Misfire : The Sarajevo Assassination and the Winding Road to World War I

A new interpretation of the Sarajevo assassination and the origins of World War I that places focus on the Balkans and the prewar period. The story has so often been told: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, was shot dead on June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Thirty days later, the Archduke's uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph, declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia, producing the chain reaction of European powers entering the First World War. In Misfire , Paul Miller-Melamed narrates the history of the Sarajevo assassination and the origins of World War I from the perspective of the Balkans. Rather than focusing on the bang of assassin Gavrilo Princip's gun or reinforcing the mythology that has arisen around this act, Miller-Melamed embeds the incident in the longer-term conditions of the Balkans that gave rise to the political murder. He thus illuminates the centrality of the Bosnian Crisis and the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth century to European power politics, while explaining how Serbs, Bosnians, and Habsburg leaders negotiated their positions in an increasingly dangerous geopolitical environment. Despite the absence of evidence tying official Serbia to the assassination conspiracy, Miller-Melamed shows how it spiraled into a diplomatic crisis that European statesmen proved unable to resolve peacefully. Contrasting the vast disproportionality between a single deadly act and an act of war that would leave ten million dead, Misfire contends that the real causes for the world war lie in "civilized" Europe rather than the endlessly discussed political murder. A new interpretation of the Sarajevo assassination and the origins of World War I that places focus on the Balkans and the prewar period.The story has so often been told: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, was shot dead on June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Thirty days later, the Archduke's uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph, declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia, producing the chain reaction of European powers entering the First World War.In Misfire, Paul Miller-Melamed narrates the history of the Sarajevo assassination and the origins of World War I from the perspective of the Balkans. Rather than focusing on the bang of assassin Gavrilo Princip's gun or reinforcing the mythology that has arisen around this act, Miller-Melamed embeds the incident in the longer-term conditions of the Balkans that gave rise to the political murder. He thus illuminates the centrality of the Bosnian Crisis and the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth century to European power politics, while explaining how Serbs, Bosnians, and Habsburg leaders negotiated their positions in an increasingly dangerous geopolitical environment. Despite the absence of evidence tying official Serbia to the assassination conspiracy, Miller-Melamed shows how it spiraled into a diplomatic crisis that European statesmen proved unable to resolve peacefully.Contrasting the vast disproportionality between a single deadly act and an act of war that would leave ten million dead, Misfire contends that the real causes for the world war lie in "civilized" Europe rather than the endlessly discussed political murder. ## Abstract Shot through the neck, choking on his own blood with his beloved wife dying beside him, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, managed a few words before losing consciousness: “It’s nothing,” he repeatedly said of his fatal wound. It was June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. One month later, what most Europeans also took for “nothing” became “something” when the Archduke’s uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph, declared war on Serbia for allegedly harboring the criminal elements and tolerating the propaganda that prompted the assassination. The First World War—the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century—had begun not with the bang of Gavrilo Princip’s gun, but with the whimper of European statesmen unable to resolve the diplomatic crisis that ensued. The history of the Sarajevo assassination and the origins of World War I rest on a rude irony: the vast disproportionality between a single deadly act and an act of war that would leave ten million dead. Consequently, the Archduke’s murder has assumed mythic proportions—the “first shots of the First World War” fired by a “fanatic Serb nationalist” backed by the “secret” Black Hand “terrorist” society in the “primitive, violence-ridden Balkans.” This book brings Sarajevo back to earth. By narrating the assassination in a broad historical context bereft of its usual embellishments and distortions, Misfire reminds readers that the real causes for the world war lie in “civilized” Europe rather than an amateurishly organized, if eternally fascinating, political murder. By narrating the Sarajevo assassination in a broad historical context, 'Misfire' contends that the most consequential political murder in modern history would have remained inconsequential if not for the decisions made by the leaders of Europe's Great Powers