The little Balkan Kingdom of Serbia was a principality under the
suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire for half a century after its
resurrection during the Napoleonic Wars. The Serbs engaged in a war
with Turkey in 1876, which led to the intervention of Russia, and to
the recognition by the powers of the independence of Serbia in the
Treaty of Berlin. The limits of the new kingdom were so drawn as to
exclude the northern part of Macedonia, which was left to Turkey, and
Bosnia and Herzegovina, the administration of which was entrusted to
Austria-Hungary, without detaching these territories from the Ottoman
Empire. The little principality of Montenegro, whose inhabitants had
successfully resisted the Turks for centuries, was also declared
independent by the Treaty of Berlin. In 1908, after the Young Turk
revolution, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the
Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, little Serbia succeeded in nearly
doubling her territory and adding 50 per cent to her population at the
expense of Turkey and Bulgaria. An important part of the new territory,
however, contained a non-Serbian majority.
Of the Serbian-speaking peoples, known as the Jugoslavs, considerably
more than half were in the Hapsburg dominions at the outbreak of the
World War. The kingdom of Serbia had a population of 3,000,000 before
the Balkan Wars, which added 1,500,000 more, of whom 1,000,000 by the
most liberal estimate could be considered Serbs. In round numbers the
Jugoslavs in 1918 were distributed as follows:
Old Serbia 3,000,000
New Serbia 1,000,000
Montenegro 500,000
Croatia and Slavonia 2,600,000
Bosnia and Herzegovina 2,000,000
Dalmatia 1,000,000
Slovenia 1,500,000
Istria 400,000
Banat of Temesvár 250,000
Other parts of Hungary 1,000,000
We must have these figures before us to realize the tremendous
difficulties confronting the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes, created by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon. Greater
Rumania was formed by adding between four and five million liberated
Rumanians and an equal number of alien peoples to an independent
kingdom already containing more than seven million Rumanians. Greater
Serbia was formed by adding 8,000,000 liberated Jugoslavs and the
half-million already independent Montenegrins to 4,000,000 independent
Serbians. The figures alone demonstrate the difference in the problem.
If the Serbians were to maintain their supremacy over the redeemed
brethren, it was going to be a case of the tail trying to wag the dog.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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