The little Balkan Kingdom of Serbia was a principality under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire for half a century after its resurrection during the Napoleonic Wars. The Serbs engaged in a war with Turkey in 1876, which led to the intervention of Russia, and to the recognition by the powers of the independence of Serbia in the Treaty of Berlin. The limits of the new kingdom were so drawn as to exclude the northern part of Macedonia, which was left to Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the administration of which was entrusted to Austria-Hungary, without detaching these territories from the Ottoman Empire. The little principality of Montenegro, whose inhabitants had successfully resisted the Turks for centuries, was also declared independent by the Treaty of Berlin. In 1908, after the Young Turk revolution, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, little Serbia succeeded in nearly doubling her territory and adding 50 per cent to her population at the expense of Turkey and Bulgaria. An important part of the new territory, however, contained a non-Serbian majority.
Of the Serbian-speaking peoples, known as the Jugoslavs, considerably more than half were in the Hapsburg dominions at the outbreak of the World War. The kingdom of Serbia had a population of 3,000,000 before the Balkan Wars, which added 1,500,000 more, of whom 1,000,000 by the most liberal estimate could be considered Serbs. In round numbers the Jugoslavs in 1918 were distributed as follows:
Old Serbia 3,000,000 New Serbia 1,000,000 Montenegro 500,000 Croatia and Slavonia 2,600,000 Bosnia and Herzegovina 2,000,000 Dalmatia 1,000,000 Slovenia 1,500,000 Istria 400,000 Banat of Temesvár 250,000 Other parts of Hungary 1,000,000
We must have these figures before us to realize the tremendous difficulties confronting the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, created by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon. Greater Rumania was formed by adding between four and five million liberated Rumanians and an equal number of alien peoples to an independent kingdom already containing more than seven million Rumanians. Greater Serbia was formed by adding 8,000,000 liberated Jugoslavs and the half-million already independent Montenegrins to 4,000,000 independent Serbians. The figures alone demonstrate the difference in the problem. If the Serbians were to maintain their supremacy over the redeemed brethren, it was going to be a case of the tail trying to wag the dog.