Who bore responsibility for the start of World War I?

Increased Serbian Nationalism led to the incitement of conflict

Question: Who bore responsibility for the start of World War I?
Position‹3 of 4›: The Black Hand Serbian Society and the Bosnians are responsible
Argument: Increased Serbian Nationalism led to the incitement of conflict

As a region consistently occupied by outer forces, Serbian nationalism in the Balkans peaked in the days before World War 1, and the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which ultimately resulted in the spiraling conflict was World War 1.

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the immediate cause of the war lies in the rise of Serbian nationalism and in the organisations that carried it into action. On this view the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip was not an isolated act of violence but the culmination of a nationalist project that had been gathering force for years, and responsibility for the conflict that followed rests with those who pursued that project. The grievance, on this account, was structural. Austrian annexation of Bosnia brought Serb populations under the rule of a neighbouring empire rather than a Serbian state, while Serbia's own strong emergence following the Balkan Wars turned it from a minor neighbour into a confident regional power. The two developments worked together: a state whose national programme implied the detachment of Austro-Hungarian territory was growing stronger at the very moment its claims became hardest to ignore. Austria-Hungary could not concede those claims without encouraging similar demands elsewhere within its borders, and so came increasingly to regard Serbia as a rising threat well before any shot was fired. That nationalism did not remain a matter of sentiment. Proponents point to consistent rebellion by Serbs against Austria, undertaken to bolster a distinct national identity, and to the growth of nationalist societies such as 'Unification or Death', better known as the Black Hand, which existed to press initiatives for separation from Austria. Groups of this kind converted diffuse national feeling into organised and deniable action, and the volatility of the region rose accordingly. The assassination was the point at which that machinery produced an act no empire could absorb quietly. Responsibility, on this reading, belongs to the Black Hand and to the Bosnian Serbs who set the sequence in motion.

Premises

[P1]Serbian nationalism directly produced the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip, with Serbia already seen as a rising threat to Austria-Hungary after the Balkan Wars. [P2] Persistent Serb rebellion against Austria and the growth of nationalist groups like the Black Hand ('Unification or Death') further drove the push to separate from Austria and incited conflict. [C] Therefore, the Black Hand and Bosnian Serbs, through rising nationalism, bore responsibility for starting World War I.

Counter-arguments

Serbian nationalism is not responsible for World War 1. Austrian and German response to Serbian nationalism resulted in the conflict arising and sucking other world powers into the conflict due to allyships.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The assassination was the occasion of the war rather than its cause, and the premise slides between the two. Being perceived as a rising threat is a fact about Austro-Hungarian policy as much as about Serbia, and treating a perception as an incitement lets the responding power's own decisions drop out of the account. [Rejecting P2] Nationalist agitation and irredentist societies were common across the Balkans and across Europe, so the premise identifies a general condition and assigns particular responsibility to one instance of it. It also stops short of the steps that turned a local crime into a continental war — the ultimatum, the rejection of a near-complete acceptance, the declaration of war, and the alliance commitments and mobilisation timetables the counter points to.