Nations must build on Sarajevo legacy

The events sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife outside a Sarajevo delicatessen 100 years ago this morning have had a greater impact on our lives than any other event in the last century — even the one we will mark in 2016.

The industrial-scale carnage, the unprecedented social change, the redefinition of women’s roles in society, the irreversible mechanisation of war, industry and agriculture, the first great steps in electronic communication, aviation and advances in medicine were all accelerated and made everyday because of the demands of the Great War.

The seismic artillery barrages on the Western Front, when tens of thousands of field guns pummelled men and earth as if to remake that which could not be remade, continued the work of Russian revolutionaries and brought the age of traditional, political and land-based empire to a close. The European social hierarchy, presided over by an hereditary aristocracy since the Crusades, was changed for ever. Democracy usurped the ages of deference and feudalism. By murdering Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia, and from 1889 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Gavrilo Princip began a revolution which continues to this day.