On June 28 in 1914, Gavrilo Princip killed the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife during their visit to Sarajevo. Meant as a symbolic act in support of the creation of a Yugoslavian nation, the assassination triggered lethal dynamics which affected all continents of the globe in the end. Austria- Hungary’s war of retaliation against Serbia was expected to be over in a matter of weeks. However, the global entanglements of an already highly globalized world witnessed the emergence of what British historian Eric Hobsbawm called the age of catastrophe.
Within just a few days, the war had spread so widely that it became known as the Great War. Yet still we are not fully aware of its global reach beyond Europe and Northern America: The First World War is still narrated as a primarily European war. On the occasion of the 100 year anniversary of the Great War, scholars from various academic disciplines will discuss the global dimensions of those years of warfare on the eve of the age of globalisation. In particular, the conference will discuss the global phenomenon of war enthusiasm at the outbreak of the war and the failure of the international Socialism to avoid it along several papers. Furthermore, presentations and discussions will focus on the globally spread British Empire, as well as on North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Doing that, the conference tries to draw assumptions regarding the question of war and peace then and now.
The State of Peace Conference will take place at the conference centre of the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution (ASPR) at Schlaining Castle. The conference is organised by ASPR in close cooperation with its partner institutions from the Conflict, Peace and Democracy Cluster (CPDC): the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education (ZFF) at the University of Klagenfurt, the Institute for Conflict Research (IKF) as well as the Democracy Centre Vienna.