A century ago this week in Sarajevo, Bosnia, a teenage Serbian nationalist assassinated Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, the empire then dominating central Europe. Though brazen and premeditated, the murder attracted scant international attention: it made no front page and elicited only token condemnation from European governments. Yet it took just over a month for this crime to start a war that would spread to six of seven continents.

This was a murky conflict that defies bumper sticker shorthand, but its immediate cause is simple: a dispute over territory.

The murder of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, capped a 10-year conflict between the Austro-Hungarian empire and its small neighbor, Serbia. Serbia had once been a powerful empire, encompassing present-day Serbia plus Kosovo, Macedonia and parts of Bosnia. But it could not withstand the invasion of the Ottoman Turks, the greatest military machine of their day.

Finally, in 1805, a weakened Ottoman empire in combat with Napoleon gave Serbs a chance to break away. A pig farmer named Karageorge led a ragtag band of fighters in an uprising, setting off a decade of attacks and reprisals that ended in the formation of a small Serbian state. Almost immediately, Serbs declared in a remarkable foreign policy blueprint, the Memorandum, their intention to reconstitute fully the empire they had lost in 1389. They had an acute sense of nationhood and destiny.

By contrast, Austria-Hungary was in decline by the mid-19th century. Once the grandest, most powerful force in Europe, its leaders now faced the task of managing a dozen national groups in a nationalist age, when every nation wanted special privileges if not outright independence. It had lost its Italian territories, its privileged position among the German states and primacy in its own backyard by 1867. The future looked uncertain.

After an 1875 war, the European powers decided that Austria-Hungary should get Bosnia. For a time, disappointed Serb leaders deferred their dreams of empire and reconciled to Austria-Hungarys occupation of Bosnia. But some Serbian army officers vehemently disagreed, manifesting their displeasure by murdering their king and throwing his corpse out the window in 1903. The new sovereign promptly reoriented Serbian policy toward conquest of Bosnia and other medieval Serbian territories.

Serb nationalists quickly went on the offensive in Bosnia. They founded a cultural organization, National Defense, that distributed propaganda asserting that Bosnia belonged to Serbia. One of the conspirators in the 1903 murder gathered the more violent-minded in an underground society known as the Black Hand, whose members swore to die to unite Serbia with its lost territories. They began derailing trains, setting off bombs and trying to kill foreign officials. Austria-Hungary fought these people as best it could, policing the border, jailing suspects and beefing up security.

In 1914, Emperor Franz Joseph decided to send his heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, to observe army maneuvers and show the flag in the region. Aides decided the visit would take place June 25-29, 1914. They apparently failed to note that June 28 was the anniversary of Serbias loss of empire in 1389, a day when all Serbs vowed to smite their oppressors.

Having learned of the upcoming visit from the newspapers, Black Hand operatives plotted to kill the archduke. Six teenagers were recruited for the job, slipped over the border and armed with revolvers and explosives from the Serbian state arsenal. Positioned along Franz Ferdinands route on June 28, one threw a bomb that bounced off the archdukes car and injured members of his entourage. Afterward, the archduke refused to cancel his afternoon schedule, opting to visit the wounded in the hospital. A wrong turn by his driver brought him alongside conspirator Gavrilo Princip, who was wandering around dejectedly after the failed attempt. Princip stepped quickly towards the car and fired his revolver, killing the archduke and his wife.

Ironically, few in Austria-Hungary mourned Franz Ferdinand. He was a disagreeable person and had insisted on marrying a commoner, scandalizing his family. But this was an outrage.

Thus Emperor Franz Joseph and his advisers decided to punish Serbia, though the Serbian government denied involvement with the Black Hand. They believed other powers would support them. Tsarist Russia, Serbias longtime protector, warned against retaliation and mobilized its army. That forced Austria-Hungarys ally, Germany, to set in motion its war plan, which called for a quick strike against France, Russias ally, before turning eastward against Russia.

En route to France, German forces crossed into Belgium, bringing in Great Britain, since 1839 the guarantor of Belgian neutrality. All these belligerents had colonies, too, so the conflict absorbed soldiers from Australia, America, Africa and Asia. Suddenly the world was in a war that would destroy four empires and kill nine million people in four years.

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Brigit Farley is a Russian and European history professor at Washington State University-Tri-Cities and lives in Pendleton.