Trigger: The Hunt for Gavrilo Princip - the Assassin who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher
| Trigger: The Hunt for Gavrilo Princip - the Assassin who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher | |
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| Category: History | |
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Reviewer: John Van der Kiste
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| Summary: A journey across Bosnia and the former Serbia, in the footsteps of Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914 was the catalyst for the First World War. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 326 | Date: July 2015 |
| Publisher: Vintage | |
| ISBN: 9780099581338 | |
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The trigger of the title is that which featured in perhaps the most far-reaching assassination in history – that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the imperial throne of Austria-Hungary, and his morganatic (unequal in rank) wife, Sophie Chotek.
On the morning of 28 June 1914, they were being driven through the streets of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, when a young Serbian self-styled 'freedom-fighter', Gavrilo Princip, took aim and shot them dead at point blank range. Within six weeks the the double killing had triggered – excuse the pun – a war which brought three admittedly crumbling European empires to defeat and oblivion, and helped to redraw a very different map of the continent less than five years later.
Almost a hundred years later, journalist Tim Butcher went 'in search of Princip', or rather the country in which he was born and raised. It took him from his birthplace in the hamlet of Obljaj in western Bosnia to Sarajevo and across the border to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. From the descriptions in his book, western Bosnia, an area of largely infertile terrain bordered by mountains, sounds like it has altered but little in the last hundred years. His odyssey begins in Obljaj, where he meets surviving members of Princip’s family, some now very elderly, who pass on memories and recollections handed down from the previous generation of the mischievous schoolboy who became a discontented teenager and then a passionate nationalist, obsessed with the desire to save his nation.
Here the complexities of nineteenth century European politics intrude. Bosnia-Herzegovina, as the land in which Princip was born and raised was known, was under Austro-Hungarian occupation as a result of an agreement signed by the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Austria’s decision to annex the area in 1908 without prior warning to her fellow Powers, was greeted with dismay if not anger throughout much of Europe, inflamed an already volatile situation and in retrospect was seen as one of the major causes of the 1914-18 conflict by creating tension with Serbia and to an extent also Russia. Inevitably, there is a deep historical thread running throughout the book. The Austrian occupation begat the First World War, the partisan war of 1941-1945 and the hostilities of the 1990s.
Next Butcher proceeds through the stony unforgiving landscape of western Bosnia. He comes into contact with some of the ethnic groups who live there, the guard dogs, the mine warnings which bear testimony to the recent wars, and the defaced remains of many a war memorial. His journey recalls the years he spent earlier as a war reporter in Yugoslavia, coming face to face with harrowing scenes of a ravaged territory. The worst, perhaps, was a field of skulls, vertebrae, rotting piles and scraps of clothing and footwear. When he turns his jeep at one point, the back wheels drive over a rib cage. As he takes a few photographs, a man appears from apparently nowhere, brandishing a shotgun and ordering him to leave.
More comfortably if more strangely, on his quest he encounters a remarkable case of east-meets-west. He finds that Franz Ferdinand, the British rock group who named themselves after the murdered Archduke, are playing a gig at the north Bosnian town of Banja Luka. He attends the occasion, gets to talk to the members, and learns that when they project a giant image of Princip behind the stage, it appears that most of the young Serbian audience have no idea who he was.
After he reaches Sarajevo, he presents us with a chapter on the original event which provided the focus for the whole book, that fateful day in June 1914. The story has been recounted many times before, of the Archduke and heir to the imperial throne who realised his journey was fraught with danger, and of the bungled, inadequate security measures which resulted in a near-miss for the illustrious victim and his wife followed by the fatal shots just minutes later. It is completed with an account of the timetable to war and the trials of Princip and his fellow-conspirators, three of whom were hanged for the part in the conspiracy. Princip was too young to be sent to the gallows and died in prison of tuberculosis, a few months before the end of the war.
Butcher writes sensitively of his travels, the country, the ethnic divisions, and the tortured history which continues to resonate down the years, with natonalism and war replicating themselves in successing generations. It goes without saying that the story of a young man who only lived to be twenty-four is never going to extend to a full-length biography, and this book certainly does not claim to be one. Nevertheless if it has a fault, it is that sometimes it the pages turn a little too much into over-lengthy descriptions of the walks, which would have benefited from some editing.
For all that, this is a very evocative read. The country that spawned Princip and the nationalist movement, and the tortuous, ever-troubled nationalism of Bosnia and Serbia which had such a far-reaching impact on European history, are vividly portrayed by one who perhaps came as close to living the life, or certainly observing it at first-hand, as any British person of the present day could hope to do.
For further reading, focusing on the victims, their life and times, may we also recommend The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Murder That Changed the World by Greg King and Sue Woolmans.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Trigger: The Hunt for Gavrilo Princip - the Assassin who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher at Amazon.com.
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