No assassination in Sarajevo, speculation on a world without the Great War.

In the 100 years ago today thread Craig B and I went a bit off topic onto speculations about the likely consequences of a world without the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on the 28th of June 1914.



Assuming the plotters had failed, for whatever reason¹ what do people think would have happened?

1. Would there have soon been another casus belli with the war starting later but pretty much as historically?


2. Would the Russian Empire have collapsed, drastically upsetting the balance of the European alliances, before a major war started?


3. Even a relatively short delay could have changed the political situation in Britain, where Irish Home Rule had passed into law but been suspended in September of 1914. If it had enacted it would have been a considerable distraction (UVF, IVF, Curragh Mutiny) with the potential for internecine warfare distracting attention from Europe.


4. Would the failure of the assassination plot have allowed Pašić (Serbian Prime Minister) to rein in the Black Hand? Especially 'Apis' (Dragutin Dimitrijević, head of Serbian Military Intelligence) who was functionally the group's leader. This might have calmed matters in the Balkans for a few years.


5. Historically Emperor Franz Josef died in November 1916, and even without the stresses of the war he'd probably not have lived much beyond this (he was 86). What would have happened if the war hadn't yet happened before he died? While Franz Ferdinand was undoubtedly a conservative and dynastist he was somewhat more liberal and moderate than Franz Josef² .


6. A Russia facing greater internal turmoil might be less willing to support Serbia in any later confrontation; this was the principal difference between the 1914 and 1908-9 Balkan crises.


7. However the forces of nationalism were on the rise, could the empires have managed them, adapting to new realities, without dragging everyone into war?


8. Would Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans have transitioned to constitutional democracy? Would the monarchies have survived, more of less intact, in their autocratic glories? Or would they have fallen to violent revolutions?

Thoughts?





¹ Betrayal and capture by the Austro-Hungarian authorities, problems at the border crossing, capture before they acted in Sarajevo, tighter security for the visitors et cetera

¹ It'd be pretty difficult to be more conservative than FJ.

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