‘Why We Are At War’: Justifying War in Britain, 1914

Abstract

On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student who was a member of a Serbian terrorist organization, the Black Hand. One month later, on 28 July, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within a week, a regional dispute had escalated into European war.1 Questions surrounding the outbreak of the War began immediately, focusing mainly on the issue of who was responsible.