Serbia Montenegro And The Serbo-croats In Austria-hungary 1903-8
It was inevitable that, after the sensation which such an event could not
fail to cause in twentieth-century Europe, it should take the country
where it occurred some time to live down the results. Other powers,
especially those of western Europe, looked coldly on Serbia and were in no
hurry to resume diplomatic intercourse, still less to offer diplomatic
support. The question of the punishment and exile of the conspirators was
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almost impossible of solution, and only time was able to obliterate the
resentment caused by the whole affair. In Serbia itself a great change
took place. The new sovereign, though he laboured under the greatest
possible disadvantages, by his irreproachable behaviour, modesty, tact,
and strictly constitutional rule, was able to withdraw the court of
Belgrade from the trying limelight to which it had become used. The public
finances began to be reorganized, commerce began to improve in spite of
endless tariff wars with Austria-Hungary, and attention was again diverted
from home to foreign politics. With the gradual spread of education and
increase of communication, and the growth of national self-consciousness
amongst the Serbs and Croats of Austria-Hungary and the two independent
Serb states, a new movement for the closer intercourse amongst the various
branches of the Serb race for south Slav unity, as it was called,
gradually began to take shape. At the same time a more definitely
political agitation started in Serbia, largely inspired by the humiliating
position of economic bondage in which the country was held by
Austria-Hungary, and was roughly justified by the indisputable argument:
'Serbia must expand or die.' Expansion at the cost of Turkey seemed
hopeless, because even the acquisition of Macedonia would give Serbia a
large alien population and no maritime outlet. It was towards the Adriatic
that the gaze of the Serbs was directed, to the coast which was ethnically
Serbian and could legitimately be considered a heritage of the Serb race.
Macedonia was also taken into account, schools and armed bands began their
educative activity amongst those inhabitants of the unhappy province who
were Serb, or who lived in places where Serbs had lived, or who with
sufficient persuasion could be induced to call themselves Serb; but the
principal stream of propaganda was directed westwards into Bosnia and
Hercegovina. The antagonism between Christian and Mohammedan, Serb and
Turk, was never so bitter as between Christian and Christian, Serb and
German or Magyar, and the Serbs were clever enough to see that Bosnia and
Hercegovina, from every point of view, was to them worth ten Macedonias,
though it would he ten times more difficult to obtain. Bosnia and
Hercegovina, though containing three confessions, were ethnically
homogeneous, and it was realised that these two provinces were as
important to Serbia and Montenegro as the rest of Italy had been to
Piedmont.
It must at this time be recalled in what an extraordinary way the Serb
race had fortuitously been broken up into a number of quite arbitrary
political divisions. Dalmatia (three per cent. of the population of which
is Italian and all the rest Serb or Croat, preponderatingly Serb and
Orthodox in the south and preponderating Croat or Roman Catholic in the
north) was a province of Austria and sent deputies to the Reichsrath at
Vienna; at the same time it was territorially isolated from Austria and
had no direct railway connexion with any country except a narrow-gauge
line into Bosnia. Croatia and Slavonia, preponderatingly Roman Catholic,
were lands of the Hungarian crown, and though they had a provincial
pseudo-autonomous diet at Agram, the capital of Croatia, they sent
deputies to the Hungarian parliament at Budapest. Thus what had in the
Middle Ages been known as the triune kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and
Dalmatia, with a total Serbo-Croat population of three millions, was
divided between Austria and Hungary.
Further, there were about 700,000 Serbs and Croats in the south of Hungary
proper, cast and north of the Danube, known as the Banat and Ba[)c]ka, a
district which during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was
the hearth and home of Serb literature and education, but which later
waned in importance in that respect as independent Serbia grew. These
Serbs were directly dependent on Budapest, the only autonomy they
possessed being ecclesiastical. Bosnia and Hercegovina, still nominally
Turkish provinces, with a Slav population of nearly two million (850,000
Orthodox Serbs, 650,000 Mohammedan Serbs, and the rest Roman Catholics),
were to all intents and purposes already imperial lands of
Austria-Hungary, with a purely military and police administration; the
shadow of Turkish sovereignty provided sufficient excuse to the de facto
owners of these provinces not to grant the inhabitants parliamentary
government or even genuine provincial autonomy. The Serbs in Serbia
numbered nearly three millions, those in Montenegro about a quarter of a
million; while in Turkey, in what was known as Old Serbia (the sandjak
of Novi-Pasar between Serbia and Montenegro and the vilayet of Korovo),
and in parts of northern and central Macedonia, there were scattered
another half million. These last, of course, had no voice at all in the
management of their own affairs. Those in Montenegro lived under the
patriarchal autocracy of Prince Nicholas, who had succeeded his uncle,
Prince Danilo, in 1860, at the age of nineteen. Though no other form of
government could have turned the barren rocks of Montenegro into fertile
pastures, many of the people grew restless with the restricted
possibilities of a career which the mountain principality offered them,
and in latter years migrated in large numbers to North and South America,
whither emigration from Dalmatia and Croatia too had already readied
serious proportions. The Serbs in Serbia were the only ones who could
claim to be free, but even this was a freedom entirely dependent on the
economic malevolence of Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Cut up in this way by
the hand of fate into such a number of helpless fragments, it was
inevitable that the Serb race, if it possessed any vitality, should
attempt, at any cost, to piece some if not all of them together and form
an ethnical whole which, economically and politically, should be master of
its own destinies. It was equally inevitable that the policy of
Austria-Hungary should be to anticipate or definitively render any such
attempt impossible, because obviously the formation of a large south Slav
state, by cutting off Austria from the Adriatic and eliminating from the
dual monarchy all the valuable territory between the Dalmatian coast and
the river Drave, would seriously jeopardize its position as a great power;
it must be remembered, also, that Austria-Hungary, far from decomposing,
as it was commonly assumed was happening, had been enormously increasing
in vitality ever since 1878.
The means adopted by the governments of Vienna and Budapest to nullify the
plans of Serbian expansion were generally to maintain the political
emiettement of the Serb race, the isolation of one group from another,
the virtually enforced emigration of Slavs on a large scale and their
substitution by German colonists, and the encouragement of rivalry and
discord between Roman Catholic Croat and Orthodox Serb. No railways were
allowed to be built in Dalmatia, communication between Agram and any other
parts of the monarchy except Fiume or Budapest was rendered almost
impossible; Bosnia and Hercegovina were shut off into a watertight
compartment and endowed with a national flag composed of the inspiring
colours of brown and buff; it was made impossible for Serbs to visit
Montenegro or for Montenegrins to visit Serbia except via Fiume, entailing
the bestowal of several pounds on the Hungarian state steamers and
railways. As for the sandjak of Novi-Pazar, it was turned into a
veritable Tibet, and a legend was spread abroad that if any foreigner
ventured there he would be surely murdered by Turkish brigands; meanwhile
it was full of Viennese ladies giving picnics and dances and tennis
parties to the wasp-waisted officers of the Austrian garrison. Bosnia and
Hercegovina, on the other hand, became the model touring provinces of
Austria-Hungary, and no one can deny that their great natural beauties
were made more enjoyable by the construction of railways, roads, and
hotels. At the same time this was not a work of pure philanthropy, and the
emigration statistics are a good indication of the joy with which the
Bosnian peasants paid for an annual influx of admiring tourists. In spite
of all these disadvantages, however, the Serbo-Croat provinces of
Austria-Hungary could not be deprived of all the benefits of living within
a large and prosperous customs union, while being made to pay for all the
expenses of the elaborate imperial administration and services; and the
spread of education, even under the Hapsburg regime, began to tell in
time. Simultaneously with the agitation which emanated from Serbia and was
directed towards the advancement, by means of schools and religious and
literary propaganda, of Serbian influence in Bosnia and Hercegovina, a
movement started in Dalmatia and Croatia for the closer union of those two
provinces. About 1906 the two movements found expression in the formation
of the Serbo-Croat or Croato-Serb coalition party, composed of those
elements in Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia which favoured closer union
between the various groups of the Serb race scattered throughout those
provinces, as well as in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and
Turkey. Owing to the circumstances already described, it was impossible
for the representatives of the Serb race to voice their aspirations
unanimously in any one parliament, and the work of the coalition, except
in the provincial diet at Agram, consisted mostly of conducting press
campaigns and spreading propaganda throughout those provinces. The most
important thing about the coalition was that it buried religious
antagonism and put unity of race above difference of belief. In this way
it came into conflict with the ultramontane Croat party at Agram, which
wished to incorporate Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Dalmatia with Croatia and
create a third purely Roman Catholic Slav state in the empire, on a level
with Austria and Hungary; also to a lesser extent with the intransigent
Serbs of Belgrade, who affected to ignore Croatia and Roman Catholicism,
and only dreamed of bringing Bosnia, Hercegovina, and as much of Dalmatia
as they could under their own rule; and finally it had to overcome the
hostility of the Mohammedan Serbs of Bosnia, who disliked all Christians
equally, could only with the greatest difficulty be persuaded that they
were really Serbs and not Turks, and honestly cared for nothing but Islam
and Turkish coffee, thus considerably facilitating the germanization of
the two provinces. The coalition was wisely inclined to postpone the
programme of final political settlement, and aimed immediately at the
removal of the material and moral barriers placed between the Serbs of the
various provinces of Austria-Hungary, including Bosnia and Hercegovina. If
they had been sure of adequate guarantees they would probably have agreed
to the inclusion of all Serbs and Croats within the monarchy, because
the constitution of all Serbs and Croats in an independent state (not
necessarily a kingdom) without it implied the then problematic
contingencies of a European war and the disruption of Austria-Hungary.
Considering the manifold handicaps under which Serbia and its cause
suffered, the considerable success which its propaganda met with in Bosnia
and Hercegovina and other parts of Austria-Hungary, from 1903 till 1908,
is a proof, not only of the energy and earnestness of its promoters and of
the vitality of the Serbian people, but also, if any were needed, of the
extreme unpopularity of the Hapsburg regime in the southern Slav provinces
of the dual monarchy. Serbia had no help from outside. Russia was
entangled in the Far East and then in the revolution, and though the new
dynasty was approved in St. Petersburg Russian sympathy with Serbia was at
that time only lukewarm. Relations with Austria-Hungary were of course
always strained; only one single line of railway connected the two
countries, and as Austria-Hungary was the only profitable market, for
geographical reasons, for Serbian products, Serbia could be brought to its
knees at any moment by the commercial closing of the frontier. It was a
symbol of the economic vassalage of Serbia and Montenegro that the postage
between both of these countries and any part of Austria-Hungary was ten
centimes, that for letters between Serbia and Montenegro, which had to
make the long detour through Austrian territory, was twenty-five. But
though this opened the Serbian markets to Austria, it also incidentally
opened Bosnia, when the censor could be circumvented to propaganda by
pamphlet and correspondence. Intercourse with western Europe was
restricted by distance, and, owing to dynastic reasons, diplomatic
relations were altogether suspended for several years between this country
and Serbia. The Balkan States Exhibition held in London during the summer
of 1907, to encourage trade between Great Britain and the Balkans, was
hardly a success. Italy and Serbia had nothing in common. With Montenegro
even, despite the fact that King Peter was Prince Nicholas's son-in-law,
relations were bad. It was felt in Serbia that Prince Nicholas's
autocratic rule acted as a brake on the legitimate development of the
national consciousness, and Montenegrin students who visited Belgrade
returned to their homes full of wild and unsuitable ideas. However, the
revolutionary tendencies, which some of them undoubtedly developed, had no
fatal results to the reigning dynasty, which continued as before to enjoy
the special favour as well as the financial support of the Russian court,
and which, looked on throughout Europe as a picturesque and harmless
institution, it would have been dangerous, as it was quite unnecessary, to
touch.
Serbia was thus left entirely to its own resources in the great
propagandist activity which filled the years 1903 to 1908. The financial
means at its disposal were exiguous in the extreme, especially when
compared with the enormous sums lavished annually by the Austrian and
German governments on their secret political services, so that the efforts
of its agents cannot be ascribed to cupidity. Also it must be admitted
that the kingdom of Serbia, with its capital Belgrade, thanks to the
internal chaos and dynastic scandals of the previous forty years,
resulting in superficial dilapidation, intellectual stagnation, and
general poverty, lacked the material as well as the moral glamour which a
successful Piedmont should possess. Nobody could deny, for instance, that,
with all its natural advantages, Belgrade was at first sight not nearly
such an attractive centre as Agram or Sarajevo, or that the qualities
which the Serbs of Serbia had displayed since their emancipation were
hardly such as to command the unstinted confidence and admiration of their
as yet unredeemed compatriots. Nevertheless the Serbian propaganda in
favour of what was really a Pan-Serb movement met with great success,
especially in Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Old Serbia (northern Macedonia).
Simultaneously the work of the Serbo-Croat coalition in Dalmatia, Croatia,
and Slavonia made considerable progress in spite of clerical opposition
and desperate conflicts with the government at Budapest. Both the one
movement and the other naturally evoked great alarm and emotion in the
Austrian and Hungarian capitals, as they were seen to be genuinely popular
and also potentially, if not actually, separatist in character. In October
1906 Baron Achrenthal succeeded Count Goluchowski as Minister for Foreign
Affairs at Vienna, and very soon initiated a more vigorous and
incidentally anti-Slav foreign policy than his predecessor. What was now
looked on as the Serbian danger had in the eyes of Vienna assumed such
proportions that the time for decisive action was considered to have
arrived. In January 1908 Baron Achrenthal announced his scheme for a
continuation of the Bosnian railway system through the sandjak of
Novi-Pazar to link up with the Turkish railways in Macedonia. This plan
was particularly foolish in conception, because, the Bosnian railways
being narrow and the Turkish normal gauge, the line would have been
useless for international commerce, while the engineering difficulties
were such that the cost of construction would have been prohibitive. But
the possibilities which this move indicated, the palpable evidence it
contained of the notorious Drang nach Osten of the Germanic powers
towards Salonika and Constantinople, were quite sufficient to fill the
ministries of Europe, and especially those of Russia, with extreme
uneasiness. The immediate result of this was that concerted action between
Russia and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans was thenceforward impossible,
and the Muerzsteg programme, after a short and precarious existence, came
to an untimely end (cf. chap. 12). Serbia and Montenegro, face to face
with this new danger which threatened permanently to separate their
territories, were beside themselves, and immediately parried with the
project, hardly more practicable in view of their international credit, of
a Danube-Adriatic railway. In July 1908 the nerves of Europe were still
further tried by the Young Turk revolution in Constantinople. The
imminence of this movement was known to Austro-German diplomacy, and
doubtless this knowledge, as well as the fear of the Pan-Serb movement,
prompted the Austrian foreign minister to take steps towards the
definitive regularization of his country's position in Bosnia and
Hercegovina--provinces whose suzerain was still the Sultan of Turkey. The
effect of the Young Turk coup in the Balkan States was as any one who
visited them at that time can testify, both pathetic and intensely
humorous. The permanent chaos of the Turkish empire, and the process of
watching for years its gradual but inevitable decomposition, had created
amongst the neighbouring states an atmosphere of excited anticipation,
which was really the breath of their nostrils; it had stimulated them
during the endless Macedonian insurrections to commit the most awful
outrages against each other's nationals and then lay the blame at the door
of the unfortunate Turk; and if the Turk should really regenerate himself,
not only would their occupation be gone, but the heavily-discounted
legacies would assuredly elude their grasp. At the same time, since the
whole policy of exhibiting and exploiting the horrors of Macedonia, and of
organizing guerilla bands and provoking intervention, was based on the
refusal of the Turks to grant reforms, as soon as the ultra-liberal
constitution of Midhat Pasha, which, had been withdrawn after a brief and
unsuccessful run in 1876, was restored by the Young Turks, there was
nothing left for the Balkan States to do but to applaud with as much
enthusiasm as they could simulate. The emotions experienced by the Balkan
peoples during that summer, beneath the smiles which they had to assume,
were exhausting even for southern temperaments. Bulgaria, with its
characteristic matter-of-factness, was the first to adjust itself to the
new and trying situation in which the only certainty was that something
decisive had got to be done with all possible celerity. On October 5,
1908, Prince Ferdinand sprang on an astonished continent the news that he
renounced the Turkish suzerainty (ever since 1878 the Bulgarian
principality had been a tributary and vassal state of the Ottoman Empire,
and therefore, with all its astonishingly rapid progress and material
prosperity, a subject for commiseration in the kingdoms of Serbia and
Greece) and proclaimed the independence of Bulgaria, with himself, as Tsar
of the Bulgars, at its head. Europe had not recovered from this shock,
still less Belgrade and Athens, when, two days later. Baron Aehrenthal
announced the formal annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by the Emperor
Francis Joseph. Whereas most people had virtually forgotten the Treaty of
Berlin and had come to look on Austria as just as permanently settled in
these two provinces as was Great Britain in Egypt and Cyprus, yet the
formal breach of the stipulations of that treaty on Austria's part, by
annexing the provinces without notice to or consultation with the other
parties concerned, gave the excuse for a somewhat ridiculous hue and cry
on the part of the other powers, and especially on that of Russia. The
effect of these blows from right and left on Serbia was literally
paralysing. When Belgrade recovered the use of its organs, it started to
scream for war and revenue, and initiated an international crisis from
which Europe did not recover till the following year. Meanwhile, almost
unobserved by the peoples of Serbia and Montenegro, Austria had, in order
to reconcile the Turks with the loss of their provinces, good-naturedly,
but from the Austrian point of view short-sightedly, withdrawn its
garrisons from the sandjak of Novi-Pazar, thus evacuating the
long-coveted corridor which was the one thing above all else necessary to
Serbia and Montenegro for the realization of their plans.