Transnational Comparison

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Transnational Comparison

The ‘outbreak’ of World War One: some international comparisons

 


After you have read the article by Christopher Clark, read the article ‘Weeks of decision’, by Stig Forster, from a German popular history magazine. (Insert Link)


Tasks (students' view):

1

Both articles describe the events surrounding the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event which is widely thought to have been one of the causes of World War One. However, after the description of the assassination, they go on to talk about different aspects of the outbreak of war. In a sense, they are providing answers to different questions about the outbreak of war.


a. What is the question to which Christopher Clark is providing the answer? (Focus on the last 3 paragraphs of the Clark article)

b. What is the question to which Stig Forster is providing the answer? (Focus on the last 3 paragraphs of the Forster article)

c. The two historians have different views about the extent to which the assassination at Sarajevo was ‘just an excuse’ to go to war.
i) What is Clark’s view about this? (See the second column of page 23 of the article)
ii) What is Forster’s view about this? (See the top half of the second page of the Forster article).


2


Reading the two articles (and if you have time, the articles from Sweden, Spain and Poland? Is there any evidence that the historians from the different countries who write in popular history magazines are ‘biased’ in their views about responsibility for causing the war? (In other words, do German historians tend to blame countries other than Germany for the war, and for British historians to blame Germany).




3


Germany, England and Poland were more directly involved in the war than Spain and Sweden. Does this make any difference to the questions that they ask about the war? (As well as thinking about the magazine articles, you may find it helpful to look at the sections in the ‘Overview’ pages about the way that school textbooks treat this topic in the different countries).



4

4. Forster’s article focuses on the question of which countries and individuals were most responsible for the outbreak of war. What other questions might one ask about the outbreak of war? Is the decision about which questions are asked (whether in textbooks or popular history magazines) influenced by national perspectives? Task Caption / Question (Arial / 14pt / bold)


5


How come that nearly 100 years after the start of World War One (and after hundreds of historians have examined the evidence about this event), there does not appear to be a ‘true’ or ‘correct’ answer to the question of which country did most to cause the war, which is generally accepted by all historians. Does this mean that one historian’s opinion is no more authoritative than another’s? (In other words,’ It’s just a matter of opinion’).


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Tasks (teachers' view):

1

Both articles describe the events surrounding the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event which is widely thought to have been one of the causes of World War One. However, after the description of the assassination, they go on to talk about different aspects of the outbreak of war. In a sense, they are providing answers to different questions about the outbreak of war.


a. What is the question to which Christopher Clark is providing the answer? (Focus on the last 3 paragraphs of the Clark article)

b. What is the question to which Stig Forster is providing the answer? (Focus on the last 3 paragraphs of the Forster article)

c. The two historians have different views about the extent to which the assassination at Sarajevo was ‘just an excuse’ to go to war.
i) What is Clark’s view about this? (See the second column of page 23 of the article)
ii) What is Forster’s view about this? (See the top half of the second page of the Forster article).


1a) Clark is arguing that the assassination at Sarajevo did play a big part in the outbreak of World War One – it was not ‘just an excuse’ for war, explaining that events which have a strong impact on the perceived power and prestige of nations – a strong symbolic significance – like the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001, can have an important effect on history – then and now.
1b) Forster’s article is about which countries and which individuals were most responsible for war breaking out.
1c i) Clark’s view is that the assassination at Sarajevo was NOT just an excuse for Austria to go to war with Serbia. He argues that they could not afford to just ignore this provocation, and that the situation in the Balkans was very volatile and problematic and was a major part of the problems which led to war.
1c ii) On page 2 of Forster’s article (second paragraph) he makes it clear that the assassination WAS an excuse to go to war with Serbia, ‘an opportunity to realise long preserved plans.’

2

Reading the two articles (and if you have time, the articles from Sweden, Spain and Poland? Is there any evidence that the historians from the different countries who write in popular history magazines are ‘biased’ in their views about responsibility for causing the war? (In other words, do German historians tend to blame countries other than Germany for the war, and for British historians to blame Germany).


There is little evidence to suggest that historians are ‘nationalistic’ and biased from these articles. Forster, a German historian, is arguing that Germany and Austria were perhaps more to blame than other countries (but not entirely to blame). Also, the curricular synopsis of how World War One is taught in Germany draws attention to ‘The Fischer Thesis’, where the German Historian Fritz Fischer argued that Germany was most to blame for World War One – and notes that this has been argued about by a number of German historians since then. This is not to say that there are NO historians who have ever been guilty of not strictly respecting the evidence about their nation’s role in the past, but on the whole, popular history magazine articles, or at least the ones featured in the EHISTO project are not riddled with nationalistic bias. The way academic history works is that historians do their research, publish the findings in books and monographs, and the published work is then subject to critique by the community of practice of professional historians. Articles in history magazines are an attempt to spread knowledge of their research to a broader audience, beyond ‘the academy’.

3

 


Germany, England and Poland were more directly involved in the war than Spain and Sweden. Does this make any difference to the questions that they ask about the war? (As well as thinking about the magazine articles, you may find it helpful to look at the sections in the ‘Overview’ pages about the way that school textbooks treat this topic in the different countries).

The fact that some countries were not directly involved in the war (Spain and Sweden) may mean that they are more detached about what questions to ask about the war. Historians have sometimes chosen to focus on the aspects of World War On that had most influence on their own nation’s past, so although they are not ‘biased’ or ‘nationalistic’, their focus is influenced sometimes by what country they come from (See next section for examples).

4

Forster’s article focuses on the question of which countries and individuals were most responsible for the outbreak of war. What other questions might one ask about the outbreak of war? Is the decision about which questions are asked (whether in textbooks or popular history magazines) influenced by national perspectives?

Other questions might focus on what factors did most to cause the war (alliance system, colonial rivalry, economic rivalry, arms race, balance of power), why War broke out in 1914 and not sooner or later, was war caused by capitalism, was it an accident/miscalculation or was it deliberate, was it an attempt to deflect people’s attention away from domestic problems.
The way that World War One is taught in Poland (see the curriculum synopsis and text book approach in the Polish Overview section) focuses to at least some extent on the ways in which World War One influenced the history of Poland (it led to the recreation of the Polish state, so it was ‘big deal’ for Poland. Similarly, Great Britain was in more of a position to keep out of the war if she had chosen to do so – she was not bound by any alliances to join in. So more attention has been given to the question of whether Britain would have done better to keep out of the war. (Although Britain and her allies won the war, some historians have argued that it bankrupted Britain as a great nation, and accelerated her decline as a great power. The British historian Simon Schama has argued that just like people taking photographs or making films, historians ‘frame’ when they pre-formulate the questions they ask of their sources, and their framing is just a much a product of prior preoccupations and prejudices as the video director’s (Schama, S. ‘Television and the trouble with history’, BBC History Magazine, 3 (8), 2002: 40-43).

5

How come that nearly 100 years after the start of World War One (and after hundreds of historians have examined the evidence about this event), there does not appear to be a ‘true’ or ‘correct’ answer to the question of which country did most to cause the war, which is generally accepted by all historians. Does this mean that one historian’s opinion is no more authoritative than another’s? (In other words,’ It’s just a matter of opinion’).

Both Clark and Forster are respected historians and expert in this field. This shows that it is very difficult to be certain about exactly what happened and why in history sometimes, because we don’t always have all the evidence, and historians interpret what evidence there is differently. Also, people sometimes ask different questions about the event. For example, William Mulligan’s article, ‘The origins of the First World War’ (in History Review, No 69, March 2011: 12-17), is about the causes of World War One, but is writing about very different things to do with the causes and outbreak of the war compared to Clark and Forster – focusing on the question, what was it that kept the peace between 1870 and 1914, and what was different about the situation in 1914. It is in the nature of accounts to differ because of these things. Historians are more certain about some things compared to others, it depends on the evidence. Historians’ accounts of the past can also be influenced by their background and perspective – and some people try to use (and distort) history for their own purposes.
Two quotations about history which are relevant to the development of historical and critical literacy:
‘Most historians… find more evidence about the past than they imaging or invent, and the quality of that evidence, together with the quality of the necessary selection, ordering and presentation of it, is one important distinction between good history and bad.’ Aldrich, R. (1997) The end of history and the beginning of education, London, ULIE: 5.
‘The complicated interplay of evidence which is itself not certain and subject to interpretation gives history a particularly valuable part in the development of an adult understanding. It helps pupils to understand that there is a range of questions – be they political, economic, social or cultural – on which there is no single right answer, where opinions have to be tolerated but need to be subjected to the test of evidence and argument. As the pupil progresses in this encounter with history, he should be helped to acquire a sense of the necessity for personal judgements in the light of facts – recognising that the facts often be far from easy to establish and far from conclusive. And it should equally awaken a recognition of the possible legitimacy of other points of view. In other words, it seems to be that the teaching of history has to take place in a spirit which takes seriously the need to pursue truth on the basis of evidence, and at the same time accepts the need for give and take in that pursuit and that teaching in that spirit should encourage pupils to take a similar approach. Joseph, K. (1984) ‘Why teach history in school?’, The Historian, No. 2 (Insert).