As such, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was experiencing a great deal of tensions in the first years of the 20th century. This ethnic diversity was a challenge for the empire because the growth of nationalism in the 1800s caused many in Europe to seek independence. At the time of the early 20th century, Austria-Hungary was a diverse empire that stretched across large sections of central and eastern Europe. For instance, Ferdinand supported some freedoms for the different ethnic groups that existed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. All these big trends would have eventually forced a war.Politically, Franz Ferdinand differed from his uncle, Franz Joseph, in that Ferdinand was much more liberal. They argue that better diplomacy would only have delayed the inevitable. But to other historians, this kind of explanation seems insufficient. Some historians argue that this inadequacy, rather than the deep underlying trends or even the assassination itself, was most responsible for the war. They simply couldn't keep up with the pace of events. Throughout the summer of 1914, as diplomats and governments thought long and hard about the impact of an assassination, they missed all kinds of opportunities to slow down the mobilization of troops. With the increased speed of mobilization, there was no time for old-school diplomacy. But technological change had outpaced the way that people thought about international relations.
Communication between diplomats and their governments was slow and limited, and there had been a time when that was just fine. The world at this time didn't have really sophisticated diplomatic systems. This leads us to another theory about why the First World War happened.
The stumbling pathway to war creates an image of one state after another seemingly helpless or unwilling to stop a conflict they could see coming. That is when their supportive friend Russia, they hoped, would leap to the defense of Serbia, defeat the Habsburg armies, and help the Bosnian Serbs win their independence.
The plotters hoped that by killing Franz Ferdinand, they would provoke the Austro-Hungarian Empire to declare war on Serbia. The successful plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 was part of a bigger plan. Russia was generally supportive of these plots. Serbian nationalists, both in Serbia and Bosnia, plotted throughout the early twentieth century to get the Habsburgs out of Bosnia. But many Serbs still lived in the Habsburg province of Bosnia. The Serbs, one of those ethnic groups, had their own country of Serbia having achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire. It didn't help that Russia and the Habsburg's other rivals were cheering them on in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. First of all, nationalism was pushing many of them to pursue independence. Franz Ferdinand's uncle, the emperor, ruled over its many ethnic communities with difficulty. It was a huge, multi-ethnic empire located in the middle of Europe. But in 1914, the Habsburg family had ruled this empire for almost four centuries. It was one of the victims of the First World War, defeated and torn apart by the end of the conflict.
You probably have already learned a bit about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro- Hungarian Empire.
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