Outbreak of World War 1 brought to life online
30 Jun 2014 04:09 PM
Foreign Office brings
World War 1 diplomacy to life online with podcasts and live
tweets.
To mark 100 years to the day
that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, on 28 June the
FCO will bring the events leading up to the outbreak of war vividly to life
online.
Known as the ‘July
crisis’, the assassination sparked a diplomatic frenzy and, ultimately,
led to the outbreak of World War 1 on 28 July 1914, with Great Britain joining
the war on 4 August.
The FCO will be live tweeting the events
leading up to the outbreak of war. Twitter accounts in the names of eleven
key political and diplomatic figures from the time, including Sir Edward Grey,
Foreign Secretary, and key Ambassadors, are now live. They will be tweeting
their own words, from telegrams, despatches and letters, to give an
unprecedented insight into how events unfolded.
The Foreign Secretary will
launch a series of
eight podcasts in which he, and senior British Ambassadors from key
countries involved in the war, interviewed by Richard Burge, Chief Executive of
Wilton Park, will set the scene for what was unfolding in Europe and describe
what it would have been like for their predecessors during that period. They
will reflect on the pressures and challenges of the time, and the factors that
each would have had to weigh up when reporting and providing
advice.
As Sir Edward Grey, Foreign
Secretary, said in the House of Commons on the eve of Great Britain’s
entry into World War 1:
It is clear that the peace of
Europe cannot be preserved. […] We are in the presence of a European
conflagration. […] I believe, when the country realises what is at
stake, what the real issues are, the magnitude of the impending dangers in the
west of Europe, which I have endeavoured to describe to the House, we shall be
supported throughout, not only by the House of Commons, but by the
determination, the resolution, the courage, and the endurance of the whole
country.
Foreign Office Minister Mr
Simmonds said:
I will personally be following
the story as it unfolds online, and hope most especially that schools across
the UK get involved. It is a project which has the potential to connect with
people throughout our communities and encourage thoughtful debate about one of
the determining events of world history.
Further
information
The tweets will be drawn from a
volume of British diplomatic documents, first published in 1926, which captured
the unravelling of events during the July crisis: ‘British Documents on
the Origins of War, 1898-1914 Volume XI: The Outbreak of War, 28 June-4 August
1914’.
@WW1FO will
retweet all the tweets and is the account which should be followed for the
whole picture. For verification purposes the authorised individual accounts
are:
- J.F. Jones, British Vice Consul,
Sarajevo @WW1Jones
- W.G. Max Muller, British Consul
General Budapest @WW1MaxMuller
- Dayrell Crackanthorpe, British
Chargé d’Affaires, Belgrade@WW1Crackanthorp
- Sir Francis Villiers, British
Minister, Brussels @WW1Villiers
- Sir Maurice de Bunsen, British
Ambassador, Vienna @WW1deBunsen
- Sir George Buchanan, British
Ambassador, St. Petersburg@WW1Buchanan
- Sir Edward Goschen, British
Ambassador, Berlin @WW1Goschen
- Sir Eyre Crowe, Assistant Under
Secretary of State, Foreign Office@WW1Crowe
- Sir Arthur Nicolson, British
Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign Office@WW1Nicolson
- Sir Edward Grey, British
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs@WW1Grey
- Sir Francis Bertie, British
Ambassador, Paris @WW1Bertie
The podcasts will be available
at https://audioboo.fm/playlists/1256851-fco-first-world-war-podcasts.
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Read more: ‘The lamps are going out…’: tweeting the July
Crisis
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Mark Simmonds on twitter@MarkJSimmonds
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