In just a few months the Balkan strategic landscape had been totally ... These efforts paid off on January 16, 1914, when a “Francophile” Romanian politician, Ion Bratianu, came to power ...

The Balkan Wars (1912-1913) proved that the Megali Idea—the nationalist concept and goal to expand the Greek state to include all ethnic Greeks and historically Greek territories—was a tangible dream.

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand ... of little consequence and was dismissed as just another shooting in the Balkans. Yet within a matter weeks, the First World War had begun.