Marvin Fried's extensively researched history of Austria-Hungary's wartime diplomatic agenda in the Balkans fits well into two recent scholarly “turns” in late Habsburg and World War I history. First, it bears kinship to the group of studies that are challenging the narrative of the empire's accelerating decline in the modern period; this includes the work of scholars such as Pieter Judson, Tara Zahra, John Deak, Alexander Watson, Mark Cornwall, and Jonathan Gumz (see “An Imperial Dynamo? Forum on Pieter Judson's The Habsburg Empire: A New History,” CEH 50, no. 2 [2017]: 236–59). Those works have disputed the traditional notion that Austria-Hungary's fragmentation was inevitable in the context of a Europe whose states were increasingly organized around the principle of the nation-state. Such approaches contrast the supposedly anachronistic and weakening Habsburg empire with the robust, newly-unified German state, the senior partner in the Central Power wartime alliance.

In the context of World War I, the military failures and, of course, the ultimate collapse of Austria-Hungary have led many historians of the war, until recently, to deny the empire historical agency. But agency it had, Fried claims, and war aims, too—changeable to be sure, but nevertheless present and focused on the Balkans. Fried's concentration on the empire's concerns in southeastern Europe points to the second historiographical “turn” to which his book tacks: the primacy of the Balkan region in the course of the war. It is thus reminiscent of Christopher Clark's major study of the origins of World War I, The Sleepwalkers (2014). For Fried (and for Clark), Austria-Hungary and the Balkans were not merely incidental to the war: they were at its very center. Following from prewar policies of expansion and control in the Balkans, Austria-Hungary's wartime policies remain fixated on the region, especially on dealing decisively with the threat of Serbia. It was these “Balkan aspirations” (a phrase used by Fried throughout the text) that kept the empire in the war, its leaders abjuring the possibility of separate or compromise peace arrangements. This also eventually led to its demise.

The study is based largely on what could be described as a close reading of the most important diplomatic papers of Austria-Hungary's war effort. Fried's careful analysis of these documents reveals the disputes among the various organs of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy, as well as their spheres of interest and power—especially the maintenance of civilian control over the Austrian Foreign Ministry (Ministerium des Äussern, or MdÄ), which largely remained in control of Balkan policy during the war. It seems that, in the Austro-Hungarian case, there was an intent and single-minded focus above all on foreign-policy aims—just as there was in Germany. Yet, Austria-Hungary never went to the same lengths as German in this respect. Fried's treatment of a winter 1915 debate about Serbia's future—one of many throughout the course of the war—is notable in this respect: The Austro-Hungarian chief of staff Conrad von Hötzendorf pushed for outright removal of Serbia from the map of Europe, a punitive move aimed at eliminating a rival and making its fate serve as an example for other potentially nettlesome Balkan states. His hawkish ambitions were thwarted, however, by more moderate voices in the Foreign Ministry.

As already noted, Fried's book is especially strong in its use of primary sources, which are almost exclusively diplomatic papers in several languages from the relevant archives in Vienna and Budapest. It is this detailed reading that has allowed him to reconstruct an extremely exacting and precise chronology of the Habsburgs’ war in the Balkans. This will become an invaluable reference for future historians of the war. Fried introduces some key secondary literature in the introduction, but then relies almost exclusively on source-based analysis to make his arguments. A book that speaks directly to the sources and that is thus not bogged down in existing historiographical arguments is refreshing. After all, Austria-Hungary remains one of the least investigated of the belligerent states in the literature about World War I. Important works are in the pipeline (such as the two-volume Cambridge History of the Habsburg monarchy, whose second volume, edited by Mark Cornwall and Pieter Judson, will appear 1918), and they would do well to take note of Fried's challenging propositions and the Balkan-centric nature of Austro-Hungarian war aims.

Fried's book is a first-class intervention into the resurgent field of diplomatic history. The author has approached his sources with imagination and intelligence, and, in so doing, has moved the discussion beyond the interpretive impasse created by the long-held notions that Austria-Hungary could no longer be taken seriously as a political and military actor on the eve of World War I, and that its behavior during the war itself was entirely subservient to German wishes. Greater engagement with extant scholarship might have refined some of the broader conclusions, without fully negating them. Still, the book itself can hardly be faulted for asserting its case boldly and consistently throughout—and, for that reason, it will command the attention of anyone wishing to address the dilemmas faced by Austria-Hungary in World War I, as well as the shaping of the Balkan region in the twentieth century.