[FN: As used in this paper, the term Jugo-Slav comprehends
the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, but not the Bulgars. It is
not necessary here to consider whether the latter are Slavs
or Slavicized Tartars, but merely to point out that since
the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Bulgars have taken no
part in the movement which has resulted in the creation of
Jugo-Slav nationalism. The word "jug" means "south" in
Slavic. It is also written "youg" and "[iu]g."]
If there are miracles in history, the Jugo-Slav movement is a miracle.
It is the story of a nation which entered its new home in the Balkans in
the seventh century and became divided geographically and politically,
in faith and written language, and in economic and social life, until
at last its spokesmen could truthfully say that it was divided
into thirteen separate administrative units dependent upon fifteen
legislative bodies. [FN: In 1915 the Slovenes inhabiting Carniola,
Carinthia, Styria, Istria, and Goerz-Gradisca, and the Serbo-Croats of
Istria and Dalmatia, were under the direct rule of Austria. Trieste and
its district were a part of Austria. The Serbs of Hungary belonged to
Hungary proper for the most part; the Croats by a fundamental agreement
were entitled to autonomy in Croatia. Fiume, the seaport of Croatia and
Hungary, had an administration of its own. Bosnia-Herzegovina possessed
a diet and was under the dual rule of Austria and Hungary. All the
provinces or districts mentioned above were governed by the two
parliaments at Vienna and Budapest. There were, in addition, two
independent Serb states, Serbia and Montenegro. Down to 1912 Turkey
ruled over a large number of Serbs.] How did it come about that this
evolution of twelve centuries, beginning with primeval unity and passing
through a political, economic, and social decomposition of a most
bewildering character, has once more arrived at national unity and
is even now demanding the last step--political amalgamation? Is it a
doctrine or a dream or is it a reality?
I
When the Jugo-Slavs first occupied the western half of the Balkan
peninsula, they were one in speech, in social customs and ancestry, and
were divided only into tribes. The Slovenes, who settled in the northern
end of the west Balkan block, were not separated from their Croat and
Serb kinsmen by the forces of geography, but rather by the course of
political evolution. On the other hand, the Croats became separated from
the Serbs by forces largely geographical, though partially economic and
political, in nature.
The Slovenes gave way before the pressure of the Germans who swept
through the Alps and down the Danube and forced the Slovene vojvodes
to acknowledge their suzerainty and accept their religion. The Germans
would doubtless have succeeded in obliterating them had not the Magyar
invasion weakened their offensive. The Slovenes, however, were left a
wrecked nationality whose fate became blended with that of the Habsburg
possessions and who against the forces of geography--which firmly bound
them to the Croats--were politically riveted to the Habsburg north.
This division was therefore the result of forces created by man and
changeable by him. The Croats settled in the northwestern half of the
territory south of the Slovenes; the Serbs roughly in the southeastern
part of it. Here geographical influences--the direction of the rivers
and the Dinaric ridges--combined with divergent political and economic
possibilities, produced a dualism. The Croats on the Save and its
tributaries naturally expanded westward and aspired to closer
connection with the sea where their struggle with the remnants of
Roman civilization and a superior culture absorbed their energies.
They developed out of their tribal state more quickly, while the Serbs,
further inland and amid more difficult surroundings, developed more
slowly. The people who lived along the Save aspired to control the
Dalmatian coast which military and geographical authorities claim can
best be held from the mainland. The people who lived in Montenegro
or along the Morava, which was the gateway to the peninsula, would
naturally expand south and east toward the other cultural center,
Constantinople, and thus seek to dominate the Balkan peninsula. In both
cases, the attraction proved too much for feudal kings and led to the
formation of cosmopolitan empires instead of strong national monarchies.
The kingdoms of Croatia and Serbia thus parted company politically. The
former became a separate kingdom attached to Hungary in 1102 and to the
Habsburg dynasty in 1527, while the Serbs began their expansion under
the Nemanja dynasty late in the twelfth century and almost realized
the dominion over the Balkans under Stephen Du[s]an in the fourteenth
century.
This political, geographical, and economic dualism became still greater
when in 1219 the Serbs cast their lot with orthodoxy. The Croats, like
the Slovenes, adopted Roman Catholicism, the Latin alphabet, and the
culture of Rome. The Serbs accepted Greek Orthodoxy, the Cyrillic
alphabet, and the culture of Constantinople.
The Slovenes became a part of the Austrian possessions of the Habsburgs;
the Croats fell under the dominion of the Hungarian crown and the
republic of Venice; and the Serbs succumbed to the Turks by the middle
of the fifteenth century. The loss of political independence brought
with it ultimately the loss of the native nobility, the sole guardians
of the constitutional and historical rights of the nations down into
the nineteenth century in central Europe. In addition, many towns were
Germanized and the middle class disappeared. The Jugo-Slavs, like the
Czecho-Slovaks, appeared in modern times as a nation which had lost
its native nobility and had been reduced to a disarmed, untutored, and
enserfed peasantry. In the absence of these leaders, the nation turned
to its clergy who in order to retain their hold on the peasantry must
needs ever remain national. But here again the misfortune which awaited
the Jugo-Slavs was that historically three religions had taken deep
root, the Catholic among the Slovenes and Croats, and the Mohammedan and
Orthodox among the Serbs. We may therefore conclude the first half of
the historical evolution of the Jugo-Slavs with the observation that
political, economic, social, and geographical divisions led to their
downfall as a nation and that if they ever desired to become one, each
one of these chasms would have to be bridged. A solution for each of
these problems--the most difficult which ever faced a nation--would
have to be found; meanwhile the policy of the four masters, the German,
Venetian, Magyar, and Turk, would always be "divide and rule," in other
words, to perpetuate the divergencies.