'The Sleepwalkers, how Europe went to war 1914', Christopher Clark review

The historiography of World War I is immense, more than 25,000 volumes and articles, yet Clark is still able to offer new perspectives on contemporary history's most enduring problem. The distinctive achievement of “The Sleepwalkers” is Clark’s through survey of European history leading up to the war. He raises the curtain at 2 a.m. on June 11, 1903, 11 years before Princip's fateful shots. the narrative shows 28 Serbian army officers shoot their way into the royal palace in Belgrade. King Alexandar and Queen Draga, betrayed and helpless, are butchered, riddled with bullets, stabbed with a bayonet, hacked with an ax and partially disemboweled, their ­faces mutilated beyond recognition and the bloody half-naked remnants tossed from the royal balcony onto the grounds.

Clark draws a direct parallel between the assassins of Belgrade and Sarajevo. Though the regicide — and the murder of a despotic prime minister the same night — led to a more transparent democracy, the conspiratorial network remained. Its murderous intentions were now directed towards undermining multi-ethinic Austria-Hungary. The chief instigator of the Belgrade plot, Apis, became the head of Serbian military intelligence and was instrumental in the creation of the Black Hand terrorist networks that organized the assassination of the archduke. They dreamed of a greater 'Yugoslavia' encompassing all the Serbs on the Balkan Peninsula. The region was fertile ground for disaffection: two non-Slavic races, Austrians and Maygars, held sway over millions of Serbs, Slovaks, Czechs, Croats and Poles, among others.  

Clark's stringent analysis of Austria’s 48-hour ultimatum to Serbia and the Serbian reply, demolishes the standard view that Austria was too harsh and that Serbia humbly complied. Austria demanded action against terrorist networks in Serbia. It would have been an infringement of sovereignty, but Serbian tolerance of the terrorist networks, and its laid-back response to the Sarajevo murders, inhibit one’s sympathy with its position. Clark describes Austria’s ultimatum as “a great deal milder” than the ultimatum presented by NATO to Serbia-Yugoslavia in the March 1999 Rambouillet Agreement for unimpeded access to its land. As for Serbia’s reply, so long regarded as conciliatory, Clark shows that on most policy points it was a highly perfumed rejection offering Austria amazingly little — a 'masterpiece of diplomatic equivocation.'

By deeply studying the characters of the key players, Clark makes an entirely original insight; the all-male political players were caught in a 'crisis of masculinity'.  he backs up this viewpoint by citing gender historians who claim that the conventions of the time encouraged assertiveness.  He demonstrates how this social concept is intwined with the leader's understanding of policy; phrases such as 'firmness of will' and 'self castration' were included in the memoirs of statesmen.  

Clark's conclusion of the origins of the First world war was that the leaders were 'sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world.'  I disagree with his judgement, In my opinion the leaders were not sleepwalkers as this connotes a state of unconsciousness.  The reckless men of time were deniers rather than blinded sleepwalkers, they continued to pursue dangerous policies, the Russian interference in the Balkan tinderbox in support of her Slavic little brothers' was particularly reckless, as was the German General Staff's consensus to precipitate a preventive war against ascendent Russia. They all understood that these policies, such as the deepening of the Franco-Russian alliance which increasingly polarised Europe, would lead to general war, but the statesmen simply denied the bloody inevitability of their actions.    

This book is the most comprehensive and readable study of the period I have read, and is a genuine God-send to any student studying this complex period of history

It gets 5/5