Comment

Mar 29, 2015baldand rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
This has been a grossly overrated work of history. A lot of it is at the level of a tabloid newspaper. We are fed endless details about the politicians’ mistresses in its 700 pages, but there is a real shortage of serious analysis. Although the immediate cause of the war was the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia, Ms. MacMillan does not even deign to provide readers with an outline of what were its terms, or summarize the incredibly conciliatory response of the Serbian government, considering the insulting tone of the ultimatum itself. This points up another weakness of the book; the author is a virulent Serbophobe, who misses no opportunity to take Serbs down a notch. It isn’t even reliable as to facts, but is littered with errors great and small. Russia became the world’s largest country in the 17th century, not the 19th, the Battle of Borodino was not a Russian victory, the Black Hand’s newspaper was called “Pijemont”, not “Piejmont”, the Ruthenians in Austrian Galicia spoke Ukrainian and not a language related to Ukrainian, the King of Montenegro was called Nikola, not Nicholas (if this is just an Anglicization of a Serbo-Croat name then Ms. MacMillan is not consistent, as she writes of Nikola Pašić, the Serbian PM, not Nicholas Pašić), Gavrilo Princip believed in Yugoslavia and was not a Serbian nationalist, he died in a prison in what is now the Czech Republic, not in an Austrian prison, and contrary to the author’s statement, was full of anxiety that his assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand may have done more harm than good. The following sentence is unfortunately all too typical of the general tone of the book: “During the crisis over the Bosnian annexation, for example, Italy’s suggestions for a settlement were brushed aside and there was no thought of giving it any compensation in the Balkans.” Here, it seems, we are supposed to commiserate with Italy, not given its due, and not with the people of the Balkans, treated as spoils by the Great Powers, with their own interests ignored.