Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Overview of debates about the causes of the First World War
- Part II Structure and agency
- Part III The question of preventive war
- Part IV The role of the other powers
- 9 War accepted but unsought
- 10 France’s unreadiness for war in 1914 and its implications for French decision-making in the July Crisis
- References
- Index
- References
9 - War accepted but unsought
Russia’s growing militancy and the July Crisis, 1914
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Part I Overview of debates about the causes of the First World War
- Part II Structure and agency
- Part III The question of preventive war
- Part IV The role of the other powers
- 9 War accepted but unsought
- 10 France’s unreadiness for war in 1914 and its implications for French decision-making in the July Crisis
- References
- Index
- References
Summary
In July 1914, the Russian government reacted to developments in a fashion that transformed a local Balkan war into a continental conflict. While concerns about the sovereignty and security of Serbia and about Austrian intentions in the Balkans played their roles, by the summer of 1914, the Russian leadership acted in an atmosphere of real distrust of Germany that had built up over a decade of misunderstanding and rivalry. A string of diplomatic crises increased Russia’s suspicions of German intentions in the Near East, a region of strategic, economic, and cultural interest to Russians. Vital trade relations between the two were increasingly strained as Russia grew to resent German economic power, especially in the context of a renegotiation of a major trade treaty. In this context, Russia’s changing leadership perceived German manipulation of Austria during July 1914 and thought that the only way to preserve its prestige in Europe, as well as to slow German penetration into a region vital to its interests, would be to deter action by the Central Powers through a strong show of resolution via the mobilization of its army. While these measures increased the threat of a war that Russia did not want, it felt only such a demonstration could make an impression on German leaders. The failure of the Russian deterrent helped to bring the outbreak of the First World War.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Outbreak of the First World WarStructure, Politics, and Decision-Making, pp. 227 - 251Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
References
, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (London: Longman, 2002)Google Scholar
, “Russian Historiography on the Origins of the First World War since the Fischer Controversy,” Journal of Contemporary History 48(2) (2013): 350–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Vneshniaia politika Rossii v XX veke: populiarnyi ocherk (Moscow: Izd-vo Kommun. un-ta im IA. M. Sverdlova, 1926)Google Scholar
, Iz istorii vozniknoveniia pervoi mirovoi voiny (Otnosheniia Rossii i Frantsii 1912–1914 kummun period after im. 1914 gg.) (Moscow: Izd-vo Mosk. universiteta, 1961).Google Scholar
, The Coming of the War 1914, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1930), vol. 2, pp. 480–481.Google Scholar
, Russia and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1983), p. 154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Russian Mobilisation in 1914,” in (ed.), The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880–1914 (Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1979), pp. 252–268Google Scholar
, “The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914,” International Security 15(3) (1990/1): 120–150CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Russia,” in and (eds.), The Origins of World War I (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 188–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Pieces of the Puzzle: The Role of Iu. N. Danilov and M. V. Alekseev in Russian War Planning before 1914,” International History Review 25(4) (2003): 775–798;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “War Planning and Initial Operations in the Russian Context,” in and (eds.), War Planning 1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 80–142.Google Scholar
, Bosfor i Dardanelly: Tainye provokatsii nakanune Pervoi mirovoi voiny (1908–1914) (Moscow: Kvadriga, 2010)Google Scholar
, The Russian Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908–1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Roads to Glory: Late Imperial Russia and the Turkish Straits (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006).Google Scholar
, The Russian Constitutional Experiment: Government and Duma, 1907–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 2–12Google Scholar
, The Crisis of Russian Autocracy: Nicholas II and the 1905 Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
, United Government and Foreign Policy in Russia, 1900–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Iz moego prozhlogo. Vospominaniia. 1903–1919 gg., 2 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1992), vol. 2, pp. 127–128Google Scholar
, “The Russian Empire,” in (ed.), Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars (Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 98–126Google Scholar
, “Militarization and Diplomacy in Europe before 1914,” International Security 22(1) (1997): 125–161, at 160CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Origins of the War of 1914, 3 vols., trans. and ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1952–1957), vol. 1, p. 22Google Scholar
, The Balkan Wars, 1912–1913: Prelude to the First World War (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Russia and the Balkans: Inter-Balkan Rivalries and Russian Foreign Policy 1908–1914 (University of Toronto Press, 1981), pp. 34–36.Google Scholar
, Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (New York: Macmillan, 1991), p. 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Bor’ba v Rossii po voprosam vneshnei politiki 1906–1910 (Moscow: Nauka, 1961), p. 46Google Scholar
, A. V. Krivoshein (1857–1921 gg.). Ego znachenie v istorii Rossii nachala XX veka (Paris: P.I.U.F., 1973), p. 195.Google Scholar
(ed.), Out of My Past: The Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov, trans. (Stanford University Press, 1935), p. 349.Google Scholar
, , and (eds.), British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898–1914, 11 vols. (London: HMSO, 1926–1938)Google Scholar
, Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904–1914 (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 345–349.Google Scholar
(ed.), Konstantinopol’ i prolivy Po sekretnym dokumentam b. ministerstva inostrannykh del, 2 vols. (Moscow: Izdanie Litizdat NKID, 1925), p. 62.
, P. A. Stolypin: The Search for Stability in Late Imperial Russia (Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 251.Google Scholar
, “La politique russe d’accès à la Méditerranée au XXe siècle,” Recueil des cours 47 (1934): 603–802, at 661Google Scholar
, Endgame: Britain, Russia, and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), p. 87Google Scholar
, Russkii imperializm i razvitie flota: nakanune pervoi mirovoi voiny (1906–1914 gg.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1968), pp. 82, 323–327Google Scholar
, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy 1860–1914, trans. . (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 163.Google Scholar
, Osthandel and Ostpolitik: German Foreign Trade Policies in Eastern Europe from Bismarck to Adenauer (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1997), pp. 81–83Google Scholar
, “Poor Russia, Poor Show: Mobilising a Backward Economy for War 1914–1917,” in and (eds.), The Economics of World War I (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 235–275, at 237CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Russian National Income, 1885–1913 (Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 56–59, 73Google Scholar
, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, 2nd edn. (London: Macmillan 1993), pp. 156–174.Google Scholar
, Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900–1914: The Last Argument of Tsarism (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 133–134CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Memoirs: Diplomat of Imperial Russia, 1903–1917 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1973), p. 91.Google Scholar
, The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France Prepare for War, 1904–1914 (London: Ashfield, 1990), pp. 167–342Google Scholar
and , Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 2nd edn. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 84–116, 151–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, France and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1983), pp. 104–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy towards Russia, 1894–1917 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 267–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Twenty-Five Years, 1892–1916 (New York: Stokes, 1925), pp. 273–278
, The Mediterranean Naval Situation 1908–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 86–110, 311–313Google Scholar
, Maurice Paléologue: The Diplomat, the Writer, the Man, and the Third French Republic (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), pp. 83–99Google Scholar
, “1914: The Safety of Ciphers and the Outbreak of the First World War,” in and (eds.), Intelligence and International Relations (University of Exeter Press, 1987), pp. 29–48.Google Scholar
Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia v epokhu imperializma 3rd series (Moscow: Gos. sots., 1931–1940)
(ed.), July 1914: The Outbreak of the First World War: Selected Documents (New York: Scribner, 1967)
- 3
- Cited by