Roy Bridge obituary

Roy Bridge showed that the Habsburgs’ decision in 1914 to risk a European war by attacking Serbia came from a desperate desire to survive in a fast-changing Europe Photograph: from family/none

My mentor and friend Roy Bridge, who has died aged 85, was the foremost authority on the foreign policy of the late Habsburg empire.

He became a leading expert with his first book, From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary 1866-1914 (1972), later expanded as The Habsburg Monarchy Among the Great Powers, 1815-1918.