Constitutional Development, 1914-1941
Constitutional Development, 1914-1941

Author(s): Malbone W. Graham
Subject(s): Interwar Period (1920 - 1939)
Published by: CEEOL Collections / Digital Reproductions
Keywords: Yugoslavia as Kingdom;
Summary/Abstract: On the eve of the First World War the situation in the Yugoslav lands revealed distinct cleavages—chiefly psychological and economic—in the romantic ideal of Yugoslav unification which boded ill for the union if formally achieved. To fuse into a single state the peoples of kindred blood and origin who were historically divided into many political units was a difficult task. It called for an appreciable interval of time in which to integrate the political folkways of the various Yugoslav peoples and imbue them with a common tradition. But this interval was not vouchsafed to the Yugoslavs. Neither the democratic revolutions of 1848, nor the defeat of Austria at Sadowa, nor the Bosnian crisis in the early ’seventies provided the incentive for unification of the Yugoslav peoples. The failure of abortive movements to shake off the Ottoman yoke, the conspiracy of the Great Powers at Berlin to hold the Balkans in a juridical strait jacket, the appeasement of Austria-Hungary by the allocation to it of Bosnia and Hercegovina—all bear tragic witness to the deliberate retardation, on every side, of the process of Yugoslav unification.

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