Photographs from the start of the First World War in El Mercurio newspaper of Santiago, Chile: From the «tragedy of Sarajevo» to the outbreak of «the european conflict»

Abstract

Traditional historiography has valued little the impacts of the Great War on Ibero-American Societies. Since the years before the commemoration of the centenary of the beginning of the war, this position has begun to be questioned by some authors and research has been appearing on the subject in different countries of Ibero-America. In the Chilean case, interest in the subject has been scarce and has been limited in most cases to holding seminars at several universities from which few publications have been seen. Our hypothesis is that the Chilean society lived with interest and concern the events developed in Europe after the tragedy of Sarajevo. The effects were intense and varied. One of them was in the informational sphere. In general, the news from abroad of the moment that came to Chilean newspapers were controlled and directed by the agencies of European news and were received through telegraphic cables of European and North American companies. This circumstance made the independent information shortage and that Chilean public opinion had a certain vision of the facts developed in Europe in 1914. For this study we analyzed the images published in El Mercurio of Santiago de Chile concerning the moments prior to the beginning of the First World War. The newspaper gave a great coverage and space to the facts were studied: the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Austro-Serbia war and the beginning of the First World War. It also receives a clear alignment with regard to the competing blocs transmitting a series of ideas and values of each one of them.