When Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife the Duchess Sophie came to Sarajevo on 25 June 1914, they were ushered into a suite at a spa resort in the nearby municipality of Ilidža. The room, decorated in a Turkish style in vogue at the time, was provided by a local Jewish merchant from the …
Historical fiction can be the a fantastic way to ingrain history events as long as it doesn’t deviate too far from the dry and dusty demands of factual “truthiness”, and in the vein The Second Seal by Dennis Wheatley is an excellent primer for the dabbler who wants to get started in the area World …
Passion and levity have destroyed me. I pay with my life for my sins. Pray for me.–Alfred Redl Colonel Redl had good reason to kill himself in spring of 1913; as the head of the Evidenzbureau (counterintelligence) of Austria-Hungary, he had been selling Austria’s secrets and war plans to Russia for over ten years. …
World War I nearly started in 1909 over Bosnia and Herzegovina. Worried about a changing circumstance in Europe after the Young Turk Revolution and increasingly bothered by the rhetoric from Serbia, Austria-Hungary felt it had to act in order to preserve the integrity of its borders and its empire. On 6 October 1908, they announced …
The history of the Balkans is rife with the arguments of other nations playing out amongst the Slavic nations of south-west Europe. Nowhere is this illustrated better than through the events of the 1800s. As Russia became increasingly able to turn away from the endless wars of the Caucasus, the Balkans of the retreating …
The best way to explain a thing tends to be the simplest – and the rise of memes have presented history with an unprecedented opportunity to get to the “truthiness” of historical situations. Thus we can explain the four hundred+ year rivalry between Austria and Russia in the Balkans this way: Of course, the …
The crises in the Balkans jumped one to the next as the 1800s turned into the 1900s. Royal assassinations turned into paradigm shifts, causing strikes against the status quo. No longer wanting to be a dependent satellite of Austria-Hungary, Serbia turned toward Russia and began attempting to diversify their economics. Sensing the threat to …
The Pig War was not actually a war, and the weapons that started it were purchased, not shot. Nevertheless, when the Austro-Hungarians decided to teach Serbia a lesson, it was triggered by Serbia’s decision to purchase weapons from outside the Habsburg sphere of influence. The weapons were French, not coincidentally a treaty-partner to the …
When Serbia, which had long been considered a satellite of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, began attempting to branch out their economic and trade relationships, Austria-Hungary reacted decisively in an attempt to quell any thoughts of an independent Slavic Balkans. The result, on 1 March 1906, was the Pig War of 1906-1908. The Pig War was not …
The Balkans has always been a point of contention between the East and the West, and although the various incarnations of Hungary, Austria, and Austria-Hungary tended to dominate next to the advancing Ottoman Army, Russia was always nipping at the edges and creating leverage with the large number of Orthodox Slavs in Central Europe. That …
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