Transnational Comparison
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.
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.
|
2 |
|
3 |
|
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 |
|
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.
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.
|
|
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 |
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. |
|
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.
|