The Balkan Peninsula: Part IV. The Peninsula In The 20thCentury
The concept of sovereign states did not exist until the 1648 Treaty of West Falia which ended the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Until this treaty local feudal lords, princes, kings, and emperors governed Europe. The hierarchy these rulers established gained such intricacy that it was often ambiguous as to exactly who held claim to what territory. These disputes caused wars and rancorous family rivalries. A consequence of the treaty was that local lords ceded many of their duties to higher ranking nobles such as princes or kings. Two rulers (the king of Spain and the emperor of Austria-Hungary) governed the Holy Roman Empire. The Austria-Hungary Empire was never a very cohesive entity. Its people and languages were diverse, and its economy was primarily agricultural. Until the nineteenth century its cities could not boast of great scholars or scientists; its politics were unstable; its tentions were tought; and its natural resources were scant. The ancient cities of Prague, Vienna, and Budapest were its intellectual core. While these cities thrived during Habsburg rule, rural districts of the empire lay dormant as the provinces grappled with political decisions they were quite intentionally kept unprepared to confront. This situation created political crises the Habsburg were unprepared to solve.
On 28 June 1914 Arch-Duke Ferdinand of the Austria-Hungary Empire was slain on a Sarajevo street. The case is often made that long restrained ill will by some malcontent radicals caused the assassination. The contention there lies in who was malcontent and why such drastic action was necessary.
For two years prior to this incident, brutal slaughter raged in the Balkan Peninsula. These Balkan wars (1912-1913) did not actually end until after the first World War. The reasons for this series of conflicts were derived from fervent nationalism: The Black Hand (the terrorist organization responsible for killing Arch-Duke Ferdinand) had as its goal the establishment of a greater Serbia. Rhetoric alone provides obvious justification, but rhetoric alone cannot win wars. It only encourages people to resist a supposed foe with more vigilance and alacrity than they would otherwise accept.
As part of his Fourteen Points proposal, US President Woodrow Wilson pledged to uphold the rights of all Balkan peoples to decide their form of government. The nationalist factions squabbled straight away; in 1919 Serbian King Alexander I finally established the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Land of the Southern Slavs). From the outset Serbs perceived it was their right and duty to rule Yugoslavia and thought themselves the inheritors of Yugoslav power. Yugoslavia was divided into six artificially created republics: Bosnia-Hertzegovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. This system was meant to extenuate the Wilsonian ideal of self-determination. The solution satisfied many diplomatic purposes, but it did not measure to the ramifications of the visionary policy President Wilson believed he suggested. These republics never or only briefly existed as sovereign states. Much interwar instability ensued.
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