1914 Revisited: Evidence vs. Sophistry

Abstract

The response by Danilo Šarenac to a critical review of his own and two of his colleagues’ reflections on the 1914 Sarajevo assassination is subjected to close analysis of the specific details emphasized in that response. 

Summary: Danilo Šarenac has responded to a recent review essay of Sarajevo 1914: Sparking the First World War, edited by Mark Cornwall. This essay, written by John Zametica, focuses on three contributions to that volume, by Šarenac himself and two other authors. Šarenac’s response, according to Zametica, is hugely problematic intellectually and morally. While criticising him for not respecting “the culture of dialogue” – the respondent maintains – Šarenac evades any meaningful academic dialogue by ignoring the key critical observations made by Zametica. He asserts that the trivial issues, which Šarenac actually raises instead, stand exposed in the ensuing text as grotesque deviations. In levelling the charge of nationalist bias against the reviewer, Zametica concludes, Šarenac uses subterfuge in order to sound politically correct and hide his bigoted intolerance.