The Banat question with Rumania was compromised by a Solomonic
division of the disputed territory. As we have seen elsewhere,
Jugoslav ambitions in regard to Albania were thwarted by the Albanians
themselves, whose success in defending their independence was followed
by the intervention of the League of Nations. The Montenegrin revolt
was suppressed. Serbian claims at the expense of Bulgaria were allowed
in the Treaty of Neuilly. The Treaty of Trianon gave the new state
generous frontiers at the expense of Hungary. The Treaty of St.-Germain
provided for a plebiscite in the Klagenfurt district of Carinthia,
which resulted in a victory for the Austrians. But the Paris Conference
left to direct negotiations between Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes the fixing of the frontier with Italy.
For eighteen months it looked as if war would break out between
Italians and Jugoslavs. But the latter were not sufficiently united
to make possible an uncompromising attitude toward the Italians. In
violation of President Wilson’s ninth point in the famous Fourteen,
the Jugoslavs finally agreed to sacrifice a large portion of the
Slovenes, to renounce their claim to Fiume, and to agree to the
incorporation of the Zara district and some of the Dalmatian islands
in Italy. This compromise, called the Treaty of Rapallo, was signed
on November 28, 1920. Like other compromise frontiers in the general
settlement after the World War, the Rapallo arrangement created an
irredentist problem more complicated and dangerous than the one it was
supposed to solve. Italy was confirmed in the possession of Istria
and secured a frontier in the hinterland of Trieste and the Isonzo
Valley more advantageous than the frontier of the 1915 secret Treaty
of London. Fiume was made a free state “in perpetuo.” Zara and its
hinterland became an Italian _enclave_ in Dalmatia. The islands of
Cherso and Lussin, with “minor islands and rocks” off the Istrian
Peninsula, went to Italy. Former Austro-Hungarian subjects were allowed
to opt for Italian nationality, without the obligation to transfer
their domicile outside Jugoslav territory. Reciprocity for Jugoslavs
residing within the new limits of the Kingdom of Italy was denied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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