1 O N July 23, 1914, the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
1 onJuly 23, 1914, the Habsburg monarchy of Austria-Hungary presented an ultimatum to the neigh- boring kingdom of Serbia that was designed to be unacceptable.' The funda- mental issue in the international crisis that followed was whether the Austro-Serbian standoff would trigger a showdown between the two great European blocs: the Central Powers of Austria-Hungary and Germany, and the Triple Entente of Russia, France, and Britain.' The events of 1914 remain a crucial test for any theory of the origins of modern wars, and pivotal among the issues that they raise is that of how far technical military considerations determine security policy. With this in mind, scholars have focused their attention on the thesis propounded at the time by German Chancellor Theo- bald von Bethmann Hollweg, namely, that the July 1914 crisis got "out of David Stevenson is Senior Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of French War Aims against Germany, 1914-1919 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2982), The First World War and International Politics (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2988), Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904-1914 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2996), and The Outbreak of the First World War: 1914 in Perspective (Busingstoke, U.K.:Macmillan, 2997). I should like to thank the three anonymous readers of this article. Their constructive comments were extremely beneficial. 1. This article uses the following abbreviations: BD: George P. Gooch and Harold W. Temperley, eds., British Documents on the Origins of the War, 2898-2924, 11 vols.
[Show full text]