| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig. The Origins of World War I. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xiii, 537. $60.00.
Coeditors Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig open this lengthy volume with a pertinent question: "Why another book on 1914?" Their justification centers on their belief that recent scholarship on July 1914 has shifted away from a focus on decision makers, or the constitutional arrangements in which they operated, or the motives behind their actions to concentrate instead on more generalized explanations. Yet much of the historical literature of the last decade or so on the July crisis, including that contributed by this reviewer, has addressed precisely these issues. The volume's value instead consists of putting such questions into a comparative perspective for all of the belligerents of the Great War (with the surprising omission of Belgium) and offering four conceptual chapters that examine the "origins issue" from a social-science perspective. Presented at a conference in 1999 of established scholars and newcomers, the essays constitute a useful source of bibliographic information on the origins of the war.	1
Hamilton and Herwig start with an analysis of what constitutes a world war, who were the decision makers in 1914, and what part was played by contingent factors. They systematically demolish the idea that "big causes," such as alliances or imperialism or militarism or Social Darwinism, triggered the war. Alliance obligations or militarism might have created the context for July 1914, but the final actions, the editors and most contributors insist, sprang from "strategic considerations." There was no "slide" to war, no war caused by "inadvertence," but instead a world war caused by a fearful set of elite statesmen and rulers making deliberate choices.	. . .

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