Young Bosnia and the Shots at Sarajevo

The assassination that triggered World War I grew out of South Slav nationalism. Austria-Hungary had occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878 and annexed it in 1908, angering Serbia and many Bosnian Serbs who hoped to unite with Serbia or to form a wider South Slav (Yugoslav) state.

Young Bosnia was a loose movement of mostly young students, Serb, Croat and Bosnian Muslim, who embraced revolutionary nationalism and admired political assassination as a tool. Some of its members received weapons and help crossing the border from the Black Hand, a secret society of Serbian officers led by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, known as Apis.

On 28 June 1914, during a visit to Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, and his wife Sophie were shot by Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb. Historians debate how much the Serbian government knew. The assassination shows how a small nationalist group, acting within a tense international system, could set off a chain of events far beyond its intentions.