The shot that triggered the war

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Exactly 100 years ago on June 28th 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo, when the young Bosnian-Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip fired several shots at the couple that was on an official visit at point-blank range. Interesting to note, the couple’s visit also marked their 14th anniversary as married.

While this event proved how high the international tension was at this point in history, it also showed how fragile peace was. Princip sparked the Great War: a month after the assassination of the heir to the throne and his wife, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia and thus began what would become one of the most terrifying wars of the European history. Together with WW2, the 1914 war cost millions of lives and changed the world forever.

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The pre-war tensions caused by nationalist and imperialist rivalry and militarism of the big empires made the more modernised and equipped armies fight against each other from the trenches. The dominant idea was that “a nation’s power was largely based on its ability to wage war” (1). Soldiers were fighting for their nations, for pride and victory, while the frontiers between empires and nations were being redefined. The first global conflict redrew the world’s and, more specifically, Europe’s maps (for an interactive map, click here). Moreover, its ending “also helped create the conditions in which political extremism thrived in Europe, eventually giving rise to Nazism in Germany and Communism throughout Eastern Europe” (2).

Nationalism was one of the reasons behind the political turmoil Europe was living in that period. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines nationalism as “a desire by a large group of people (such as people who share the same culture, history, language, etc.) to form a separate and independent nation of their own”. Before and during the Great War, rising nationalist ideologies were fighting for their independence and autonomy from the vast empires (such as Serbians against the Austro-Hungarian Empire). For a detailed glossary of WW1, please have a look here.

Somehow these cultural and patriotic wounds do not seem to have healed completely in the Balkans even today. The celebrations held last weekend to commemorate the tragic event, showed a country divided by those who see Princip as a hero who sought to liberate the Slavs from the empire, and those who consider him to be the detonator of the bloody conflict. EU leaders also commemorated the centenary in Ypres (Belgium), where they remembered the suffering of both sides and were glad for the creation of the EU, which reflects that “we learnt from our history”, said Merkel.

Small big events can change the world’s path in one second. Have you ever imagined what would have happened if the archduke was not killed? Historian and columnist Dr Tim Stanley explores some of the possibilities here.

 

References

The Guardian  (The Trigger)

Huffington Post

El País (Internacional)

BBC

(1) WW1

(2) The Guardian

 

 

By Jurdana Martin Retegi
Student of MA Learning & Communication in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts
University of Luxembourg
Study visitor at TermCoord