The Month that Changed the World: July 1914 and WWI - Hardcover

Martel, Gordon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199665389 ISBN 13: 9780199665389

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2014

Synopsis

On 28 June 1914 the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in the Balkans. Five fateful weeks later the Great Powers of Europe were at war.

Much time and ink has been spent ever since trying to identify the "guilty" person or state responsible, or alternatively attempting to explain the underlying forces that 'inevitably' led to war in 1914. Unsatisfied with these explanations, Gordon Martel now goes back to the contemporary diplomatic, military, and political records to investigate the twists and turns of the crisis afresh, with the aim of establishing just how the catastrophe really unfurled.

What emerges is the story of a terrible, unnecessary tragedy - one that can be understood only by retracing the steps taken by those who went down the road to war. With each passing day, we see how the personalities of leading figures such as Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Emperor Franz Joseph, Tsar Nicholas II, Sir Edward Grey, and Raymond Poincare were central to the unfolding crisis, how their hopes and fears intersected as events unfolded, and how each new decision produced a response that complicated or escalated matters to the point where they became almost impossible to contain.

Devoting a chapter to each day of the infamous "July Crisis," this gripping step by step account of the descent to war makes clear just how little the conflict was in fact premeditated, preordained, or even predictable. Almost every day it seemed possible that the crisis could be settled as so many had been over the previous decade; almost every day there was a new suggestion that gave statesmen hope that war could be avoided without abandoning vital interests.

And yet, as the last month of peace ebbed away, the actions and reactions of the Great Powers disastrously escalated the situation. So much so that, by the beginning of August, what might have remained a minor Balkan problem had turned into the cataclysm of the First World War.

About this title

About the Author

Gordon Martel is a leading authority on war, empire, and diplomacy in the modern age. His numerous publications include studies of the origins of the first and second world wars, modern imperialism, and the nature of diplomacy. A founding editor of The International History Review, he has taught at a number of Canadian universities, and has been a visiting professor or fellow in England, Ireland and Australia. Editor-in-chief of the five-volume Encyclopedia of War, he is also joint editor of the longstanding Seminar Studies in History series.

Reviews

Martel (The Origins of the First World War, 1996) scrutinizes the monthlong diplomatic crisis that began with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and ended with the first volleys of the “war to end all wars.” Given the tangle of treaties, alliances, and variously divergent national interests that gave rise to the crisis, not to mention the great number of individuals involved, it’s an unavoidably complicated story. Historical explanations as to how relatively minor local tensions in the Balkans boiled over into full-scale pan-European war are many, yet given the scope of the carnage that would ensue—9 million people killed and 30 million injured, many horrifically—such explanations often seem insufficient. On this greatest of questions Martel does not claim new clarity, suggesting that there is not, and may never be, a full set of explanations for the choices made in July 1914. Instead, inspired by crime novelist Ian Rankin, whose books demand that the reader be the detective, Martel embraces the complexity of the historical moment and presents a thoroughly (and, at times, bewilderingly) detailed blow-by-blow account of the flurry of diplomatic activity that, despite many opportunities to maintain peace, ultimately plunged the world into war. Readers seeking a more explanatory approach may prefer Christopher Clark’s excellent The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2013), or Barbara Tuchman’s classic The Guns of August (1962), but Martel’s careful, encyclopedic approach deserves to share a shelf with such works. --Brendan Driscoll

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199665389
• ISBN 13: 9780199665389
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512