Old Knowledge and New Research: A Summary of the Conference on the Fischer Controversy 50 Years On

Abstract

The richness and intensity of the three-day conference, promoted by the German Historical Institute in London from 13 to 15 October 2011, made the summary I was asked to provide unusually difficult. I had 31 pages of notes on the papers presented. The following summary suggests ways in which the standard accounts of the July Crisis need to be altered by new research on the Great Powers in the decade before 1914 and on the July Crisis itself, the days between the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and the declarations of war.