1848-1878 1914-1918






Serbia 1878-1914



From 1878 onward, there were a few decades of peace. The example of Italy and Germany, which had achieved their national unification in 1859/1860 respectively 1870/1871 only spurred on Serbian patriots dreaming of a larger Serbia or a Yugoslavia lead by Serbia.
In 1885/1886 there was a short Serbian-Bulgarian war, which began with a Serbian invasion; the Bulgarians defeated the Serbs in the Battle of Slivnica; the Treaty of Bucharest ended the war on the basis of the status quo ante.
In 1903 a coup d'etat ended in the assassination of the royal couple and the ascension of Peter Karadjordjevic, the son of deposed King Alexander.
When Italy took Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (Libya) from the Ottoman Empire with relative ease in 1911, the christian Balkan states formed an alliance and attacked the ailing Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War (1912). As Bulgaria claimed the larger part of Macedonia against Serbian claims, the Second Balkan War - now everybody else against Bulgaria - followed suit (1912/1913).
Serbia which had occupied much of Albania, had to give it away due to massive diplomatic pressure from Great Britain, Italy and Austria-Hungary, neither of whom wanted to see Serbia having access to the Adriatic Sea. Serbia did gain half of the Sandjak of Novi Pazar. the Kosovo and the larger part of Macedonia.
With the Ottoman Empire eliminated from the European map, Serbian attention now focussed on Austria-Hungary.






EXTERNAL
LINKS 		Servia, from Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 edition
History of Serbia and Montenegro, from yunet
Andrej Mitrovic, Foreign Banks in Serbia 1882-1914, from Association for Social History, Dubravka Stojanovic, Party Elites in Serbia 1903-1914, from Association for Social History
Dubravka Stojanovic, Publicity in Serbia 1903?914. An outline for the profile of Serbian society, from Association for Social History
DOCUMENTS Map of SE Europe 1892, from Gardiner's Atlas 1892
Map of Belgrad, 1905, from Perry Castaneda Library
Serbian coins 1912-1915, from Collection Mirko Plavsic
Article Serbien, from Meyers Konversationslexikon, 1888-1890 edition, in German
REFERENCE Fred Singleton, A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples, Cambridge University Press (1985) 1999
Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile. The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, Princeton, NJ : Darwin Press 1995 [G]
Article : Servia, in : Britannica Book of the Year 1913 pp.1037-1038 on events of 1912) [G]
Article : Servia, in : Statesman's Year Book 1895 pp.925-933, 1898 pp.925-933, 1901 pp.1037-1047, 1905 pp.1124-1135, 1910 pp.1201-1208 [G]
Article : Servia, in : International Year Book 1898 pp.696-697, 1899 p.730, 1900 pp.814-814; in : New International Year Book 1907 pp.713-714, 1908 pp.644-645, 1909 pp.644-645, 1913 pp.625-627, 1914 pp.631-633 [G]
Article : Servia, in : Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events 1894 pp.714-715 [G]
Jacob Gold Schurman, The Balkan Wars 1912-1013 (1916), posted by Gutenberg Library Online
Jivoin Perich, La Confederation Balkanique (The Balkan Confederation, 1912), posted online by Gutenberg Library Online
Anonymous, Une Confederation Orientale comme solution de la Question d'Orient (An Oriental Confederation as solution of the Oriental Question, 1907), posted online by Gutenberg Library Online


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2000, last revised on October16th 2007

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