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The top 10 historic places from the American Revolution

In 1996, Congress commissioned the National Park Service to compile a list of sites and landmarks that played a part in the American Revolution. From battlefields to encampments, meeting houses to museums, these places offer us a chance to rediscover the remarkable men and women who founded this nation and to recognize the relevance of not just what they did, but where they did it. Frances Kennedy, editor of The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook, has compiled a list of her favorite places, and why.

1.  Minute Man National Historical Park, Concord, Lincoln, and Lexington, Massachusetts

The American Revolution began years before the first battles of the Revolutionary War, fought at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. In 1765 Parliament passed the Stamp Act which imposed taxes on the colonies. After the colonists began protests, the British ordered soldiers to Boston. In April 1775, after the royal governor of Massachusetts learned that colonists were storing military supplies in Concord, he ordered British regulars to march from Boston to seize the supplies. They fired “the shot heard around the world”. Men on both sides were killed in Lexington and Concord; more British soldiers were killed on their march back to Boston by militiamen firing from behind walls and trees. The Historical Park includes the sites of the battles at Lexington Green and at North Bridge in Concord. In July, the Continental Congress named George Washington commander in chief of the Continental Army.

Minute Man National Park, Concord, MA by Jay Sullivan. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

2.  Boston National Historical Park, Dorchester Heights in South Boston, Massachusetts

In early March 1776, General Washington surprised the British forces occupying Boston by fortifying Dorchester Heights, the hills high above the ships in the harbor. He had received about 60 pieces of the artillery in late February after Colonel Henry Knox, formerly a Boston bookseller, had succeeded in dragging them across more than 200 miles of ice and snow from Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. Washington’s successful siege forced the British to evacuate Boston. They sailed out of the harbor on March 17 toward New York. The tall white marble monument on the Heights commemorates the siege.

3.  Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The clocktower at Independence Hall. Philadelphia, PA by Captain Albert E. Theberge, NOAA Corps (ret.) (NOAA Photo Library: amer0024). CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Great beginnings in America are commemorated in the Historical Park. In Carpenter’s Hall in 1774, delegates from twelve colonies — all except Georgia – met in the First Continental Congress, to consider how to respond to acts of Parliament that threatened their liberties. The State House of the Province of Pennsylvania, now Independence Hall, was the meeting place for the Second Continental Congress, beginning on May 10, 1775. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, Congress edited it, and on July 4, Congress accepted it, in the same Hall. After the Articles of Confederation were ratified, the Confederation Congress met in the Hall until June 21, 1783. The Constitutional Convention met in the Hall in May-September 1787 and approved the Constitution on September 17.

4.  Washington Crossing Historic Park, Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania

Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 in a raging snowstorm and on the next day, he won the battle of Trenton, New Jersey. Henry Knox was in command of the crossing, the same officer who had dragged the artillery from Fort Ticonderoga for the successful siege of Boston. Among the men who managed the boats in the dangerous river crossing, amid floating cakes of ice, were the mariners in Colonel John Glover’s Massachusetts regiment, which included blacks, American Indians, and whites. The historic river crossing is commemorated in the two parks, one on each side of the river.

5.  Saratoga National Historical Park, Stillwater, New York

In July 1777 General Burgoyne’s 8,000-man British army, which included German soldiers and American Indians, marched down the Hudson River Valley with the goal of splitting the states and isolating New England. Slowed by the dense forests and its long supply line, the army finally crossed the river in mid-September, won a costly victory against the Americans in the battle of Freeman’s Farm, fought another at Bemis Heights on October 7, and was forced by the American siege to surrender 6,800 soldiers on October 17. The Historical Park, along the Hudson River, includes the sites of the battles and the British camp.

6.  Valley Forge National Historical Park, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

The army barely survived the 1777-1778 winter in the Valley Forge camp. More than 2,000 soldiers died as a result of too little to eat and inadequate clothing. Conditions improved in March after Nathanael Greene was appointed quartermaster general. Baron von Steuben, a former Prussian officer commended to Washington by Benjamin Franklin, arrived at the camp in February and began a training regimen for the army. By June 1778 when the soldiers marched out of Valley Forge, they were better trained and more confident. The 5.4 square mile Historical Park includes historic buildings, sites of the brigade encampments, the historic trace road, monuments, and the camp defense lines.

National Park Service Digital Image Archives. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

7.  Kings Mountain National Military Park, Blacksburg, South Carolina

In the fall of 1780, the patriots known as over-mountain men rode from their farms in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to battle British Major Patrick Ferguson and his command of loyalists. After riflemen from South Carolina joined the patriots, their force numbered about two thousand. On October 5, they attacked Ferguson’s camp, killed him and one-third of his force and captured about 650 loyalists in the hour-long battle. It was the first major patriot victory after the British capture of  Charleston the previous May. The Military Park includes the battle site, monuments, and Ferguson’s grave. The Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail commemorates the patriots’ routes (on today’s maps).

8.  Cowpens National Battlefield, Gaffney, South Carolina

Cowpens, a pastureland in South Carolina, is the site of General Daniel Morgan’s attack on Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s British Legion on January 17, 1781.  Called a tactical masterpiece, Morgan’s battle plan began with militia sharpshooters who fired two volleys, then fell back behind the Continentals who next attacked, followed by the cavalry. In less than an hour, the British suffered nearly 1,000 casualties, including about 500 captured. Tarleton escaped and rode to General Cornwallis to report the bad news. The 845-acre park includes the battlefield and monuments.

9.  Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, Greensboro, North Carolina

In the small community of Guilford Courthouse, General Nathanael Greene used General Morgan’s Cowpens tactics to battle General Cornwallis on March 15, 1781. Cornwallis won the battle over Greene’s militia and Continentals, but his force suffered such heavy casualties that he was left with only about 1,500 soldiers able to fight.  He retreated to the coast and made his decision to march north to join the British force in Virginia. The Military Park includes the battlefield and monuments.

10.  Colonial National Historical Park, Yorktown, Virginia

In May 1781, General Cornwallis took command of the British soldiers in Virginia and waited for reinforcements to arrive from General Henry Clinton in New York. In mid-August, General Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau, in command of the French army in America, began their march south after learning that the French fleet was sailing for the Chesapeake Bay. On September 5 the French defeated the British fleet in a battle in the Atlantic Ocean off the Bay. Cornwallis could not be reinforced.  By September 26 the American and French armies had arrived at Yorktown with about 18,000 soldiers and put Cornwallis’s 5,500-man force under siege. On October 19, Cornwallis surrendered, ending the last major battle of the Revolutionary War. The Historical Park includes Historic Jamestowne in Jamestown and the Yorktown Battlefield in Yorktown. The Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail commemorates the route (on today’s maps) taken by the two armies, the French from Rhode Island and both south from New York.

Frances H. Kennedy is a conservationist and historian. Her books include The Civil War Battlefield Guide, American Indian Places, and, most recently, The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook.

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                Related StoriesThe month that changed the world: Monday, 29 June to Sunday, 5 July 1914Wars and the lies we tell about themMargot Asquith’s Great War diary 

The Lady: One woman against a military dictatorship

Film is a powerful tool for teaching international criminal law and increasing public awareness and sensitivity about the underlying crimes. Roberta Seret, President and Founder of the NGO at the United Nations, International Cinema Education, has identified four films relevant to the broader purposes and values of international criminal justice and over the coming weeks she will write a short piece explaining the connections as part of a mini-series. This is the third one, following The Act of Killing and Hannah Arendt.

By Roberta Seret

When Luc Besson finished filming The Lady in 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi had just been released from being under house arrest since 1989. He visited her at her home in Yagoon with a DVD of his film as a gift. She smiled and thanked him, responding, “I have shown courage in my life, but I do not have enough courage to watch a film about myself.”

The recurring tenet of the inspiring biographical film, The Lady, is exactly that: one woman’s courage against a military dictatorial regime. Each scene reinforces her relentless fight to overcome the inequities of totalitarianism.

Aung San Suu Kyi was born the third child of General Aung San, leader of Burma during World War ll and Father of Independence from British rule. He was assassinated in 1947 before he saw his country’s sovereignty in 1948. His daughter has dedicated her life to continue his legacy – to bring democracy to the Burmese people.

The film, The Lady, begins in Oxford 1988 where she is a housewife and mother of two sons. After setting the stage of happy domesticity, she receives a phone call from her mother’s caretaker in Burma that the older woman is dying. And so begins the action.

After 41 years, Suu Kyi returns home to a different world than she remembers. The country’s name is changed from Burma to Myanmar, Ragoon has become Yagoon, and a new capital, Naypidaw, has been carved out of a jungle. Students are demonstrating and being killed in the streets of Yagoon while General Ne Winn rules with an iron fist. Suu Kyi is soon asked by a group of professors and students to form a new party, the National League for Democracy. She campaigns to become their leader.

French director, Luc Besson, was not allowed to film in Myanmar. Instead, he chose Thailand at the Golden Triangle, where Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand merge in a beautiful mountainous landscape. Most of his interior scenes, however, take place at the Lady’s house on Inya Lake in Yagoon, which Luc Besson recreated with help from Google Earth and computers. The Chinese actress, Michelle Yeoh, plays Suu Kyi, with perfectly nuanced facial and body expressions that are balanced with a subtle combination of emotion and control. But the Burmese, who were initially not allowed by the government to see the film, resented a Chinese actress portraying their icon. Even the police chased Ms. Yeoh from Myanmar when she tried to pay her respects to the Lady.

The film adheres closely to history and biography, which are inherently compelling. The director did not need to borrow from fiction to enhance his portrait of a brave, self-sacrificing woman. Luc Besson is a master filmmaker, and we see in the characters of his strong women, like Nikita (1990) and The Lady, the power of will and determination that go beyond limits to become personality cults.

The film depicts how Suu Kyi wins 59% of the votes in the general election of 1990, but instead of leading Parliament as Prime Minister, she has already been forced and silenced under house arrest by the Military where she stays for more than 15 years and three times in prison until 2010.

The Lady is a heart-breaking story of a woman’s personal sacrifice to free her people from the Military’s crimes against humanity. In 2012, once free and allowed to campaign, she won 43 seats in Parliament for her party, but this is only 7% of seats. She will campaign again in 2015 despite the Military’s opposition and a Constitution that has already been amended to block her from winning.

In Luc Besson’s film, we see a beautiful woman of courage and heart, a personage deserving the adulation of her people. “She is our hope,” they all agree. “Hope for Freedom.”

Roberta Seret is the President and Founder of International Cinema Education, an NGO based at the United Nations. Roberta is the Director of Professional English at the United Nations with the United Nations Hospitality Committee where she teaches English language, literature and business to diplomats. In the Journal of International Criminal Justice, Roberta has written a longer ‘roadmap’ to Margarethe von Trotta’s film on Hannah Arendt. To learn more about this new subsection for reviewers or literature, film, art projects or installations, read her extension at the end of this editorial.

The Journal of International Criminal Justice aims to promote a profound collective reflection on the new problems facing international law. Established by a group of distinguished criminal lawyers and international lawyers, the journal addresses the major problems of justice from the angle of law, jurisprudence, criminology, penal philosophy, and the history of international judicial institutions.

Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in international law, including the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, latest titles from thought leaders in the field, and a wide range of law journals and online products. We publish original works across key areas of study, from humanitarian to international economic to environmental law, developing outstanding resources to support students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide. For the latest news, commentary, and insights follow the International Law team on Twitter @OUPIntLaw.

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Margot Asquith’s Great War diary

Margot Asquith was the opinionated and irrepressible wife of Herbert Henry Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister who led Britain into war on 4 August 1914. With the airs, if not the lineage, of an aristocrat, Margot knew everyone, and spoke as if she knew everything, and with her sharp tongue and strong views could be a political asset, or a liability, almost in the same breath. Her Great War diary is by turns revealing and insightful, funny and poignant, and it offers a remarkable view of events from her vantage point in 10 Downing Street. The diary opens with Margot witnessing the scene in the House of Commons, as the political crisis over Irish Home Rule began to be eclipsed by the even greater crisis of the threat of a European war, in which Britain might become involved…

Friday 24 July 1914

The gallery was packed, Ly Londonderry and the Diehards sitting near Mrs Lowther—myself and Liberal ladies the other side of the gallery. The beautiful, incredibly silly Muriel Beckett and M. Lowther rushed round me, and others, pressing up, said ‘Good Heavens, Margot, what does this mean? How frightfully dangerous! Why, the Irish will be fighting tonight—what does it all mean?’ M. ‘It means your civil war is postponed, and you will, I think, never get it.’ I looked at these women who had been insolent to me all the session, when I added ‘If you read the papers, you’ll find we are on the verge of a European war.’

Redmond told H. that afternoon that if the Government liked to remove every soldier from Ireland, he would bet there would never be one hitch; and that both his volunteers and Carson’s would police Ireland with ease.

War! War!—everyone at dinner discussing how long the war would last. The average opinion was 3 weeks to 3 months. Violet said 4 weeks. H. said nothing, which amazed us! I said it would last a year. I went to tea with Con, and Betty Manners told me she had heard Kitchener at lunch say to Arthur Balfour he was sure it would last over a year.

Wednesday 29 July 1914

Bad news from abroad. I was lying in bed, resting, 7.30 p.m. The strain from hour to hour waiting for telegrams, late at night; standing stunned and unable to read or write; two cabinets a day; crowds through which to pass, cheering Henry wildly—all this contributed to making me tired. H. came into my room. I saw by his face that something momentous had happened. I sat up and looked at him. For once he stood still, and didn’t walk up and down the room (He never sits down when he is talking of important things.)

H.           Well! We’ve sent what is called ‘the precautionary telegram’ to every office in the Empire—War, Navy, Post Office, etc., to be ready for war. This is what the Committee of Defence have been discussing and settling for the last two years. It has never been done before, and I am very curious to see what effect it will have. All these wires were sent between 2 and 2.30 marvellously quick. (I never saw Henry so keen outwardly—his face looked quite small and handsome. He sat on the foot of my bed.)

M.          (passionately moved, I sat up, and felt 10 feet high.) How thrilling! Oh! Tell me, aren’t you excited, darling?

H.           (who generally smiles with his eyebrows slightly turned, quite gravely kissed me, and said) It will be very interesting.

Margot Asquith’s Great War Diary 1914-1916 is selected and edited by Michael Brock and Eleanor Brock. Until his death in April 2014, Michael Brock was a modern historian, educationalist, and Oxford college head; he was Vice-President of Wolfson College; Director of the School of Education at Exeter University; Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford; and Warden of St George’s House, Windsor Castle; he is the author of The Great Reform Act, and co-editor, with Mark Curthoys, of the two nineteenth-century volumes in the History of the University of Oxford. With his wife, Eleanor Brock, a former schoolteacher, he edited the acclaimed OUP edition H. H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley.

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Image credit: Margot Asquith. By Philip de László. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Discovering digital libraries

By Ian Anstice

English public librarians don’t get out much. Sure, we’re often dealing with the public every open hour or talking with our teams but, well, we normally just don’t meet librarians from neighbouring authorities, let alone from around the country. Most branch staff stay in their own building and may never talk to anyone from another authority other than on the phone arranging for a book for a customer. So, it was a delight for me to be invited by Oxford University Press (OUP) to an afternoon to meet with nineteen other library professionals, ranging from part-time library staff to at least one head of service. It was also wonderful that the session was in the publishers’ beautiful headquarters in the famous historic town of Oxford, which has to be one of my favourite places in world and, not coincidentally, one of the most book-friendly too.

So why the nice day out? Well, the meeting was the first one for public librarians in the UK of the OUP Library Advisory Council. The clever purpose of this impressive sounding group is to get together library staff who use and promote online resources so that we can share ideas and learn more about how the publisher can help libraries and their users. I am delighted to say that from the start – and to the great credit of our hosts – it was clear that this was not just going to be a thinly veiled sales day but rather a real chance for us all to hear about what best practice was going on and how we could adapt it for our own purposes.

The importance of online services to public libraries was clear in every presentation and in every conversation. People are more and more using their computer as their source of knowledge for factual information and for what is going on locally and libraries, used for so long to fulfilling that function, need to get with the programme. Further to this, social media is being used by many as a primary way of getting answers. People get their news about what is going on from Facebook and Twitter and will often ask questions online that are then answered by their friends or followers. I recently came across an example of this myself when I tweeted asking for anyone’s experience of using lego in libraries: I got ten replies including from practitioners who have won awards for their work in the United States and Australia. The challenge for public librarians is therefore about how to meet this challenge and how best to serve the public in a world where answers are obtainable without even opening up a new window on the computer. It’s also important for us to provide a professionally-resourced, factually-based, and entirely neutral service to counteract what can often be the biased (and sometimes inaccurate) views expressed by others in social media.

Kids having fun at Cockburn Libraries during the school holidays. Photo by Cockburn Libraries. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via cockburnlibraries Flickr.

How librarians are meeting this challenge is truly inspiring. One city mayor realised early on that libraries are instrumental in improving literacy and sense of community and invested in a special website where e-books, online services, reviews and events all came together. Another library service goes out to schools to let them know about how useful their website (including a fair number of OUP resources) can be for their students, with the visits being such a success that they’re being invited back to deliver classes. Yet another city’s library twitter account is now really embedded in the local community, sharing information on local events, linking to old photographs of the town and chatting to users who need never leave their mobile phone to access their library. It’s even be used as some sort of instant messaging service with the library being tweeted about the wifi having just stopped working elsewhere in the building.

Lots of great ideas then, which got me thinking (perhaps counterintuitively) during the day about how important surrounding and buildings still are in this digital age. The OUP offices in Great Clarendon Street are beautiful and spacious, mixing the old and the new with some skill. In this environment, all of us felt comfortable and happy to talk about our and each other’s experiences. The building had all of the facilities — space, light, refreshments, wifi — that we needed. The same can also of course be equally said of a good public library for our users. Such a library provides the space for people to meet, read, and study with no need to worry about anything else that is going on and with no need to pay. Even for the digital elite, such meeting spaces are not without importance and for those with no online presence, with little money, or even just for those who downright love the printed word the public library building can be absolutely essential. The online resources are an extension of this, promote it and enhance it, but do not totally replace it. This is why the OUP has a headquarters and why there will always be public library buildings.

My thanks therefore to OUP for putting on such a good day, and to all of my highly skilled and motivated colleagues who made the day so useful. I travelled back on the train thinking about how to share what I had learned with my colleagues and how to use the examples and resources to improve the service that I provided. In such ways, the library gets more value for the money it pays for online resources but also, more to the point, the public gets served better and the library continues to be so well-used by everyone, including by those who use Facebook and Twitter.

Ian Anstice is a full-time public librarian working in the North West of England. He also finds the time to run the Public Libraries News website which provides a free summary of international and national coverage of the sector.

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                Related StoriesA map of Odysseus’s journeyLibrarian voices from the other side of the worldThe month that changed the world: Monday, 29 June to Sunday, 5 July 1914 

The month that changed the world: Monday, 29 June to Sunday, 5 July 1914

July 1914 was the month that changed the world. On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and just five weeks later the Great Powers of Europe were at war. But how did it all happen? Historian Gordon Martel, author of The Month That Changed The World: July 1914, is blogging regularly for us over the next few weeks, giving us a week-by-week and day-by-day account of the events that led up to the First World War.

By Gordon Martel

Although it was Sunday, news of the assassination rocketed around the capitals of Europe. By evening Princip and Čabrinović had been arrested, charged, taken to the military prison and put in chains. All of Čabrinović’s family had been rounded up and arrested, along with those they employed in the family café; Ilić was arrested that afternoon. The remaining conspirators fled the city but within days six of the seven had been captured.

On Sunday evening crowds of young Croatian and Muslim men gathered and marched through Sarajevo, singing the Bosnian anthem and shouting ‘Down with the Serbs’. About one hundred of them stoned the Hotel Europa, owned by a prominent Serb and frequented by Serbian intellectuals. The next morning Croat and Muslim leaders held a rally to demonstrate their support for Austrian rule. They sang the national anthem of the monarchy and carried portraits of the emperor. Sporadic demonstrations quickly escalated into full-scale rioting. Crowds began smashing windows of Serbian businesses and institutions, ransacking the Serbian school, stoning the residence of the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Sarajevo and besieging the homes of prominent Serbs.

The people of Vienna had remained calm when news of the assassination arrived on Sunday, but by Monday afternoon a crowd gathered at the Serbian legation and police had to be called in. Behind the scenes the chief of Austria-Hungary’s general staff argued that they must ‘draw the sword’ against Serbia. Leading Viennese newspapers however argued against a campaign of revenge. The emperor returned to Vienna from his hunting lodge on Monday, blaming himself for the killings: God was punishing him for permitting Franz Ferdinand’s marriage to Sophie.

By Tuesday the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Count Berchtold, was convinced that the conspiracy had been planned in Belgrade. But what would he propose to do? Would he agree to ‘draw the sword’ against Serbia? Or might he be satisfied with Serbian promises to act against those involved in the conspiracy? His choice would rest largely upon the advice he received from his German allies: he could not risk war without German support.

Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Count Berchtold, public domain

The German ambassador in Vienna preached restraint. Meeting with Berchtold on Tuesday, Heinrich von Tschirschky advised him not to act in haste, to first decide exactly what he wished to achieve and to weigh his options carefully. Neither of their other allies – Italy and Romania – were likely to support an energetic response. In Berlin, a leading official at the Wilhelmstrasse (the German foreign office), confided to the Italian ambassador his fear that the Austrians might adopt ‘severe and provocative’ measures and that Germany would be faced with the task of restraining them.

On Wednesday Serbia’s prime minister instructed his representatives to explain that his government had taken steps to suppress anarchic elements within Serbia, and that it would now redouble its vigilance and take the severest measures against them: ‘Serbia will do everything in her power and use all the means at her disposal in order to restrain the feelings of ill-balanced people within her frontiers.’

Might this satisfy the Austrians? Ambassador Tschirschky could not envision them demanding more than that Serbia should cooperate in an investigation into the assassination. At the same time, the Hungarian minister-president, István Tisza, was urging the emperor not to use the assassination as an excuse for a ‘reckoning’ with Serbia: it could be fatal to proceed without proof that the Serbian government had been complicit in the plot.

Few expected Count Berchtold to act decisively. He was widely regarded as intelligent but weak, charming but cautious. No one expected him to undertake anything adventurous, and he now appeared to fulfil these expectations. Before making any crucial decisions Berchtold revised an existing memorandum that advised how to meet the growing threat of Russia in the Balkans and turned it into a plea for German support in Austria’s coercion of Serbia. He then drafted a ‘personal’ letter to be sent from the emperor to the kaiser. On Thursday Franz Joseph wrote the letter in his own hand: the crime committed against his nephew (no mention of the duchess) had resulted directly from the agitation conducted by ‘Russian and Serbian Panslavists’ who were determined to weaken the Triple Alliance and ‘shatter my empire’. The Serbian government aimed to unite all south-Slavs under the Serbian flag, which was a lasting danger ‘to my house and to my countries’.

By Thursday a preliminary police investigation had identified seven principal conspirators. Six of them had been taken into custody. Interrogations of the prisoners already indicated that they could be linked to highly-placed officials in Belgrade. And the Austrian military attaché in Belgrade was sending reports linking the conspiracy to Serbian army officers and to the Narodna Odbrana. The pieces of the puzzle seemed to be fitting into place. That evening the bodies of the archduke and the duchess arrived in Vienna; they were to lie in state at the Hofburg Palace until a requiem mass was said on Saturday. They would then be transported to their final resting-place in the chapel Franz Ferdinand had built for that purpose at his castle in Artstetten.

The politicians and diplomats of the so-called Triple Entente – France, Russia, and Britain – expressed few fears of an impending international crisis in the week following the assassination. When the French cabinet met following the assassination on Tuesday the situation arising from Sarajevo was barely mentioned. The French ambassador in Vienna believed the emperor would restrain those seeking revenge and that Austria was not likely to go beyond making threats. The Russian ambassador agreed: he did not believe that the Austrian government would allow itself to be rushed into a war for which it was not prepared. In London, the permanent under-secretary of state at the Foreign Office doubted that Austria would undertake any ‘serious’ action.

While Entente diplomats were comforting themselves with the thought that Austria would not go beyond words, Berchtold despatched his chef de cabinet, Count Hoyos, to Berlin. He carried with him the emperor’s letter to the kaiser and the long memorandum on the Balkan situation that the foreign minister had revised for the purpose. Hoyos, one of the ‘young rebels’ at the Ballhausplatz (the Austrian foreign office), advocated an aggressive foreign policy as an antidote to the monarchy’s apparent decline. Before leaving for Berlin he told a German journalist that he believed Austria must seize the opportunity to ‘solve’ the Serbian problem. It would be most valuable if Germany promised to ‘cover our rear’.

In Berlin on Sunday 5 July 1914 the Germans seemed prepared to do just that. Although the Kaiser expressed his concern that severe measures against Serbia might lead to serious complications he promised that Austria could rely upon the full support of Germany. He did not believe that the Russians were prepared for war, but even if it came to this he assured the Austrian ambassador that Germany would ‘stand at our side’ and that it would be regrettable if Austria failed to seize the moment ‘which is so favourable to us.’ This would go down in legend as the ‘blank cheque’.

Gordon Martel is a leading authority on war, empire, and diplomacy in the modern age. His numerous publications include studies of the origins of the first and second world wars, modern imperialism, and the nature of diplomacy. A founding editor of The International History Review, he has taught at a number of Canadian universities, and has been a visiting professor or fellow in England, Ireland and Australia. Editor-in-chief of the five-volume Encyclopedia of War, he is also joint editor of the longstanding Seminar Studies in History series. His new book is The Month That Changed The World: July 1914.

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Image credit: Count Leopold Berchtold. By Philip de László. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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The role of communication at work

By François Cooren, Eero Vaara, Ann Langley, and Haridimos Tsoukas

“Communication matters in organizations!”

We all know this catchphrase. Both employees and managers experience problems daily with coordination, and when news (good or bad) is released about their organization. There is, however, a different way of studying communication at work, a way that does not merely reduce it to the transfer of information, but also explores its constitutive aspects: how communicative events literally constitute what organizations are all about.

Connect communication to the very processes, activities, and practices that constitute organizations or organizational phenomena. This echoes what Phillips and Lawrence (2012) recently labeled “the turn to work” in organization studies. These authors referred to notions such as “identity work,” “institutional work,” and “boundary work” as part of a trend in which scholars have been highlighting “the role of actors in socially constructing elements of work and organizations that were previously seen as either ‘natural’ or beyond the control of individual actors.”

Phenomena such as identity, routines, boundaries, or organizations themselves are thus seen as communicative processes, which means that ongoing “work” is implicated in the construction, maintenance, and adaptation of organizational identities, boundaries, and operations. Communication is the essential way through which much of this “work” takes place, whether or not conscious intentions lie behind it.

Depart from abstract and static considerations to concentrate on communicational activities and practices that constitute the daily life of organizations, or capture the ways in which they change over time. These types of study focus on cultural, artifactual, ideological, or technological aspects of work, and systematically scrutinize and highlight the communicational dimension of these activities, whether from a theoretical or empirical perspective.

The study of language and communication at work could prove to be a fruitful way to study organizational life in all its aspects (meetings, speeches, routines, operations, expeditions, etc.). Organizations should not only be viewed as ‘things made’ but also as what Hernes (2007) calls “processes in the making,” whether we want to study reproduction, development, or change. If analyzing and conceiving of processes is indeed a difficult thing to do, it is, we believe, the price we need to pay to study organizational matters in a very concrete and incarnated manner.

If organizations are dynamically constituted, we thus need to start thinking processually, that is, we need to invent new ways of studying and conceiving of these “works in process” we call companies, firms, businesses, institutions, NGOs, and associations. In keeping with Derrida’s (often misunderstood) concept of differance, this processual way of thinking leads us to study any organizational course, sequence, or practice in terms of both its passive and active dimensions, i.e. in terms of what leads it to be what it is, but also in terms of what it produces, enacts, and contributes. Studying processes indeed means that there cannot be an absolute point of origin and that we need, as analysts, to always pay attention to what is ongoing.

Methodologically speaking, this could have serious consequences, as thinking and analyzing the organizational world processually will also lead us to rely more and more on actual recordings of activities, conversations, and practices. Although interviews certainly remain relevant ways to access what is taking place in organizational settings, they seem poorly equipped to study processes per se, as they rely on post-hoc reconstructions that cannot always do justice to what really happens ‘in the making’ (except, of course, if the interviews themselves are analyzed processually). Whether video or audio recordings, the detailed study of communication at work seems to require that we “pay our due” to the phenomena themselves.

But studying processually means that we also have to develop tools and methodologies that allow us to not only make some gains in terms of details, but also in terms of longitudinality. The detailed study of processes indeed implies, by definition, that we follow them through time and space, a methodological requirement that often seems hard to reconcile with the thoroughness of detailed analyses. It is, we believe, in this uncomfortable tension that the future of process studies might lay.

François Cooren is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Université de Montréal; Eero Vaara is Professor of Management and Organization at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki; Ann Langley is Professor of Management at HEC Montréal; and Haridimos Tsoukas is Professor of Strategic Management and Professor of Organization Studies at University of Cyprus, and at Warwick Business School. Their book Language and Communication at Work. Discourse, Narrativity and Organizing was published May, 2014.

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Image Credit: Businesspeople at boardroom table. © monkeybusinessimages via iStock Photo.

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Wars and the lies we tell about them

By Jessica H. Clark

Just east of downtown Tallahassee, Florida, there is a small city park known as “Old Fort.” It contains precisely that – a square of softly eroding earthworks (all that’s left of the fort) along with a few benches placed benignly in the shade of nearby oak and pine trees. The historical marker in the park offers some explanation:

“This earth work located on ground once part of the plantation of E.A. Houston…who commanded the Confederate artillery at the Battle of Natural Bridge, is a silent witness of the efforts of the citizens of Tallahassee to protect the capitol of Florida from capture when threatened by federal troops under General John Newton. Newton’s force landed at St. Marks light house [sic] and advanced up the east side of the St. Marks River, only to be decisively repulsed at Natural Bridge on March 6, 1865, by a hurriedly assembled Confederate force commanded by General Sam Jones, which included a company of cadets from the West Florida Seminary, now Florida State University.”

Civil War marker in Old Fort Park, Tallahassee, Florida. Photo by Jessica H. Clark. Used with permission.

So the marker claims the park as a victory monument of sorts. It was here in 1865 that soldiers of the army of the Confederate States of America waited for an invading force that never came. The interpretive marker is genteel and uncommitted, allowing for assumed knowledge on the part of its reader to complete the story it would rather not to tell. So in some ways, the work of remembering our Civil War is not unlike dinner at Downton Abbey — words need not match their meanings to be perfectly well understood, if understood differently, by those who hear them.

The Romans knew that remembering was never that simple. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote a wonderful piece describing events in the year 69 or 70 C.E., which illustrates what we risk when we try to make the ground bear witness to a convenient past. According to Tacitus’s account, a man named Julius Civilis was leading a rebellion against Roman occupation east of the Rhine. He attacked two Roman legions and forced them back to their camp at Vetera (modern Xanten), and eventually convinced them, after a lengthy siege, to surrender in exchange for their lives. However, several of Civilis’s allies broke the truce and ambushed the retreating Romans, killing many and driving the rest back to Vetera. Civilis and his men finished off these unarmed Romans and burned the camp to the ground.

Table-top model of Roman Xanten (Castra Vetera), Archäologischer Park Xanten. Photo by Аlexej Potupin via Wikimedia Commons.

Not long afterwards, as Civilis and his men prepared for another battle at Vetera, Tacitus describes him giving a speech to his men in which he “[calls] the site of the battle a ‘witness to valor’” and that “they stood on footprints of glory, walking on the ashes and bones of legions.” But Civilis errs; having flooded the original battle site to disadvantage the Roman legions, Civilis knows that his speech does not match reality. A poor student of history, he is too eager in his facile assumptions of the relationship between physical remains and the memory of war.

The sense of physical connection is important, though, and so in place of real ashes beneath their feet, he gives his men the next best thing. He asks them to imagine the bones of their enemies, just as their commander imagines that their bloody indiscipline could be monumentalized into a glorious victory. Tacitus creates a striking metaphor for civil war commemoration: imaginary monuments invoking false memories, inspiring fictive reinterpretations of a better past that never was.

This, of course, never does anyone any good. Civilis was bound to fail because he did not learn from his mistakes, and did not learn from them because he chose, instead, to tell a story where they had no place.

Thus can the lies we tell ourselves about our wars exact a higher price, in the long term, than the conflicts themselves. This isn’t just ancient news, either; as recently as 2000, the US Congress asked the Department of the Interior to “compile a report on the status of our interpretation of battlefield sites.” The National Park Service conducted an investigation and concluded that it was time to “develop a new paradigm” for the national commemoration of the American Civil War. The report sets forth, as an exemplar, Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where (what is often seen as) a pro-slavery monument was restored but matched by an interpretive plaque commemorating, effectively, the ways in which the stories we tell now are different from those we have told in the past.

This monument in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, which commemorates free black man Heyward Shepherd — killed during John Brown’s raid in 1859 — for his “faithfulness” to the Confederacy, has been the subject of debate for several decades. CC BY-NC 2.0, photo by Slave2TehTink via Flickr.

The pairing of monument and plaque, unsurprisingly, caused enormous controversy. And what it underscores is, I think, one of Tacitus’s points for the preservation of civil society: the very aspects of the past that threaten our foundational illusions are the ones that have the most to offer our future.

The marker at the Old Fort in Tallahassee calls the earthwork a “silent witness,” an idea also deployed with great force in Eric Bogle’s 1976 World War I song “No Man’s Land”:

But here in this graveyard that’s still No Man’s Land


The countless white crosses in mute witness stand


To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man


And a whole generation that was butchered and damned.

In March of 2014, President Obama spoke at Flanders Field American Cemetery. While some parts of his remarks were deeply moving, at one point he invoked the hundreds of thousands of dead who lay beneath that ground: “Belgian and American, French and Canadian, British and Australian, and so many others…while they didn’t always share a common language, the soldiers who manned the trenches were united by something larger — a willingness to fight, and die, for the freedom that we enjoy as their heirs.”

Robert Vonnoh (American, 1858-1933), “Coquelicots” (“Poppies”), 1890; retitled in 1919 as “Flanders – Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow.” Butler Institute of American Art, photo from Exhibition Catalogue Americans in Paris, Metropolitan Museum via Wikimedia Commons.

Those soldiers presumably would have died for freedom, as would the “so many others” (better known to history as Germans), had they been called to do so — but the First World War was not about that. We make false witness of the past and then wonder why it does not teach our children the truth; and while we may take some comfort from our consistency, Tacitus and the Park Service should remind us that we can do better.

Jessica H. Clark is Assistant Professor of Classics at Florida State University and the author of the book Triumph in Defeat: Military Loss and the Roman Republic.

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The Man in the Monkeynut Coat and the men in the yellow jerseys

By Kersten Hall

It is a safe bet that the name of Pierre Rolland rings very few bells among the British public. In 2012, Rolland, riding for Team Europcar finished in eighth place in the overall final classifications of the Tour de France whilst Sir Bradley Wiggins has since become a household name following his fantastic achievement of being the first British person ever to win the most famous cycle race in the world.

In the world of sport, we remember a winner. But the history of science is often also described in similar terms – as a tale of winners and losers racing to the finish line. Nowhere is this more true than in the story of the discovery of the structure of DNA. When James Watson’s book, The Double Helix was published in 1968, it depicted science as a frantic and often ruthless race in which the winner clearly took all. In Watson’s account, it was he and his Cambridge colleague Francis Crick who were first to cross the finish line, with their competitors Rosalind Franklin at Kings College, London and Linus Pauling at Caltech, Pasadena trailing in behind.

There is no denying the importance of Watson and Crick’s achievement: their double-helical model of DNA not only answered fundamental questions in biology such as how organisms pass on hereditary traits from one generation to the next but also heralded the advent of genetic engineering and the production of vital new medicines such as recombinant insulin. But it is worth asking whether this portrayal of science as a breathless race to the finish line with only winners and losers, is necessarily an accurate one. And perhaps more importantly, does it actually obscure the way that science really works?

William Astbury. Reproduced with the permission of Leeds University Library

To illustrate this point, it is worth remembering that Watson and Crick obtained a vital clue to solving the double-helix thanks to a photograph taken by the crystallographer Rosalind Franklin. Labelled in her lab notes as ‘Photo 51′, it showed a pattern of black spots arranged in the shape of a cross, formed when X-rays were diffracted by fibres of DNA. The effect of this image on Watson was dramatic. The sight of the black cross, he later said, made his jaw drop and pulse race for he knew that this pattern could only arise from a molecule that was helical in shape.

In recognition of its importance in the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA, a plaque on the wall outside King’s College, London where Franklin worked now hails ‘Photo 51‘ as being ‘one of the world’s most important photographs’. Yet curiously, neither Watson nor Franklin had been the first to observe this striking cross pattern. For almost a year earlier, the physicist William Astbury working in his lab at Leeds had obtained an almost identical X-ray diffraction pattern of DNA.

Yet despite obtaining this clue that would prove to be so vital to Watson and Crick, Astbury never solved the double-helical structure himself and whilst the Cambridge duo went to win the Nobel Prize for their work, Astbury remains largely forgotten.

But to dismiss him as a mere ‘also-ran’ in the race for the double-helix would be both harsh and hasty: the questions that Astbury was asking and the aims of his research were subtly but significantly different to those of Watson and Crick. The Cambridge duo were solely focussed on DNA, whereas Astbury felt that by studying a wide range of biological fibres from wool to bacterial flagella, he might uncover some deep common theme based on molecular shape that could unify the whole of biology. It was this emphasis on the molecular shape of fibres and how these shapes could change that formed his core definition of the new science of ‘molecular biology’ which he helped to found and popularise, and one that has had a profound impact on modern biology and medicine.

On 5th July this year, Leeds will host ‘Le Grand Depart’ – the start of the 2014 Tour de France. As the contestants begin to climb the hills of Yorkshire each will no doubt harbour dreams of wearing the coveted yellow jersey and all will have their sights firmly fixed on crossing the same ultimate finishing line. At first sight scientific discovery may also appear to be a race towards a single finish line, but in truth it is a much more muddled affair rather like a badly organised school sports day in which several races all taking place in different directions and over different distances became jumbled together. For this reason it makes little sense to think of Astbury as having ‘lost’ the race for DNA to Watson and Crick. That Leeds was chosen to host the start of the 2014 Tour de France, is an honour for which the city can take pride, but in the life and work of William Astbury it also has a scientific heritage of which it can be equally proud.

Kersten Hall is graduated from St. Anne’s College, Oxford with a degree in biochemistry, before embarking on a PhD at the University of Leeds using molecular biology to study how viruses evade the human immune system. He then worked as a Research Fellow in the School of Medicine at Leeds during which time he developed a keen interest in the historical and philosophical roots of molecular biology. He is now Visiting Fellow in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, where his research focuses on the origins of molecular biology and in particular the role of the pioneering physicist William T. Astbury and the work of Sir William and Lawrence Bragg. He is the author of The Man in the Monkeynut Coat .

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Image credit: William Astbury, Reproduced with the permission of Leeds University Library

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The month that changed the world: Sunday, 28 June 1914

July 1914 was the month that changed the world. On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and just five weeks later the Great Powers of Europe were at war. But how did it all happen? Historian Gordon Martel, author of The Month That Changed The World: July 1914, is blogging regularly for us over the next few weeks, giving us a week-by-week and day-by-day account of the events that led up to the First World War.

By Gordon Martel

At 10 a.m. that morning the royal party arrived at the railway station. A motorcade consisting of six automobiles was to proceed from there along the Appel Quay to the city hall.The first automobile was to be manned by four special security detectives assigned to guard the archduke, but only one of them managed to take his place; local policemen substituted for the others. The next car was to carry the mayor, Fehim Effendi Čurćić, wearing his red fez, and the chief of police, Dr Edmund Gerde – who had warned the military authorities about the dangerous atmosphere in Sarajevo and had advised against proceeding with the visit.

The archduke and the duchess were seated next to one another in the third car, facing General Potiorek (the military governor of Bosnia) and the owner of the limousine, Count Harrach. The archduke and duchess conducted a brief inspection of the military barracks before setting out for the city hall, where they were to be formally welcomed before proceeding to open the new state museum, designed to display the benefits of Austrian rule.

Seven would-be assassins mingled with the gathering crowds for over an hour before the motorcade arrived. Ilić had assigned one of them, Nedeljko Čabrinović, a place across the street from two others stationed in front of the garden at the Mostar Café, situated near the first bridge on the route, the Čumurja. Ilić and another assassin took their places on the other side of the street; Gavrilo Princip was placed 200 yards further along the route, at the Lateiner bridge. All seven were in place when the royal party arrived at the station that morning.

The arrest of Gavrilo Princip

Ten minutes before the motorcade reached the Čumurja bridge a policeman approached Čabrinović, demanding that he identify himself. He produced a permit that purported to have been issued by the Viennese police and asked the policeman which car was carrying the archduke. ‘The third’ he was told. A few minutes later he took out his grenade, knocked off the detonator cap and threw it at the limousine carrying the archduke and the duchess. Because there was a twelve-second delay between knocking off the cap and the explosion, the grenade hit the limousine, bounced off, rolled under the next car, and exploded. General Potiorek’s aide-de-camp was injured, along with several spectators. The duchess suffered a slight wound to her cheek, where she had been grazed by the grenade’s detonator.

Čabrinović swallowed his cyanide capsule and jumped over the embankment into the river. But the cyanide failed and the river had been reduced to a mere trickle in mid-summer. He was captured immediately by a policeman who asked him if he was a Serb. ‘Yes, I am a Serb hero’, he replied.

The procession continued on its way to the splendid new city hall, the neo-Moorish Vijećnica, meant to evoke the Alhambra as part of Austria’s ‘neo-Orientalist’ policy designed to cultivate the support of Bosnia’s Muslims. When the royal party arrived, the mayor began to read the effusive speech he had prepared in their honour – apparently unaware of the near calamity that had just occurred. The archduke interrupted, angrily demanding to know how the mayor could speak of ‘loyalty’ to the crown when a bomb had just been thrown at him. The duchess, playing her accustomed role, managed to calm him down while they waited for a staff officer to arrive with a copy of the archduke’s speech – which was now splattered in blood.

After the speeches and a reception General Potiorek proposed that they either drive back along the Appel Quay at full speed to the station or go straight to his residence, only a few hundred metres away, and where lunch awaited them. But the archduke insisted on first visiting the wounded officer at the military hospital. The duchess insisted on accompanying him: ‘It is in time of danger that you need me.’

The royal couple, along with Potiorek, climbed into a new car, with Count Harrach standing on the footboard to shield the archduke from any other would-be assassins. A first car, with the chief of police and others, was to precede them. In order to reach the hospital the motorcade was forced to retrace its route along the Appel Quay. Princip, who had almost abandoned hopeafter Čabrinović’s arrest, was still waiting near the Lateiner bridge when the two cars unexpectedly appeared in front of him.

The driver of the first car had turned right off the Appel Quay, following the original route to take them to the museum; the driver of the second car followed him. General Potiorek, immediately recognizing the mistake, ordered his driver to stop. The car then began to reverse slowly in order to get back onto the Appel Quay – with Count Harrach now on the opposite side of the car to Princip, who was standing at the corner of Appel Quay and Franz Joseph Street, in front of Schiller’s delicatessen. Seizing the opportunity, Princip stepped out of the crowd. His moment had arrived.

Because it was too difficult to take the grenade out of his coat and knock off the detonator cap, Princip decided to use his revolver instead. A policeman spotted him and tried to intervene, but a friend of Princip’s kicked the policeman in the knee and knocked him off balance. The first shot hit the archduke near the jugular vein; the second hit the duchess in the stomach. ‘Soferl, Soferl!’ Franz Ferdinand cried, ‘Don’t die. Live for our children.’ The duchess was already dead by the time they reached the governor’s residence. The archduke, unconscious when he was carried inside, was also dead within minutes – before either a doctor or a priest could be summoned.

Spectators were attempting to lynch Princip when the police rescued him. He tried to swallow the cyanide capsule, but vomited it up. An Austrian judge, interviewing him almost immediately afterwards, wrote: ‘The young assassin, exhausted by his beating, was unable to utter a word. He was undersized, emaciated, sallow, sharp featured. It was difficult to imagine that so frail looking an individual could have committed so serious a deed.’

Gordon Martel is a leading authority on war, empire, and diplomacy in the modern age. His numerous publications include studies of the origins of the first and second world wars, modern imperialism, and the nature of diplomacy. A founding editor of The International History Review, he has taught at a number of Canadian universities, and has been a visiting professor or fellow in England, Ireland and Australia. Editor-in-chief of the five-volume Encyclopedia of War, he is also joint editor of the longstanding Seminar Studies in History series. His new book is The Month That Changed The World: July 1914.

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Image credit: Princip arrest, public domain, ia Wikimedia Commons.

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The month that changed the world: Saturday, 27 June 1914

July 1914 was the month that changed the world. On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and just five weeks later the Great Powers of Europe were at war. But how did it all happen? Historian Gordon Martel, author of The Month That Changed The World: July 1914, will be blogging regularly for us over the next few weeks, giving us a week-by-week and day-by-day account of the events that led up to the First World War. His first post focuses on the events of Saturday, 27 June 1914.

By Gordon Martel

The next day was to be a brilliant one, a splendid occasion that would glorify the achievements of Austrian rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Habsburg heir to the thrones of Austria and Hungary, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had been eagerly anticipating it for months. He envisioned making a triumphal entry into the city of Sarajevo, attired in his uniform as inspector-general of the Austro-Hungarian army, and accompanied by his wife, the duchess. Sophie would be resplendent in a full-length white dress with red sash tied at the waist, she would hold a parasol to shelter from the sun and a fan to cool her; gloves, furs and a magnificent hat would complete the outfit.

The date of Sunday, 28 June had been chosen carefully: it was the anniversary of the battle of Kosovo in 1389, at which the medieval Serbian kingdom had been extinguished by the victorious Turks. Afterwards, Bosnia and Herzegovina remained provinces of the Ottoman empire for almost 500 years, until occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces in 1878 and then annexed in 1908. Thus, on the occasion of the archduke’s visit, the Serbs of Bosnia were asked to pay homage to a member of the royal family that blocked the way to uniting all Serbs in a Greater Serbia. The location was also provocative: the archducal visit to Sarajevo was preceded by military manoeuvres in the mountains south of the city – not far from the frontier with Serbia.

The Austrians disregarded warnings of trouble. The Serbian minister in Vienna had suggested to the minister responsible for Bosnian affairs that some Serbs might regard the time and place of the visit as a deliberate affront. Perhaps, he warned, some young Serb participating in the Austrian manoeuvres might substitute live ammunition for blanks – and seize the opportunity to fire at the archduke. Politicians and officials on the spot in Sarajevo had advised that the visit be cancelled; the police warned that they could not guarantee the archduke’s safety, particularly given the lengthy route that that the royal couple were scheduled to take along the Miljačka river from the railway station to the city hall.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand was not to be dissuaded by any warnings. More than high politics was involved in the choice of date for the visit. 28 June was the 14th anniversary of the humiliating ‘oath of renunciation’ that Franz Ferdinand had been forced to swear in order to receive the approval of his uncle – the emperor— of his marriage to Sophie. According to Franz Joseph and Habsburg ‘house rules’, she was unsuitable: her family was merely aristocratic, and neither from the Habsburg family itself nor from one of the ruling dynasties of Europe. When the emperor, after a long and acrimonious battle with his nephew, reluctantly agreed to the marriage he had imposed the humiliating conditions of a ‘morganatic’ marriage: neither Sophie nor her offspring would possess the titles and rights that would normally have come with marriage; neither she nor their children could succeed to the throne. Franz Ferdinand, surrounded by archdukes, archduchesses and court officials, had sworn on a bible to uphold the oath in the Secret Council Chamber at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. The ritual humiliation of Sophie had begun: although she was elevated to the status of ‘princess’ (and later to duchess) she would never become royalty. Her place, literally and figuratively, was lower than that of the youngest archduchess: in royal processions her husband would come first, she last, walking alone, without an escort. She was not permitted to sit at the head table at state dinners, could not share the royal box when attending the theatre or the opera. These insults aggrieved the volatile and temperamental archduke who was devoted to his wife.

Franz Ferdinand’s triumphal visit to Sarajevo the next day – on the 14th anniversary of the humiliating oath of renunciation – offered him the opportunity of seeing that Sophie would finally be treated with the respect that she was due. As wife of the inspector-general she was to sit next to him in an open carriage during the journey through the city and take the place of honour next to him when he addressed the dignitaries at city hall. Informally, late Saturday afternoon – the day before the official, ceremonial visit – he and Sophie took a leisurely journey into Sarajevo, where they were warmly welcomed by those who recognized them. The royal couple remained blissfully unaware that they had almost come face-to-face with the young Serb who was planning to kill the archduke the next day.

When the archduke and duchess attended the military ball on Saturday evening that marked the end of manoeuvres, Sophie was able to assure everyone how pleased she was with their reception in town that afternoon. At the same time the 19-year-old Danilo Ilić was meeting with six would-be assassins at a Sarajevo café. While handing out guns and grenades, he warned the others that the police may have discovered their plot. But there was no question of calling it off: such an opportunity as this was unlikely to occur again.

Ilić outlined the plan: the assassins were to be placed at each of the three bridges crossing the river. Their best chance of success would come at these junctions, where a grenade could easily be lobbed into the car carrying the royal couple. After discussing their plan, several of the conspirators visited the grave of Bogdan Žerajić, a young Serb who had been martyred years earlier when he had attempted (unsuccessfully) to assassinate the emperor. Legend had it that his dying words were ‘I leave it to Serbdom to avenge me’.

It proved enormously helpful to the conspirators that the plans for the procession on Sunday had been published in the local newspaper, the Bosnische Post – in order to encourage as many spectators as possible to turn out. Earlier that week the Muslim mayor had issued a proclamation calling on the people of the city to demonstrate their affection for the Habsburg heir to the throne: people should decorate their homes, fly the imperial flag and display pictures of the emperor and his nephew. The day was to be a triumph for Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia.

Gordon Martel is a leading authority on war, empire, and diplomacy in the modern age. His numerous publications include studies of the origins of the first and second world wars, modern imperialism, and the nature of diplomacy. A founding editor of The International History Review, he has taught at a number of Canadian universities, and has been a visiting professor or fellow in England, Ireland and Australia. Editor-in-chief of the five-volume Encyclopedia of War, he is also joint editor of the longstanding Seminar Studies in History series. His new book is The Month That Changed The World: July 1914.

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Image credit: Franz Ferdinand. By Carl Pietzner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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