The Falcon and the Eagle

John D. Treadway is an assistant professor of history at the University of Richmond.

"Focusing upon the relations between Vienna and Cetinje in the years of the Annexation Crises, the eruption of the Albanian problem, the Balkan Wars, and the catastrophic summer of 1914, Mr. Treadway illuminates some of the inner mechanisms of the struggle between powers great and small to fill the vacuum created by the decline of Ottoman power in Europe. He has made sound use of Austrian and Yugoslav archives as well as of an impressive array of published documents and secondary sources. His analysis of the motivations behind Austro-Hungarian and Montenegrin acts is judicious and convincing. He has made a significant contribution in historiography in dispelling two myths: (1) that Montenegro was the servile handmaiden of Serbia and Russia, and (2) that Germany was constantly trying to goad Austria-Hungary into war. Mr. Treadway shatters these untenable views, and his book is a solid contribution to our knowledge of European diplomacy in the last years before the Great War."