L. C. B. Seaman, From Vienna to Versailles (1956), chs. XI-XV
James Joll, The Origins of the First World War, 2nd ed. (1992), whole book
§Hajo Holborn, The Political Collapse of Europe (1951), chs. II and III

The First World War was a long and terribly destructive war; most Europeans had not wanted war, certainly not this sort of war, and they found it very hard to explain in retrospect. What features of Europe’s international system before 1914 seem to you to be most important in explaining the origins of this war? Would you give a large or a small role to particular decisions or miscalculations in bringing on the war?

This tutorial is concerned mainly with forms of domestic political and social change, and we don’t spend much time on international relations. Apart from this week, only Week 8 (on the Third Reich) and Week 9 (on Europe after 1945) have much to do with the European state system and how nations behaved in the international arena. We see more of how governments interact with their own societies than we do of how countries (or governments) deal with other countries (or governments), which presents a different set of analytical challenges.

For one thing, in foreign relations it’s often natural to tell the story in terms of the actions and mistakes of individuals or small groups of decision-makers. In earlier centuries, like the nineteenth, foreign policy was the preserve of small circles at the top of the governmental system. Personalities, cleverness, obsessions, omissions and miscalculations loom large in accounts of international history. The personal qualities and dynastic ambitions of monarchs made a difference. No other realm of traditional large-scale history (unless maybe warfare) emphasizes individual actors so much as the history of diplomatic relations.

Despite the role of unpredictable individual action, models and theories of international relations abound, founded on the belief there must be broad, intelligible forces at work in this arena. The prominence of individuals can be seen as masking (or warping) an underlying rational pursuit of each country’s national interest in the international realm. "National interest" is a useful but problematic concept. Who determines what the national interest is? Can a country as a whole have a national interest, or are people unwittingly talking about the interests of powerful groups, perhaps economic groups? (One good test case for such ideas is the imperial rivalries in which most major European powers engaged at the end of the nineteenth century.)

Another distinctive point about international relations:  Here one can think relatively clearly about the intuitive assumption that the great events of history are "caused". Notice that Joll, in common with most historians, prefers to inquire into "origins", not causes. Think some about what is implied by this terminology. We’ll talk about it in class.