ease 890 CHATTER 27 losing even their life-sustaining relief. As a voice from the crowd cried out when the famous astron- ‘omer Francois Arago counseled patience, “Ah, Monsieur Arago, you have never been hungry!” Barricades sprang up in the narrow streets of Paris, and a terrible class war began, Working people fought with the courage of utter desperation, but the government had the army and the support of peasant France. After three terrible “June Days” and the death or injury of greater than ten thou- sand people, the republican army under General Louis Cavaignac stood triumphant in a sea of working-class blood and hatred. ‘The revolution in France thus ended in spectac- ular failure. The February coalition of the middle and working classes had in four short months be- come locked in mortal combat. In place of a gener- ‘ous democratic republic, the Constituent Assem- bly completed a constitution featuring a strong executive. This allowed Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, to win a landslide victory in the election of December 1848. The appeal of his great name, as well as the desire of the proper- tied classes for order at any cost, had produced semi-authoritarian regime. The Austrian Empire in 1848 ‘Throughout central Europe, news of the upheaval in France evoked feverish excitement and eventu- ally revolution, Liberals demanded written consti- tutions, representative government, and greater _ vil liberties. When governments hesitated, popu- lar revolts followed. Urban workers and students served as the shock troops, but they were allied with middle-class liberals and peasants. In the face of this united front, monarchs collapsed and granted almost everything. The popular revolu- tionary coalition, having secured great and easy victories, then broke down as it had in France. The * traditional forces—the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the regular army—recovered their nerve, reas- serted their authority, and took back many though not all of the concessions. Reaction was ‘every- where victorious. The revolution in the Austrian Empire began in Hungary, Nationalism had been growing among Hungarians since about 1790. In 1848, under the leadership of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarians de- ‘manded national autonomy, fall civil liberties, and universal suffrage. When the monarchy in Vienna IDEOLOGIES AND UPHEAVALS IN EUROPE, 1815-1850 hesitated, Viennese students and workers took to the streets on March 13 and added their own de- mands, Peasant disorders broke out in parts of the empire. The Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I (r. 1835-1848) capitulated and promised reforms ‘and a liberal constitution. Metternich fled in dis- guise toward London. The old order seemed to be collapsing with unbelievable rapidity. The coalition of revolutionaries was not com- pletely stable, though. The Austrian Empire was overwhelmingly agricultural, and serfdom still ex- isted. On March 20, as part of its capitulation be- fore upheaval, the monarchy abolished serfdom with its degrading forced labor and feudal services. Peasants throughout the empire felt that they had won a victory reminiscent of that in France in 1789. Newly free, men and women of the land lost interest in the political and social questions agi- ‘tating the cities. The government had in the peas- ants a potential ally of great importance, especially since, in central Europe as in France, the army was largely composed of peasants, The coalition of March was also weakened—and ultimately destroyed—by conflicting national as- pirations. In March the Hungarian revolutionary Teaders pushed through an extremely liberal, almost democratic, constitution granting wide- spread voting rights and civil liberties and ending, feudal obligations. So far, well and good. Yet the Hungarian revolutionaries were also nationali with a mission. They wanted the-ancient Crown of Saint Stephen, with its mosaic of provinces and na- tionalities, transformed into 2 unified, centralized Hungarian nation. To the minority groups that formed half of the population of the kingdom of Hungary—the Croats, the Serbs, and the Roma- nians—such unification was completely unaccept- able, Each felt entitled to political autonomy and cultural independence. The Habsburg monarchy in Vienna exploited the fears of the minority groups, and they were soon locked in armed com- bat with the new Hungarian government. Ina somewhat different way, Czech nationalists based in Bohemia and the city of Prague, led by the Czech historian Palackj, came into conflict with German nationalists. Like the minorities in Hungary, the Czechs saw their struggle for auton- omy as a struggle against a dominant group, the Germans. Thus the national aspirations of differ- ent peoples in the Austrian Empire came into sharp conflict, and the monarchy was able to play ‘off one group against the other.bald Feria Superman in okes Vieni ‘Nor was this all. The urban working classes of poor artisans and day laborers were not as radical in the Austrian Empire as they were in France, but then neither were the middle class and lower middle class, Throughout Austria and the German. ‘states, where Metternich’s brand of absolutism had so recently ruled supreme, the middle class wanted liberal reform, complete with constitutional mon- archy, limited voting rights, and modest social measures. They wanted a central European equiva- lent of the English Reform Bill of 1832 and the Corn Laws repeal of 1846, When the urban poor rose in arms—as they did in the Austrian cities of Vienna, Prague, and Milan and throughout the German Confederation as well, presenting their ‘own demands for socialist workshops and universal voting rights for men—the prosperous middle classes recoiled in alarm. As in Paris, the union of the urban poor and the middle class was soon a mere memory, and a bad memory at that. Finally, the conservative aristocratic forces gath- ered around Emperor Ferdinand I regained their nerve and reasserted their great strength. The archduchess Sophia, a conservative but intelligent and courageous Bavarian princess married to the emperor’s brother, provided a rallying point. Deeply ashamed of the emperor's collapse before a “mess of students,”® she insisted that Ferdinand, who had no heir, abdicate in favor of her eight. ecn-year-old son, Francis Joseph. Powerful nobles who held high positions in the government, the army, and the church agreed completely. They or. ganized around Sophia in a secret conspiracy to se. verse and crush the revolution. ies Their first breakthrough came when o a cance ange am when oe of iei i i i 892 CHAPTER 27 IDEOLOGIES AND UPHEAVALS IN EUROPE, 1815-1850 Alfred Windischgritz, bombarded Prague and sav- agely crushed a working-class revolt there on June 17. Other Austrian officials and nobles began to lead the minority nationalities of Hungary against the revolutionary government proclaimed by the Hungarian patriots. In late July 1848 another Austrian army reconquered Austria’s possessions in northern Italy, where Italian patriots had seized Power in March. Thus revolution failed as misér- ably in Italy as everywhere else, At the end of Oc- tober, the well-equipped, predominantly peasant ‘troops of the regular Austrian army attacked the student and working-class radicals in Vienna and retook the city at the cost of more than four thou- sand casualties. Thus the determination of the Austrian aristocracy and the loyalty of its army were the final ingredients in the triumph of reac- tion and the defeat of revolution, ‘Sophia's son Francis Joseph (r. 1848-1916) was crowned emperor of Austria immediately after his eighteenth birthday in December 1848. Only in ‘Hungary were the Austrian forces at first un- successful in establishing control on the new em- peror’s behalf, Yet another determined conser- vative, Nicholas I of Russia (r. 1825-1855), obligingly lent his iron hand. On June 6, 1849, 130,000 Russian troops poured into Hungary. AF ter bitter fighting—in which the Hungarian army supported the revolutionary Hungarian’ govern- ment—they subdued the country. For a number of years the Habsburgs ruled Hungary as a con- quered territory. Prussia and the Frankfurt Assembly The rest of the states in the German Confedera- tion generally recapitulated the ebb and flow of developments in France and Austria. The key dif fference was the additional goal of unifying the thirty-eight states of the German Confederation, with the possible exception of Austria, into a single sovereign nation. Thus events in Germany were extraordinarily complex, for they were occur- ring not only in the individual principalities But at the all-German level as well. After Austria, Prussia was the largest and most influential German kingdom. Prior to 1848, the goal of middle-class Prussian liberals had been to transform absolutist Prussia into a liberal constitu- tional monarchy, Such a monarchy would then take the lead in merging itself and all the other German states into a liberal, unified nation. The agitation following the fall of Louis Philippe en: couraged Prussian liberals to press their demands. ‘When these were not granted, the artisans and fac- tory workers in Berlin exploded, joining tempo- rarily with the middle-class liberals in the struggle ‘against the monarchy. The autocratic yet paternal- istic Frederick William TV (r. 1840-1861), already displaying the instability that later became insan- ity, vacillated. Humiliated by the revolutionary crowd, which forced him to salute from his bal- cony the blood-spattered corpses of workers who had fallen in an uprising on March 18, the nearly hysterical king finally caved in. On March 21 he promised to grant Prussia 2 liberal constitution and to merge it into a new national German state, ‘He appointed two wealthy businessmen from the Rhineland—perfect representatives of moderate liberalism—to form a new government. The situation might have stabilized at this point if the workers had not wanted much more and the Prussian aristocracy much less. On March 26 the workers issued a series of radical and vaguely so- cialist demands that troubled their middle-class al- lies: universal voting rights, a ministry of labor, a minimum wage, and a ten-hour day. At the same time, a wild-tempered Prussian landowner and aristocrat, Otto von Bismarck, joined the conser- vative clique gathered:around the king to urge counter-revolution. While these tensions in Prus- sia were growing, an elected assembly met in Ber- lin to write a constitution for the Prussian state: To add to the complexity of the situation, a self-appointed committee of liberals from various German states successfully called for the formation of national constituent assembly to begin writing a federal constitution for a unified German state. That body met for the first time on May 18 in Saint Paul’s Church in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt ‘National Assembly was a most curious revolution- ary body. It was really a serious middle-class body whose 820 members included some 200 lawyers; 100 professors; many doctors, judges, and offi- ials; and 140 businessmen for good measure. Convened to write.a constitution, the learned body was soon absorbed in a battle with Denmark ‘over the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein. Jurisdiction over them was a hopelessly compli- cated issue from a legal point of view. Bricain’s foreign minister Lord Palmerston once said that only three people had ever understood: the « Schleswig-Holstein question, and of those one hadi sate Sera 950 CHAPTER 29 THE AGE OF NATIONALISM IN EUROFE, 1860-1914 Catholic schools were put completely on their own financially, and in a short time they lost a third of their students. The state school system's power Of indoctrination was greatly strengthened, In France, only the growing socialist movement, with its very different and thoroughly secular ideology, stood in opposition to patriotic, republican na- tionalism. Great Britain and Ireland Britain in the late nineteenth century has often been seen as a shining example of peaceful and suc- cessful political evolution. Germany was stuck with a manipulated parliament that gave an ‘irre- sponsible emperor too much power. France had a quarrelsome parliament that gave its presidents too little power. Great ‘Britain, in contrast, seemed to enjoy an effective two-party parliament that skillfully guided the country from classical liberal- ism to full-fledged democracy with hardly a mis- step. This view of Great Britain is not so much wrong as incomplete. After the right to vote was granted ‘to males of the solid middle class in 1832, opinion leaders and politicians wrestled long and hard with the uncertainties of a further extension of the fran- chise. In his famous “Essay on Liberty,” published in 1859, the philosopher John Stuart: Mill (1806-1873), the leading heir to the Benthamite tradition (page 901), probed.the problem of how to protect the rights of individuals and minorities in the emerging age of mass electoral participa- tion. Mill pleaded eloquently for the practical and moral value inherent in safeguarding individual differences and unpopular opinions. In 1867 Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the Conser- vatives extended the vote'to all middle-class males and the best-paid workers in the Second Reform Bill. The son of a Jewish stockbroker, himself a novelist and urban dandy, the ever-fascinating Disraeli (1804-1881) was willing to risk this “leap in the dark” in order to gain new. supporters. The Conservative party, he believed, needed to broaden its traditional base of aristocratic and landed support if it was to survive. After 1867 English political parties and electoral campaigns became more modern, and the “lower orders” ap- peared to vote as responsibly as their “betters.” Hence in 1884 the Third Reform Bill gave the vote to almost every adult male, ernie While the House of Commons was drifting to. ward democracy, the House of Lords was content to slumber nobly. Between 1901 and 1910, how. ever, that bastion of aristocratic conservatism tried to reassert itself. Acting as supreme court of the land, it ruled against labor unions in two impor. tant decisions. And after the Liberal party came to power in 1906, the Lords vetoed several measures passed by the Commons, including the so-called People’s Budget. The Lords finally capitulated, as they had done in 1832, when the king threatened to create enough new peers to pass the new legis. lation. Aristocratic conservatism yielded once and for all to popular democracy. The result was that ex. tensive social welfare measures, slow to come to Great Britain, were passed in a spectacular rush be- tween 1906 and 1914. During those years, the Liberal party, inspired by the fiery Welshman David Lloyd George (1863-1945), substantially taised taxes on the rich as part of the People’s Budget. This income helped the government pay for national health insurance, “unemployment benefits, old-age pensions, and a host of other so- cial measures. The state was integrating the urban 6 masses socially as well as politically This record of accomplishment was only part of the story, though. On the eve of the First World War, the ever-emotional, ever-unanswered ques- tion of Ireland brought Great Britain to the brink of divil war: In the 1840s, Ireland had been deci, mated by famine, which fueled an Irish revolu. onary movement. Thereafter, the English slowly ‘granted concessions, such as the abolition of the Privileges of the Anglican church’ and rights for Trish peasants. The Liberal prime minister William Gladstone (1809-1898), who had proclaimed twenty years earlier that “my mission is to paci Ireland,” introduced bills to give Treand sald. lament saw their chance. They supported the Liberals in their battle for the People’s Budget and received Passage of a home-rule bill for Ireland in return,| 4 i hostilities of generations, the Protestants of Ulster refused to submerge themselves in a Catholic Ire- land, just as Irish Catholics had refused to submit to a Protestant Britain. The Ulsterites vowed to resist home rule in northern Ireland. By December 1913, they had raised 100,000 armed volunteers, and they were supported by much of English public opinion. Thus in 1914, the Liberals in the House of Lords introduced a compromise home-rule law that did not apply to the northern counties. This bill, which openly betrayed promises made to Irish na- tionalists, was rejected, and in September the or inal home-rule plan was passed but simultaneously suspended. The momentous Irish question was overtaken by cataclysmic world war in August 1914. Irish developments illustrated once again the power of national feeling and national movements in the nineteenth century. Moreover, they were proof that European states, which traced their de- velopment far back in history, could not elicit greater loyalty unless they could capture and con- trol thar elemental current -of national feeling. Thus, even though Great Britain had much going for it—power, Parliament, prosperity—none of these availed in the face of the conflicting nation- alisms espoused by Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Similarly, progressive Sweden was powerless to stop the growth of the Norwegian national move- ment, which culminated in Norway breaking away from Sweden and becoming a fully independent nation in 1905. One can also see how hopeless was the cause of the Ottaman Empire in Europe in the later nineteenth century. The Ottoman Empire was an old dynastic stare without ethnic or linguis- tic unity. It was only a matter of time before the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Romanians would break away to form their own independent nation-states (see pages 1042-1043), The Austro-Hungarian Empire The dilemma of conflicting nationalisms in Ire- land highlights how desperate the situation in the ‘Austro-Hungarian Empire had become by the ‘early twentieth century. In 1849 Magyar national- ism had driven Hungarian patriots to declare an independent Hungarian republic, which was sav- agely crushed by Russian and Austrian armies (sce “No Home Rule” Posters ke this one heiped to foment ‘pro-Bitish, ant-Catholle sentiment In the northern ish ‘counties of Ustor before the First World Wax. The rife rolsed defiantly ond the accompanying thyme ore © thy velled threat of ormed rebellion and cll wor. (Source: Reproduced with kind permislon of the Trust= {868 of the Ulster Museum) pages 890-892). Throughout the 1850s, Hungary was ruled as a conquered territory, and Emperor Francis Joseph and his bureaucracy tried hard to centralize the state and Germanize the language and culture of the different nationalities. ‘Then, in the wake of defeat by Prussia in 1866, a weakened Austria was forced to strike a compro- mise and establish the so-called dual monarchy. The empire was divided in two, and the nation, tic Magyars gained virtual independence for Hun- gary. Hencgforth each half ofthe empire agreed to952 carter 29 THE AGE OF NATIONALISM IN EUROPE, 1850-1914 test 1352-1870 tasse18ss “1859 1ss9-1870 1861 1962-1890 tesectari ee esse 107 Second Empire in France ‘Crimean War Mill, Essay on Liberty Unification of aly Abolition of serfdom tn Russia Fist Socialist international Unification of the German Empire: "; Marx, Capital % 1870-1871 Germany. eae Paris Commins 5 as Third Republic in Fidnee. 2. Nery 17721974 . 1878 ear iges-1889 188d 1089-1914 Assassination of Ta Enaciment of soci) Second Sociaist Intemational loty elected Duma 2 Liberal refoim in Great ean. 5 " Stolypin’s @gicrion reforms in Russia’ Fist World Wor THE SPREAD OF NATIONALISM IN EUROPE, 1850-1914 eT Be wet eee alia ay Lous Nopoleon dismisses French Notional Astembly in coup état Bismorck’s reigh of power in. German affals Prussia wins decisive victory in Austro-Prussion Wer Magyar ndbilty ncfeases ts power by restoring the constitution of 1848 In Hungary, thereby “further dividing the Austro-Hungarian Empire ky? Second Reform Bil passed by Bitish Porloment’ = Prussia wins decisive victon’ in Franco-Prusscr Wet! Willar | pfoclaiméed emperor of @ united Suppremlon of Social Denoctatsn Gormany Thi Reform Bl passed by Bish Portament ‘ Repeal of anti.sdcial Democrat jaw In Germany c Witte directs modemizstion of Ruslan econonty 3 Japan wins deckive wiétory in RussoJopanese Wot ieee : Revolution in Russia: Tsar Nicholas forced fo Issue the October Manifesto promising @ popu: German Sociel Democratic party becomes largest porty In the German Reiéhstag | lish Home Rule bil pated by Bish Perfoment but inmedictely suspended wih outbreci of! ! deal with its own “barbarians”—its own minori- 5 ties—as it saw fit. The two states were joined only by a shared monarch and common ministries for finance, defense, and foreign affairs. After 1867 the disintegrating force of competing national- isms continued unabated, for both Austria and Hungary had several “Irelands” within’ their ' borders. In Austria, ethnic Germans were only one-third of the population, anid by the late 1890s many Germans saw their traditional dominance threat- i ened by Czechs, Poles, and other Slavs. A particu- . Jarly emotional and divisive issue in the Austrian Had Parliament was the language used in government and elementary education at the local level. From 1900 to 1914, the parliament was so divided that ministries generally could not obtain a majority and ruled instead by decree, Efforts by both con- servatives and socialists to defuse national antago- nisms by stressing economic issues cutting across exhnie lines—vhich ed to the introduction ofuni- versal male suffrage in 1907—prow. - successful, eS One aspect of such national antagonisms was anti-Semitism, which was particularly virulent in Austria. After Jews obrained full legal equality it“so gy 1867, the Jewish populations of Austrian cities grew very rapidly, reaching 10 percent of the pop- ulation of Vienna by 1900. Many Jewish business- men were quite successful in banking and retail trade; and Jewish artists, intellectuals, and scien- tists, like the world-famous Sigmund Freud, played a major role in making Vienna a leading center of European culture and modern thought. ‘When extremists charged the Jews with control- ling the economy and corrupting German culture with alien ideas and ultramodem art, anxious Ger- mans of all classes tended to listen. The popular mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, Dr. Karl ‘Lueger, combined anti-Semitic rhetoric with calls for “Christian socialism” and municipal ownership of basic services. Lueger appealed especially to the German lower middle class—and to an unsuc- cessful young artist named Adolf Hitler. In Hungary, the Magyar nobility in 1867 re- stored the constitution of 1848 and used it to dominate both the Magyar peasantry and the mi- nority populations until 1914. Only the wealthiest one-fourth of adult males had the right to vote, making parliament the creature of the Magyar lite. Laws promoting use of the Magyar (Hun- garian) language in schools and government were rammed through and bitterly resented, especially ‘by the Croatians and Romanians. While Magyar ‘extremists campaigned loudly for total separation, from Austria, the radical leaders of the subject na- tionalities dreamed of independence from Hun- gary. Unlike most major countries, which har- essed nationalism to strengthen the state after 1871, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was progres- sively weakened and destroyed by it. MARXISM AND THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT ‘Nationalism served, for better or worse, as a new unifying principle. But what about socialism’, Did the rapid growth of socialist parties, which were generally Marxian parties dedicated to an interna- tional proletarian revolution, mean that national states had failed to gain the support of workers? Certainly, many prosperous and conservative citi- zens were greatly troubled by the socialist move- ment. And many historians have portrayed the years before 1914 as a time of increasing conflict 953 (MARXISM AND THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT bated pevolutlonary soe Soe ee aida nationalist alliance between conservative ar- istocPaey-ami-the prosperous middle class on the other. This question requires close examination. The Socialist International The growth of socialist parties after 1871 was phe- nomenal. Neither Bismarck’s antisocialist laws nor his extensive social security system checked the growth of the German Social Democratic party, ‘which espoused the Marxian ideology. By 1912 it had attracted millions of followers and was the largest party in the Reichstag. Socialist parties also grew in other countries, though nowhere else with quite such success. In 1883 Russian exiles in Swit- zerland founded a Russian Social Democratic party, which grew rapidly in the 1890s and there~ after, despite internal disputes. In France, various socialist parties re-emerged in the 1880s after the carnage of the Commune. In 1905 most of them were finally unified in a single, increasingly pow- erfal Marxian party called the “French Section of the Workers International.” Belgium and Austria- Hungary also had strong socialist parties of the Marxian persuasion. ‘As the name of the French party suggests, ‘Marxian socialist parties were eventually linked to- gether in an international organization. As early as 1848, Mare had laid out his intellectual system in the Communist Manifesto (see pages 875-876), He had declared that “the working men have no country,” and he had urged proletarians of all na- tions to unite against their governments. Joining the flood of radicals and republicans who fled continental Europe for England and America after the revolutions of 1848, Marx sertled in London. Poor and depressed, he lived on his meager earn- ings as a journalist and on the gifts of his friend Engels. Marx never stopped thinking of revolu- tion, Digging deeply into economics and history, he concluded that revolution follows economic crisis and tried to prove it in Critique of Political Economy (1859) and his greatest theoretical work, Capital (1867). ‘The bookish Marx also excelled as a practical or- ganizer. In 1864 he played an important role in founding the First International of socialists—the International Working Men's Association. Iir the following years, he battled successfully to control1042 cuarteR 2 navy as the legitimate mark of a great world power. But British leaders like David Lloyd George saw it as a detestable military challenge, which forced them to spend the People’s Budget on battleships rather than on social welfare. As Germany’s rapid industrial growth allowed it to overcome Britain’s arly lead, economic rivalry also contributed to distrust and hostility between the two nations. ‘Unscrupulous journalists and special-interest groups in both countries portrayed healthy com- petition in foreign trade and investment as a form of economic warfare. In Britain and Germany, many educated shapers of public opinion and ordinary people were in- creasingly locked in a fateful love-hate relationship with the two countries. Proud nationalists in both, countries simultaneously admired and feared the power and accomplishments of their nearly equal rival. In 1909 the mass-circulation London Daily Mail hysterically informed its readers in a series of reports that “Germany is deliberately preparing to destroy the British Empire.”? By then, Britain was psychologically, if not offically, in the Franco- Russian camp. The leading nations of Europe were divided into two hostile blocs, both ill pre~ pared to deal with upheaval on Europe’s south- eastern frontier, The Outbreak of War In the early years of the twentieth century, war in the Balkans was as inevitable as anything can be in human history. The reason was simple: national- ism was destroying the multinational Ottoman Empire and threatening to break up the Austro- Hungarian Empire. The only questions were what kinds of wars would occur and where they would lead. Greece had long before led the struggle for na- tional liberation, winning its independence in 1832. In 1875 widespread nationalist rebellion in the Ottoman Empire’s European possessions re- sulted in Turkish repression, Russian intervention, and Great Power tensions. Bismarck helped resdlve this crisis at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, which vworked out the partial division of Ottoman hold- ings in Europe, Austria-Hungary obtained the right to “occupy and administer” Bosnia and Her- zegovina, Serbia and Romania won complete inde- pendence, and a part of Bulgaria won local auton- omy. The Ottoman Empire retained important ‘THE GREAT BREAK: WAR AND REVOLUTION Balkan holdings, for Austria-Hungary and Russia each feared the other's domination of totally inde- pendent states in the area (Map 32.1). ‘After 1878 the siren call of imperialism lured European energies, particularly Russian energies, away from the Balkans. This division helped pre- serve the fragile balance of interests in southeast- ern Europe. By 1903, however, nationalism in the Balkans was on the rise once again. Serbia led the ‘way, becoming openly hostile toward both ‘Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The Serbs, a Slavic people, looked to Slavic Russia for support of their national aspirations. To block Ser- bian expansion and to take advantage of Russia’s weakness after the revolution of 1905, Austria in 1908 formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina with their predominantly Serbian populations. ‘The kingdom of Serbia erupted in rage but could do nothing without Russian support. Then in 1912, in the First Balkan War, Serbia tumed southward. With Greece and Bulgaria it took Macedonia from the Ottoman Empire and then quarreled with its ally Bulgaria over the spoils, of victory—a dispute that led in 1913 to the Sec- ond Balkan War. Austria intervened in 1913 and forced Serbia to give up Albania. After centuries, nationalism had finally destroyed the Ottoman Empire in Europe (Map 32.2). This sudden but long-awaited event elated the Balkan nationalists and dismayed the leaders of multinational Austria- Hungary. The former hoped and the latter feared that Austria might be next to be broken apart Within this tense context, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones, and his wife Sophie were assassinated by Bosnian revolutionaries on June 28, 1914, during a state visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The assassins were closely connected to the ‘ultrana~ tionalist Serbian society The Black Hand. This revolutionary group was secretly supported by members of the Serbian government and was dedi- cated to uniting all Serbians in a single state. Al- though the leaders of Austria-Hungary did not and could not know all the details of Serbia’s in- volvement in the assassination plot, they con- cluded after some hesitation that Serbia had to be severely punished once and for all. After a month ‘of maneuvering, on July 23 Austria-Hungary pre~ sented Serbia with an unconditional ultimatum, ‘The Serbian government had just forty-eight hours in which to agree to cease all subversion in Austria and all anti-Austrian propaganda in 6‘THE FIRST WORLD WAR 1043 MAP 32.1 The Balkans Affer the Congress of Berlin, 1878 The Ottoman Empire suffered large temtorial Josses but remained a power in the Balkons. Serbia. Moreover, a thorough investigation of all aspects of the assassination at Sarajevo was to be undertaken in Serbia by a joint commission of Serbian and Austrian officials. These’ demands amounted to control of the Serbian state. When Serbia replied moderately but evasively, Austria be- gan to mobilize and then declared war on Serbia ‘on July 28. Thus a desperate multinational ‘Austria-Hungary deliberately chose war in a last- ditch attempt to stem the rising tide of hostile na- tionalism. The “Third Balkan War” had begun. ‘Of prime importance in Austria-Hungary’s fate- fal decision was Germany's unconditional support. Emperor William I and his chancellor, Theobald yon Bethmann-Hollweg (Bismarck had resigned in 1890), gave Austria-Hungary a “blank check” and urged aggressive measures in early July even ‘MAP 32.2 The Balians in ‘1914. Ethnic boundories did not follow poltical boundaries, and Serbian national cospirations threatened Austic- Hungary. though they realized that war between Austria and Russia was the most probable result. They knew that Russian pan-Slavs saw Russia not only as the protector but also as the eventual liberator of southeri Slavs. As one pan-Slav had said much ear~ lier, “Austria can hold her part of the Slavonian mass as long as Turkey holds hers and vice versa.”# At the very least a resurgent Russia could not stand by, as in the Bosnian crisis, and simply watch the Serbs be crushed. Yet Bethmann-Hollweg appar- ently hoped: that while Russia (and therefore France) went to war, Great Britain would remain neutral, unwilling to fight over “Russian aggres- sion” in the distant Balkans. After all, Britain had only “friendly understandings” with France and Russia on colonial questions and had no alliance with either power.1044 CHAPTER 32. THE GREAT BREAK: WAR AND REVOLUTION In fact, the diplomatic situation was already out of control. Military plans and timetables began to dictate policy. Russia, a vast country, would require much longer to mobilize its armies than Germany and Austria-Hungary. On July 28, as Austrian armies bombarded Belgrade, Tsar Nicholas II ordered a partial mobilization against Austria- Hungary. Almost immediately he found that this was impossible. All the complicated mobilization, plans of the Russian general staff had assumed a war with both Austria and Germany: Russia could not mobilize against one without mobilizing against the other. On July 29, therefore, Russia or- dered full mobilization and in effect declared gen- eral war. ‘The same tragic subordination of political con- siderations to military strategy descended on Ger- many. The German general staff had also thought only in terms of a two-front war. The German plan for war called for knocking out France first with a lightning atrack through neutral Belgium before, tuming on Russia. On August 2, 1914, General Helmuth von Moltke, “acting under a dictate of self-preserva- tion,” demanded that Belgium permit German ar- mies to pass through its territory. Belgium, whose neutrality was solemnly guaranteed by all the great states including Prussia, refused. Germany attacked. Thus Germany's terrible, politically dis- astrous response to a war in the Balkans was an all-out invasion of France by way of the plains of neutral Belgium on August 3. In the face of this act of aggression, Great Britain declared war on Germany the following day. The First World War had begun. Reflections on the Origins of the War ‘Although few events in history have aroused such interest and controversy as the coming of the First ‘World War, the question of immediate causes and responsibilities can be answered with considerable certainty. Austria-Hungary deliberately started the “Third Balkan War.” A war for the right to survive was Austria-Hungary's desperate, if understand- able, response to the aggressive, yet also under- standable, revolutionary drive of Serbian national- ists to unify their people in a single state. In spite of Russian intervention in the quarrel, it was clear from the beginning of the crisis that Germany not only pushed and goaded Austria-Hungary but was also responsible for turning a little war into the Great War by means of its sledgehammer attack on, Belgium and France. Why was this so? ‘After Bismarck’s resignation in 1890, German leaders lost control of the international system. They felt increasingly that Germany's status as a world power was declining while that of Britain, France, Russia, and the United States was grow- ing. Indeed, the powers of what officially became in August 1914 the Triple Entente (see Figure 32.1}—Great Britain, France, and Russia—were checking Germany's vague but real aspirations as well as working to strangle Austria-Hungary, Ger- ‘many’s only real ally. Germany's aggression in 1914 reflected the failure of all European states- men, not just German leaders, to incorporate Bis: marck’s mighty empire permanently and peace- fally into the international system. ‘There were other underlying causes. The new averseas expansion—imperialism—did not play a direct role, since the European powers always settled their colonial conflicts peacefully. Yet the ‘easy imperialist victories did contribute to a gen- eral European overconfidence and reinforced na- fluential. The triumph of nationalism was a crucial unde lying precondition of the Great War. National- ism—in the form of Serbian aspirations and the grandiose pan-German versus pan-Slavic racism of some fariatics—was at the heart of the Balkan wars. Nationalism drove the spiraling arms race. More generally, the aristocracy and middle classes arrived at nationalistic compromises while ordi- nary people looked toward increasingly responsive states for psychological and material well-being (see pages 945-953). Broad popular commitment to “my country right or wrong” weakened groups that thought in terms of international communities and conse- quences. Thus the big international bankers, who were frightened by the prospect of war in July 1914, and the extreme-left socialists, who believed that the enemy was at home and not abroad, were equally out of step with national feeling Finally, the wealthy governing classes underesti- mated the risk of war in 1914, They had forgotten that great wars and great social revolutions very tional rivalries. In this respect imperialism. was in- © often go together in history. Metternich’s alliance) of conservative forces in support of international peace and the domestic status quo had become only a distant memory. SSS