BERLIN — Scholars from the United States and 25 other countries gathered in Sarajevo last week to mark the centennial of World War I.

Titled “The Great War: Regional Approaches and Global Contexts,” the conference was meant to expand and elevate the historical discussion about the war and its outbreak 100 years ago. But rather than a respectful salutation of Europe’s triumph over parochial nationalism, the conference set off an ethnic firestorm in the Balkans that reached the highest political circles. The controversy speaks to how the scholarly interpretation of a crucial turning point like the Great War remains disputed and entangled in present-day politics.

The conference, which ran June 19-21 in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, got off to an awkward start when disagreement flared between its original organizers, the University of Sarajevo’s Institute for History, and Sorbonne historians associated with the French Embassy in Sarajevo.

The French insisted that one of the conference’s purposes be to promote reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the scene of bloody ethnic wars during the 1990s. They wanted the meeting to include intellectuals from the country’s three ethnic groups — Serbs, Croats and Muslims — to celebrate the centennial. According to Slobodan Soja, a Bosnian Serb and former ambassador to France, who contributed to the French proposal, the purpose of the conference was “to start a dialogue between all historians” in the country on World War I.