Authors

Teodoras Zukas¹;  ¹ Vilnius University, Lithuania

Discussion

For a long time, nationalism was seen as an integral part of the origins of the Great War. The recent historiography on the origins of the Great War tends to question some long-standing beliefs about the causes of the war, including the role of nationalism. The current research states that although the phenomena of nationalism existed in all of the great European powers in the pre-1914 period, nationalism as such is not directly related to the fundamental causes of this war. At the same time, paradoxically, the new research gives huge attention to Serbian nationalism in the pre-1914 period. This paper will analyse the recent historiographical shift of the origins of the First World War and, particularly, the changing understanding of Serbian nationalism as one of the causes of the war. In the first section, the paper will examine the main trends of recent historiography. The second part will turn to the question, of how the recent historiography assesses the role of Serbian nationalism and the causes of the war. I will argue that the new historiography turns away from seeing great power nationalism as an important contributor in the coming of war because nationalism in the great powers has been contained in the years before 1914. While, in the Serbian case, nationalism has not been successfully contained. I shall conclude that the role of Serbian nationalism in pre-1914 years is of the utmost importance in understanding the causes of the Great War.