{"id":12188,"date":"2013-08-19T10:52:43","date_gmt":"2013-08-19T09:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12188"},"modified":"2013-08-19T10:53:33","modified_gmt":"2013-08-19T09:53:33","slug":"will-we-ever-agree-on-what-caused-the-first-world-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12188","title":{"rendered":"Will we ever agree on what caused the First World War?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It took six weeks, but I have now finished viewing the box set of the 26-part <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Great_War_(documentary)\">BBC television series on &#8220;The Great War&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0which was bought for me as a birthday present by a good friend. It was a utterly fascinating series, informative and balanced and very, very moving. This was a war the like of which the world had never seen, resulting in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/World_War_I_casualties\">over 37 million military and civilian casualties<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC series was broadcast in 1964 to mark the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of this horrendous conflict. Next year, we will see a host of television programmes, books, articles and exhibitions to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the war. I am particuarly interested in seeing the new sections of the Imperial War Museum in London.<\/p>\n<p>However, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2013\/aug\/12\/first-world-war-centenary-history\">a recent article<\/a>, Richard Norton-Taylor opined:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230; the government seems intent on avoiding any serious debate about the war and its causes, ducking responsibility, apparently fearful of getting embroiled in a blame game.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He refers to the work of Cambridge historian Christopher Clark and writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The conflict began in the Balkans but\u00a0a catalyst, he says, was\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_Libya_as_an_Italian_colony\">Italy&#8217;s seizure of\u00a0the Ottoman province of Libya in 1911<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 100 years before Britain and France launched air strikes against the country. Italy&#8217;s attack whetted appetites and Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece grabbed Turkish territory in Macedonia and Albania. Nationalistic and ethnic divisions erupted in a region which formed part of the Austro-Hungarian empire as well as the Ottoman.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It took six weeks, but I have now finished viewing the box set of the 26-part BBC television series on &#8220;The Great War&#8221;\u00a0which was bought for me as a birthday present by a good friend. It was a utterly fascinating series, informative and balanced and very, very moving. This was a war the like of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12188"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12199,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12188\/revisions\/12199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}