Sean McMeekin is Professor of History at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Rejecting earlier accounts of the outbreak of World War I, which emphasized structural factors or German ‘premeditation,’ McMeekin proposes instead a series of contingent occurrences stretching from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28 to the British ultimatum to Berlin on Aug. 4, 1914. Far from fated by the alliance system or the arms race, the war of 1914 was an eminently avoidable catastrophe brought on by the opportunistic scheming by a small handful of statesmen, often driven as much by personal complexes and rivalries as by compelling reasons of state. Though aware, in some sense, of the risks they were running, none of the men responsible could have imagined the scale of the human catastrophe they were about to unleash.
Presented November 7, 2014 as part of the National World War I Museum and United States World War I Centennial Commission 2014 Symposium, "1914: Global War & American Neutrality."
The Symposium was held in association with The Western Front Association East Coast Branch and the World War I Historical Association. Sponsored by Colonel J's, the Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund and Verlag Militaria.
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