11 June 1997
On 28 June 1389, the Serbian army, under the leadership of Prince Lazar, met defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, effectively eliminating any hope of the re-emergence of an independent medieval Serbian state. Although both Lazar and the Ottoman Sultan, Murad I, lost their lives at Kosovo, "From this time the Turks took over Serbia, conquered the cities and land, and broke the wings of the Serbs. The Serbs lost all their lords, remained without a leader, and became enslaved to another lord." (Emmert 120-21). Similarly, the Croats, whose kingdom had a dynastic union with the Kingdom of Hungary since 1102, were gradually incorporated into the Habsburg empire and split between two administrations. At the outset of the nineteenth century, both of the major Serbo-Croatian speaking nations found themselves under foreign domination. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, these two nations stood poised on the verge of a new era in which the Southern Slavs could stand united, free from foreign dominance. From different points of view, Southern Slavic "liberation" was to have different meanings. For some, liberation was merely a political goal, while for others liberation meant freedom from foreign cultural domination. Over the course of the Nineteenth century, the concept of liberation was to gain appeal both to the South Slavs, in particular, and, in general, to ethnic minorities in states across Europe. Despite the romantic appeal of the revolutionary rhetoric, the emergence of the Serbian and Croatian nationalist movements in the nineteenth century meant a distinct threat to the balance of power which dominated European international relations from the Conference of Vienna until the outbreak of World War I. Likewise, the rise of two assertive nationalist movements in the Balkans had significant affects upon both their neighbors and each other. The Serbian and Croatian national struggles for liberation from foreign domination attracted differing views from the Great European Powers, neighboring states, and individuals within the nations, themselves.
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars had a profound affect upon the Serbian and Croatian national revivals. For the Croats, the legacy of the brief annexation of Dalmatia by Napoleonic France planted the seed of national revival and the desire to overthrow the Habsburg overlords who returned after 1815. The French troops brought the rhetoric of revolution, fraternity, equality, and liberty, as well as improved infrastructure, secularized schools taught on the vernacular, and more liberal government. These forces converged, thus leading to an increase in Croatian intellectual development and the subsequent rise on Croat nationalism. The revolution that was brought to the Croats by the French conquerors would dominate Croatian policy throughout the nineteenth century. This was a definite threat to the Habsburg Empire. Any Croatian bid for independence, or even autonomy, would serve only to weaken the Empire in both internal control and international prestige. The large minority population of the Empire meant that any such bid might inspire others to rebel, thus creating the potential for a domino affect for national uprisings that threatened to destroy the Habsburg state. Furthermore, the fragile supremacy of the Austrian Germans and Magyars within the Monarchy faced an even greater threat from the prospect of cooperation between the minority nations, especially between the Serbs and the Croats, towards a goal of autonomy.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, Croatian nationalism expounded a sort of proto-Yugoslavism in the "Illyrian" movement, advocated by Croatian intellectual, Ljudevit Gaj. Croat nationalists maintained that the Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, and Slovenes were actually the descendants of the Illyrians, the indigenous people of the eastern Adriatic coast who were conquered and absorbed by the Romans in ancient times. Although both the Croats and the Serbs had a legitimate claim to medieval statehood, the association with a classical tradition, like the Romanians with the Romanized Dacians and the Greeks with ancient Greece, was seen as a greater legitimizing argument in that it sought to link the South Slavs to a state tradition which predated the migration of the Germans and Magyars. The "Illyrian" movement is considered proto-Yugoslavist in the sense that it sought liberation for the Southern Slavic peoples through the establishment of an independent "Illyrian" state. The Serbs, had little interest in the Illyrian movement, being perfectly content to consider themselves Serbian and Orthodox. (Jelavich vol.I 308) Nonetheless, the Illyrian movement paved the way for later Yugoslavist movements which did take hold. The agenda of Croatian nationalists was not so narrow as to view national independence or the formation of a Southern Slav state as the only route to national liberation. The most pressing national concern, to some Croatian nationalists in the Nineteenth century, was the threat of "Magyarization," especially after 1867. Many Croatians saw their culture being threatened by the chauvinistic nature of the ruling nations in the Monarchy. Other Croat nationalists, in contrast to the followers of the "Illyrian" movement and the later concept of "Yugoslavism," viewed the best path to achieving nationalist goals as by operating within the political structure of the monarchy. Needless to say, Croatians were divided on the issue of national liberation in the sense that "liberation" was not a universally defined concept.
In a letter to future British Prime Minister William Gladstone on 1 October 1876, Bishop Joseph George Strossmayer, a patron of the Croatian national movement, suggests that the Pashaliks of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not yet under Habsburg occupation as determined at the Conference of Berlin in 1878, be put "...under the protection of their [Serbia's] energy and their fifty years of experience." (Bannan and Edelenyi 187). Strossmayer, "who had preached the need for a unification of the South Slavs" (Dedijer 214-15) saw the future of the Southern Slavs on Bosnia and Herzegovina as best being served by incorporation into the Serbian state. Strossmayer, himself a Catholic German who adopted the Croatian nation as his own, viewed the liberation of the Slavs still living under direct control of the Porte as freedom from the self-centered and inefficient administration, and cultural domination of the Porte. (Bannan and Edelenyi 186)
The first Serbian revolt, which occurred in 1805 and brought about autonomy for the Belgrade Pashalik, was the first in a number of Serbian bids for greater freedom from Istanbul. For the Serbs, national liberation in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth centuries meant freedom from the oppressive nature of domination by the Janissaries. The Janissary corps, once the mighty harbingers of Islam expansion in Europe, had become a corrupt organization bent on self-preservation at the expense of the Ottoman state through insubordination and the local populations through exploitation. For most of the Serbian bids for liberty, Russia, being a nation of similar religion and ethnic origin and a state with many territorial disputes with the Porte, was found to be an occasional, albeit tentative and hesitant, patron. Austria, however, was threatened by any Serbian bids for power because of the large number of Serbs living within the borders of the Habsburg lands, as well as the number of other minorities, slavic and otherwise, who might be inspired by the Serbian paradigm. For the most part, the European great powers tended to support the Porte throughout the nineteenth century, both as a bulwark against Russian incursion into the Balkans and Mediterranean, thus maintaining the balance of power, and as a bastion of conservatism against the uprising of ethnic minority national uprisings which were a constant threat to most of the great powers.
The neighboring nations to the Serbs and Croats saw the national revivals of these two groups in varied light. The Magyars, for instance were most threatened by the rise of both Serb and Croat national revival. The kingdom of Hungary, which achieved a duality within the Habsburg Empire after the Ausgleich of 1867, was a majority-minority political entity. Most of the Empire's Croat population, including the traditional Croatian capital of Zagreb, fell within the lands of the Crown of St. Stephen, as did all of the Monarchy’s Serbian population. The Hungarians, intent on solidifying power in the Kingdom of Hungary, enacted a policy of "Magyarization," or cultural assimilation of subject minorities into the Magyar nation. This cultural conflict between the Magyar and minority nations, particularly the Croatians, was to dominate national movements in late-Nineteenth century Hungary. Considering the high proportion of the Southern Slav population within the lands of St. Stephen, the Hungarians could not afford to allow the spark of revolution in neighboring lands, much less inside the Crownlands, to kindle into flame and spread to the Hungarian minorities.
Other neighboring nations considered the notion of Serbian and Croatian nationalism as a threat, as well. The Serbian "Big Idea," the concept of a Greater Serbia, known as Nacertanija, advocated the unity of all Serb lands, Serbia, Old Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Voivodina in a single Serbian state. To the Greeks and Bulgarians this was both a threat to the territorial ambitions of these two neighboring states, but would dramatically shift the balance of power of the Balkan region in favor of Serbia. Both the Greeks and the Bulgarians, after the formation of the Bulgarian state in 1878, had extra-national territorial ambitions particularly toward Macedonia which all three had their eyes on. The latter half of the nineteenth century and the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth century were characterized by the Balkan states attempting to keep each other in check while each attempting to further its own goals.
Prior to the establishment of an independent Bulgarian state in 1878, Bulgarian nationalists looked to Croatia and Serbia as a source in inspiration. In his article, "The Sole Salvation lies in Revolution," Khristo Botev, a Bulgarian revolutionary refers to the Serbians and Croatians, as well as other subject nations in Europe, as exemplifying the goal of freedom, as compared with the situation of the Bulgarians in 1875. Botev argues that national intellectual reawakening, as it played a role in the national movement of the Croats for example, is not necessarily the right path for Bulgaria to take in its quest for national autonomy. Botev states that "Yes, [cultural and intellectual development] could be meaningful to us, but only in the event that our nation could enjoy even that illusion of freedom now enjoyed by the Czechs, Croats, Serbs, Poles, Irish, and others." (Fisher-Galati 206) Botev’s point is that although his nation can find inspiration from the national awakening of other nations whose situation is remarkably better than that of Bulgaria's, each must find its own path, according to its own needs, to national liberation.
When the Bosnians rose up in protest against unfair tax farming policies of the Porte, and the influence of the Greek Phanariots in Bosnian affairs, British traveller Arthur J. Evans noted in his book, Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot, that the revolutionary ideals were spreading to the neighboring South Slav capitals. Evans notes that as a result of the Bosnian insurrection, "...the streets of Agram [Zagreb] and Belgrade are placarded with inflammatory proclamations, calling on the Southern Sclaves (sic) to rise in defense of their brothers." (Evans 262) This rhetoric which propagated Yugoslavism, albeit indirectly, at first was inapplicable in Bosnia due to the internal conflicts between the three South Slav nations of Bosnia, the Bosnian Muslims, the Catholic Croatians, and the Orthodox Serbs. Evans, much like William Gladstone, to whom Bishop Strossmayer had written, represented the point of view of late Nineteenth century Britain, whose democratic and Christian principles allowed sympathy the national liberation movements of the Balkans, but whose imperial tendencies and political neutrality prevented interference in what was viewed as an internal Ottoman incident.
On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb member of "Narodna Odbrana," a pan-Serbian patriotic society, similar to the "Black Hand," assassinated the Habsburg heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, thus plummeting Europe into its first general War since the age of Napoleon. The youths that made up the revolutionary wing of the Black Hand were mainly young Bosnians who tended to be socialists, intellectuals, and atheists, all beliefs which were compatible with Yugoslavism. The unity of the Southern Slavs in a South Slavic state was viewed as liberation from the cultural and political dominance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The first article in the Statutes of "The Black Hand" reads: "This organization has been created with the object of realizing the national ideal: The union of all the Serbs...without distinction of sex, religion, place of birth..." (Rogers 201). This article clearly espouses the linkage between the ideology of the young Bosnians, particularly Serbian nationalism, and the concept of Yugoslavism, all of which were viewed as means of achieving liberation of the Southern Slavs.
The shots fired by Gavrilo Princip on the 525th anniversary of the defeat of the Serbian army at the hands of the Ottoman columns at Kosovo marked not only the beginning of the First World War, but also the death knell of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. On that fateful summer day in 1914, the Southern Slavs stood poised on the edge of a new era in which the ideals of the past, national revival, liberty from foreign domination, and Yugoslavism would pave the way for an independent Yugoslavian state. Although the experiment of Yugoslavia has twice failed, the liberation of the Serbs and Croats from Habsburg and Ottoman suzerainty was significant in both the newfound liberation of the long subject nations of the Croats and the Serbs, but also in ushering in a new age in the history of the Balkans and of Europe as a whole.
Bannan, Alfred J. and Achilles Edelenyi, eds. Documentary History of Eastern Europe. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970. pp. 183-88.
Dedijer, Vladimir. The Road to Sarajevo. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. pp. 175-260.
Emmert, Thomas A. Serbian Golgotha: Kosovo, 1389. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. pp. 79-89, 95-120.
Evans, Arthur A. Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1876. pp. 234-82.
Fischer-Galati, Stephen, ed. Man, State and Society in East European History. New York: Praeger, 1970. pp. 204-06.
Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
---. History of the Balkans: Twentieth Century, Volume II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pp. 28-105.
Rogers, Perry M. ed. Aspects of Western Civilization vol. II. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1997. pp. 201-05.
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