Vladimir Dedijer

Because of the international conditions under which it occurred and the region where it took place, no other political murder in modern history has had such momentous consequences as the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand von Österreich-Este, the heir apparent to the throne of the Hapsburg Empire, at the hands of Gavrilo Princip, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. In his native Bosnia, whose tribal society had been disintegrating under the impact of modern colonialism, Princip fired his pistol not only at an Archduke but also at the façade of a quiet, apparently stable world.