First, how is your life today affected by that assassination of long ago? Well, that was the event that triggered the first world war. That war, along with the peace agreement that followed, shaped the world we know. Before that war, the world scene was dominated by empires, most of them built up by formidable European powers.[I1] [E1][F1] [S1]

Apart from the rivalry between the superpowers, there is today unprecedented agitation and instability among and within nations. This is also a part of what historian Charles L. Mee, Jr., calls the “terribly mixed legacy” of the first world war and the peace treaty [I1] [E1][F1] [S1]that followed. As part of that legacy, he enumerates “the rise of Hitler, the Second World War, the riots and revolutions that plague a world without political order.” You still read about that bloodshed and suffering in your morning newspapers. And remember, the second world war spurred the development of nuclear bombs, which cast a threatening shadow over the very existence of life on earth.

Author Mee adds, however, “at the same time, the collapse of the old order was a necessary prelude to the spread of self-rule, the liberation of new nations and classes, the release of new freedom and independence.” Before 1914, most nations were ruled by a privileged, hereditary aristocracy. Class structures were rigid. The first world war accelerated the breakup of that system. As historian René Albrecht-Carrié says: “It was the First World War that broke the dyke of the nineteenth-century social structure; the claims of the Common Man for recognition could no longer be denied.” Today, it is difficult to imagine the power the old ruling classes once had.

Yes, the world that we know today started to be formed when that assassin’s bullet cut down the heir to the throne of Austria 70 years ago. Your life would be very different if that tragedy, and the war it triggered, had never happened. But let us examine how first world war broke out.

The nineteenth century

Before 1914 [I1] [S1]the world lived in relative security. No major war had occurred for decades. Hopes were high, especially since many inventions were being introduced to lighten man’s burdens. Peace and prosperity were the order of the day.

In his book The Origins of World War I Joachim Remak says: “Too much was right with the World of 1914: the nations, on the whole, had learned to live with the differences that divided them. . . . Nowhere, even in the summer of 1914, was a calculated, advance decision made for global war.” History Professor René Albrecht-Carrié of Barnard College puts it this way: “The nineteenth century is now often regarded as a century of peace, a view certainly warranted by the contrast between it and our own time of cataclysmic strife.” Then he states: “That era sharply came to an end in 1914.[I1] [S1]The pace of change thereafter, the magnitude and the intensity of struggle, have been characteristic of the twentieth century.”

Because of the long era of relative peace and rising expectations that went before it, World War I proved to be a frightful shock. None of the world’s leaders imagined such a horrible or prolonged conflict.