General European War Research Articles

Far from Armageddon: Austria-Hungary’s officers and their visions of a general European War before 1914

In the historiography on the origins of the First World War, the visions of war among European elites remain controversial. This article examines how Austria-Hungary’s military officers imagined the character and outcome of a general European war before 1914. It argues that Habsburg officers writing in military journals adhered to the idea of a short war with only limited impact on economy and society. They were optimistic about winning a major European war alongside their ally Germany. Their belief in a limited war was based on the experiences of the modern cabinet wars fought in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Armageddon: Political Elites and Their Visions of a General European War before 1914

Expectations of a general European war before 1914 remain a contentious area of historiographical debate. This article discusses how one particular group, political and diplomatic elites, imagined a future war before 1914. In contrast to the ‘short-war myth’, this article argues that political elites understood that war would bring in its wake revolution, chaos, and impoverishment. This article analyses the varieties of understandings of catastrophe among European political elites before 1914, the sources of their knowledge about the consequences of war, and the implications these visions of catastrophic warfare had for the conduct of international politics.

The Welsh press and the July Crisis of 1914

Until recently, studies of how Wales entered the First World War have generally been overlooked. Often, the British narrative has been assumed for the Welsh experience, with the once popular topos of war enthusiasm being recently displaced by a more nuanced approach. This paper revisits the July Crisis of 1914 as presented in the Welsh press and argues that on the whole, a complicated picture existed in Welsh newspapers where narratives of race and civilization formed the roots of war culture, yet justification for war was often submerged beneath feelings of opposition and indifference. Eventually, despite some strong feelings of opposition, the Welsh press succumbed to the inevitability of a general European war.

La Guerre de Crimée n’aura pas lieu

The Crimean War (1854–6) was, in the words of Eric Hobsbawn (2010), ‘the nearest thing to a general European war between 1815 and 1914’. Whereas it figures large in the national mythologies of Britain and Russia, in France it remains very much a footnote. This is despite the fact that it is the only nineteenth-century war the French ultimately won. But in the view of many, to quote Jules Michelet (1857), ‘La conquête du lama est dix fois plus importante que la conquête de Crimée.’ It would seem that the Crimean War has no place in the canon of culturally retained historical events that define modern French identity. Though news of the war in the contemporary press and popular literature was ubiquitous, it does not figure in the canonical literature of time. This paper considers how the Crimean War was and was not represented in French literature in the second half of the nineteenth-century.

‘Ideal and Ornamental Endeavours’: The Armenian Reforms and Germany's Response to Britain's Imperial Humanitarianism in the Ottoman Empire, 1878–83

Diplomatic correspondence during the period 1878–83 offers a unique insight into the tension between humanitarian and geostrategic considerations in German and British foreign policy in the aftermath of the Congress of Berlin. During this period, Germany followed the lead of Britain in adhering to an Eastern policy that favoured the introduction of reforms in the Ottoman Empire that would alleviate the position of the Armenian minority. The more strident Gladstonian stance towards the Ottoman Empire initiated in the early 1880s, however, led to the perception that the intransigence of British liberals on the Armenian issue was in fact a means by which Britain sought to recalibrate its position in Anatolia, even at the expense of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the concomitant threat of a general European war.

The Recruitment of Colonial Troops in Africa and Asia and their Deployment in Europe during the First World War

The impact of the First World War on the colonies was profound and many-sided.1 A conflict that began in the Balkans turned into a general European war in July and August 1914, and then took on ext...

Fixing the Frontiers? Ethnography, Power Politics and the Delimitation of Albania, 1912 to 1914

AbstractThe London Conference (1912–1913) of the ambassadors of the six European great powers, the Triple Entente of France, Russia and Britain, and the Triple Alliance (or Triplice) of Germany, Austria and Italy, was initially convened in an attempt to impose a settlement on the belligerents of the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 to prevent the Balkan conflict from escalating into a general European war. As part of this effort, the ambassadors had responsibility for delimitating Albanian+ boundaries. They decided to do this on the basis of ethnography, which for them meant language, specifically the mother tongue of the population or the language spoken within the family. However, the great powers were not entirely committed to these ethnic objectives and compromised them according to their own political interests, espousing ethnographical arguments only when they supported or reinforced their own strategic ones. This paper studies the socalled ‘fixing’ of Albanian frontiers during the Conference and subsequent boundary commissions. It examines the interests involved, arguments used and the problems faced. Furthermore, it discusses the reasons for the settlements. It evaluates the ethnographical basis of the frontiers established, and considers the resumption of Albanian frontier discussions during the First World War (1914–918) and at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920). The paper argues that the ‘fixing of Albanian frontiers’ promoted the objectives of the six European powers, as opposed to the ethnographic dimensions as professed.

Woodrow Wilson’s “New Diplomacy”

is an old story that Woodrow Wilson came to office expecting to deal mainly with domestic There is his well-known remark to a friend during his presidential inauguration in March 1913: It would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs. The remark has often been taken as a candid, if unguarded, confession of inadequacy in the field of diplomacy. If so, it seems quite out of character for so self-confident a man. More likely, as the distinguished historian Arthur Link once observed, Wilson simply recognizing the obvious fact of his primary concern with domestic issues and his superior training for leadership in solving them.1 The expectation of the president-elect did not appear unreasonable at that time. There were, it is true, the issues posed by the Mexican Revolution that the outgoing Taft administration had left to its successor. Even here, however, it was not unreasonable at the outset to see these issues yielding to measures traditionally employed in dealing with political instability south of the border. Elsewhere in the hemisphere, events requiring a response from Washington did not appear to hold out an element of novelty or to necessitate special attention. In Asia, novel developments were evidently in the making; but there our interests were still quite modest. Toward Europe, a policy of detachment from what George Washington had characterized as the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics remained firmly in place. That this most hallowed of American diplomatic traditions would be challenged within a brief period by the outbreak of a general European war occurred only to a handful of observers. In the event, Wilson's expectation was not fulfilled. In the course of his tenure in office, Wilson was confronted with a range of diplomatic issues, the novelty and complexity of which were without precedent in the nation s history. How prepared was he to deal with these issues? Considered from the vantage point of his academic training and teaching experience, the answer must be that he was not well prepared. Wilson's training had not emphasized the disciplines conventionally regarded as necessary for the diplomatist. Nor did his teaching experience compensate for his lack of academic preparation. This experience was by and large limited to the fields of American history and politics, and what we would term today political development. Occasionally, Wilson taught courses in comparative government. He once gave lectures in interna-

Economic Integration and the European International System in the Era of World War I

NOT BEING AN EXPERT ON THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS of Carl Strikwerda's interesting and provocative article, I intend to comment chiefly on how it affects our general picture of nineteenth and twentieth-century European international relations. It seems to me to have important implications in three respects. First, analysis it gives of course of European economic integration, which I take to be basically sound, clearly deals with a major element in overall picture. Second, Strikwerda offers a suggestive interpretation of actual and potential effects of this economic integration on subsequent course of twentieth-century international history. My reasons for disagreeing with this interpretation in certain respects will be main focus of these comments. Finally, his article exemplifies a general approach to international history and a conception of it that I consider valuable not only for historiography but also for public education and policy. As already indicated, I can add little to Strikwerda's main argument on extent to which West European industry, especially coal, iron, and steel, was integrated by 1914. His account, to be sure, seems to confirm rather than drastically alter prevailing picture of a European economy largely open and fairly well integrated in some major sectors. One might view debate' over whether nationalist protection or internationalist integration was dominant economic trend by 1914 as one in which either side could be right, depending on how one judged not merely factual evidence but also eventual outcome. An additional comment might be that any implied or explicit argument that further economic integration in early twentieth century might have averted a general European war would have to take more than Western Europe into account. The issues, tensions, and rivalries that actually produced war, including economic ones, lay more in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. And when Strikwerda argues that the creation of international business connections before World War I indicates relative openness of societies at time, while reaction against these ties and their failure to lead to durable

An American Contribution to the Armed Neutrality of 1780

The League of Armed Neutrality of 1780 is hardly terra incognito to historians. But while its negative effect on Great Britain's ability to prosecute the War for American Independence is generally admitted, less widely recognized is America's role in the creation of the League. This role was not an inconsiderable one; for it was the daring activities of an American privateer out of Boston that induced Catherine II of Russia to take her first hesitant steps toward the establishment of her famous naval code.' Russian commerce in the second half of the eighteenth century was extremely vulnerable. Almost totally lacking a merchant fleet, Russia was dependent upon the naval powers of Northern Europe for transportation of her goods. Approximately sixty percent of all Russian exports left the country in British bottoms, while much of the remainder was carried out by the United Provinces and Denmark. Whereas Great Britain tended to be governed in her naval conduct by the rule of consolato del mare (belligerent goods-a term broadly construed-contaminate a neutral vessel), the other northern powers usually adhered to the principle of free ships, free goods. In time of general European war, Russian products in British bottoms might well be seized by Britain's enemies, and Russian products in the bottoms of northern Europe nations (including Russia) -by Britain herself. This was precisely the predicament in which Russia found herself as the American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. From the very outbreak of hostilities the British navy intercepted ships, regardless of the flag flown, suspected of carrying Russian naval stores to the enemy. American privateers, on the other hand, attacked

The Bessarabian Microcosm, September 1939 - February 1940

By early September 1939, it had become apparent that Germany's invasion of Poland would not spread south to the Balkans. A number of dangerous flashpoints had been quickly doused, either by Germany's or Italy's restraint or by Bulgaria's and Hungary's reluctance to risk a general European war for the sake of their claims in Transylvania and Dobrudja.1 But by the middle of the month, that precarious peace was threatened by yet another claim on Romanian territory. The Russian invasion of Poland once again focused attention on the Soviet terra irredenta of Bessarabia. In the next few months, the Bessarabian question became a microcosm of Balkan politics. Romania's attempts to retain that province, and her parallel attempts to appease other creditors without setting in motion an avalanche of claims that would lose it half its territory, laid bare the real crux of Balkan politics that the putative solidarity among the nations of southeastern Europe was never sufficiently strong to enable them to resist the centrifugal pull of the great powers. The disintegration was already well advanced. The different range and intensity of the problems each Balkan country was preparing to face had long predisposed them to lean on one or another of the great powers: Romania and Greece were recipients of an Anglo-French guarantee against German aggression; Turkey was negotiating a defensive alliance with the west against Italy and had earlier made it clear it would not go to war against the ussr; Greece had taken a similar attitude towards Italy; even the two revisionist countries, Bulgaria and Hungary, acted as allies of the Axis, not of one another. And yet, in the face of a claim by a great power on the territory of a fellow Balkan state, it was permissible to hope that, by some territorial adjustment inter se, the Balkan countries could create the cohesion and self-sufficiency necessary to exclude the Russian intruder. It would also be prudent to

Rumania and the Belligerents 1914-1916

As the intention of Austria-Hungary to utilize the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand for a reckoning with Serbia became increasingly evident during July I9I4, the Rumanian government manifested corresponding concern. It was widely believed in Bucarest, and not without reason, that an Austro-Serbian conflict would lead to the aggrandizement of Bulgaria, thereby threatening Rumania's aspirations in the Balkans and her security as well. Even more disquieting was the possibility that the Austrian action would touch off a general European war in which Rumania might become merely a battleground for the great powers. But for King Carol I, a prince of the South German branch of the Hohenzollern family, an Austro-Russian conflict was especially unwelcome. His personal inclinations and a secret alliance of more than thirty years standing linked him to the Central Powers. Until recent years at least, Rumania's isolation and traditional Russophobia gave reasonable justification to Carol's association with the Triple Alliance. But in the decade before I914 the memory of Russia's past iniquities and even the indignation over the treatment accorded the Rumanian minority in Bessarabia had been eclipsed in Bucarest by resentment over Austria's support of Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars, and especially by anger over the plight of the larger Rumanian minority 'languishing under the Magyar yoke' in Transylvania. The latter, together with the Austrian province of Bukovina, now became the prime object of Rumanian irredentism. The role of Vienna in championing Bulgaria's cause at the Peace of Bucarest (1913) unleashed an outburst of Austrophobia which was still re-echoing in the Rumanian press the following summer and which prompted the first steps towards a rapprochement with Russia. Carol became acutely conscious of this contradiction between his personal inclinations and the interests of his adopted land when

I. Great Britain and the Swedish Revolution, 1772–73

On the morning of 19 August 1772 Gustavus III seized supreme power in Sweden, overthrew the authority of the Estates, and amid the applause of almost all Swedes outside the circle of professional politicians brought the Age of Liberty to an end. On the morrow of the revolution he explicitly abjured sovereignty for himself; he promised his.subjects the constitution of Gustav Adolf; and he did in fact confer on them a liberal and tempered despotism, which may be described as being by Mercier de la Rivière out of The Patriot King. It was a revolution bloodless, popular, and uniquely clement; but it was profoundly disturbing to international relations. Twice in the next nine months it produced crises from which, for a moment, there seemed no issue save a general European war involving all the great powers. It might have been supposed, indeed, that England could stand aside from such a struggle: the countrymen of Wilkes and Junius cared little for Swedish liberty, and had but a dim and confused notion of a parliamentary system in some respects more advanced than their own. But by an odd combination of circumstances, the Constitution of 1720—which Gustavus had overthrown on 19 August—had for some years acquired the status of a major British interest; its maintenance had become one of the linch pins of British foreign policy; and its overthrow was a challenge to a whole system of ideas which had prevailed and grown stronger in the years since the Peace of Paris.

War Comes to Russia

Give us ten more years and we are safe. -S. I. Shidlovsky1 We need peace: a war during the coming year, and especially in the name of a cause the people would not understand, would be fatal for Russia and for the the dynasty. -Stolypin to Izvolsky in 19112 . . A general European war is mortally dangerous both for Russia and Germany, no matter who wins . . . There must inevitably break out in the defeated country a social revolution, which will spread to the victor. -P. N. Durnovo to the Tsar after the Balkan alarms of 19133

The Defense of Cartagena

C ARTAGENA, founded in 1533 by Pedro de Heredia on a sandy island west of the Magdalena entrance, had become a strategic Spanish American point by the eighteenth century. It ranked third among Spain 's new world ports, being surpassed only by La Habana and Lima (Callao).' Even more than Portobelo and Panama, it was the defensive key to Spanish trade with western South America. This commerce still traveled to and from the Pacific largely by way of the isthmus, though the old galeones fleet which was its former sole link with Spain, had now dropped in importance.2 With the creation of the Peruvian viceroyalty in 1542, the part of northern South America called New Granada became loosely appended to it and remained connected for nearly two hundred years. Then, to remedy a chaotic situation caused by the deposition of colonial president, Francisco Meneses Bravo, by the audiencia of Santa Fe de Bogota6 in 1715,3 New Granada was founded as a separate viceroyalty on May 27, 1717. Just at that time, moreover, the Spanish government of Philip V, dominated by Abbot Giulio Alberoni, was preparing operations for the recovery of Sardinia and Sicily.4 Spain thus faced another general European war only four years after the Treaty of Utrecht, and she thought the Caribbean coast needed. more protection than it could receive from the distant Peruvian viceroy at Lima. The new political unit consisted of the provinces of Santa Fe, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Maracaibo, Caracas, Antioquia, Guayana, Popayan, and San Francisco de Quito, or in modernl terms Colombia, Venezuela, and The author is professor of history at the University of Illiiiois. 1 Cristobal Bernvddez Plata, Discursos leicdos ante la Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras por los Seniores Don Crist6bal Bermiidez Plata y Don Celestino Lopez Martinez (Sevilla, 1931), p. 35. 2 Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739-1763 (Oxford, 1936), p. 5. 3 Francisco Javier Vergara y Velasco, Capitutlos de itna historia civil y militar de Colombia, 3d. ser. (Bogota, 1908), pp. 65-77. 4 Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta, Historia de Espaina y si influencia en la historia universal, V (Barcelona, 1929), 51-59. Alberoni did not become a cardinal until July, 1717.

The International Non-Intervention Agreement and the Spanish Civil War

One of the most striking features of the present Spanish civil war has been the evolution, and devolution, of the international accord for non-intervention in Spain, and the observation and patrol system set up in connection therewith. The purpose motivating the accord was the desire to prevent Europe from becoming so bound up with and so divided over the ideological aspects of the conflict that the fighting would lead to a general European war. If the devices have not succeeded altogether in stopping the entrance of supplies and men into Spain; if they have glossed over or provided a screen behind which violations of pledged undertakings have occurred; if they have become popular laughing-stock, and have allowed unfortunate Spain to become a military laboratory for the testing of weapons and strategy, they have, nevertheless, been instrumental, along with other things perhaps, in averting for at least the first year of the Spanish war an extension of hostilities to other territories. Care need well be exercised lest the entire scheme be dropped, for Spanish civil wars have always been long drawn-out affairs lasting several years, and it should not be supposed that the general crisis is over, or that the mere granting of belligerent rights to the contestants will diminish the dangers.