World War began, writes Conor Mulvagh of the School of History and Archives at University College Dublin.
They can broadly agree on what factors were involved but ascribing relative importance to a myriad of long-term and more immediate causal factors has kept academics, veterans, and politicians writing and talking for an entire century.
Long-term causes may actually have had a stronger bearing on the systemic causes of the conflict but attention must first focus on the sequence of events that led from Sarajevo to the outbreak of continental war.
Since a coup in 1903, Serbian nationalists had been working towards the creation of a greater Serbia.
The Balkans had been embroiled in two separate wars between 1912 and 1913 and, ever since the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, the region had been in a near-permanent state of instability and tension.
Bosnia Herzegovina had been annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908 and Franz Ferdinand was in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 to inspect Austro-Hungarian troops in the region.
Gavrilo Princip had been part of a team of operatives plotting assassination on 28 June 1914. Continue reading
Sources
- RTE News
- Image: Greg Manderson
- See also: A Global Guide to the First World War, an interactive documentary from The Guardian.
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