Review article
https://doi.org/10.21857/mnlqgc5d5y
Centennial controversy on Serbia's joint responsibility for the Sarajevo assassination and the First World War (1915-2015)
Tihomir Rajčić
orcid.org/0000-0002-6386-1532
; The Elementary school of prince Mislava, Kaštel Sućurac, Croatia
Abstract
This article deals with historiographical controversies about the role played by the Kingdom of Serbia in the Sarajevo assassination and the outbreak of the First World War, which has been in focus for more than a century. A thesis was put forward in 2005 by the influential American-French duo of historians JayWinter and Antonie Pros that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, World War I increasingly began to look like a "European civil war." For this reason, all states, all nations, share to a different extent the responsibility for a catastrophe they were unable to predict and prevent .“ Starting from this thesis, the author provides an extensive chronological overview of the findings from 65 historiographical, memoir political science titles published in the period from 1915 to 2015. The overview is divided into three, chronologically arranged, chapters. The first chapter, entitled "Debates on the Culpability of Serbia (1915-1961)", provides an overview of the debates about the guilt, i.e. co-responsibility, of the Kingdom of Serbia in the period from the polemical writing of the American political scientist from Columbia University John William Burgess from 1915 to the so-called "Fischer Controversies" from the 1960s. The second chapter "New Knowledge in the Shadow of the Fischer Controversy (1961-2000)" provides an overview of the insights from the influential 1961 book by the famous German historian Fritz Fischer, GriffnachderWeltmacht. The book sparked a debate on the liability of Germany for World War I outbreak, and it has lasted to the early 21st century when the focus shifted again to the Balkans. That is why the third chapter "Return to the Balkans (2001-2015)" gives an overview of the latest discussions, which are primarily focused on different views and arguments about Serbia's co-responsibility for the Sarajevo assassination and the First World War. In conclusion, the author summarises a whole range of, often quite contradictory, views that represent an indispensable introduction and impetus for further research into the controversy over the co-responsibility of the Kingdom of Serbia for the Sarajevo assassination and the First World War. And the author believes that the discussion of the complex backdrop cannot only come down to pointing the finger at official Belgrade or denying its joint responsibility.
Keywords
co-responsibility of Serbia; historiographical controversy; World War I
Hrčak ID:
248503
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2020.
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