Few questions in history have generated more debate than this one. In English alone, it has been estimated that there are some 30,000 works on the origins of the First World War – and historians still cannot agree.

Was it inevitable? Was it accidental? Was it wanted?

This talk explores one of the most complex and ultimately unanswerable questions in history, and asks what we can learn from the fact that it remains so stubbornly unanswerable.

What the talk covers:

• The case for peace – why many Europeans in 1914 genuinely believed that a major war was unlikely, even impossible. The economic interdependence of nations, the growing peace movement, the rise of international arbitration, and Norman Angell's hugely influential argument that modern war simply couldn't pay
• The forces pulling towards war – nationalism, militarism, social Darwinism, and the widespread belief that struggle between nations was not just inevitable but healthy and necessary
• The arms race and the alliance systems – how Europe divided itself into two armed camps, and why the military plans of every major power made a crisis dramatically harder to control
• The decade of crises – Morocco, Bosnia, the Balkan Wars. Europe came to the brink repeatedly and stepped back each time – and why that pattern of near-misses may itself have made war more likely in 1914
• The people at the centre – the emperors, ministers and generals whose individual decisions in the summer of 1914 turned a regional Balkan crisis into a world war
• The moments it could have gone differently – at so many points between 1905 and 1914, different decisions could have produced different outcomes. The contingency of the war is one of its most poignant and fascinating aspects

The talk concludes with an open Q&A.

No prior knowledge is assumed. Suitable for general audiences, historical societies, sixth forms, A-level and GCSE students. It can also be adapted for KS3 school audiences.