ABSTRACT
On 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was murdered in Sarajevo in Bosnia, which had been annexed by Austria in 1908. The assassin and his co-conspirators were members of a Serbian nationalist group called ‘the Black Hand’. In less than five weeks the alliance systems of the great powers had turned this local incident into a European war. The origins of the First World War are a source of major historical controversy that has refused to disappear over the years. The historiographical debate must, therefore, inform any discussion about the events that ‘triggered’ a European and then a world war in 1914.
