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Updated: June 29, 2025
By the Treaty of San Stefano the future interests of both Serbia and Montenegro were jeopardised by the creation of a Great Bulgaria, but that would not have mattered if in return they had been given control of the purely Serb provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina, which ethnically they can claim just as legitimately as Bulgaria claims most of Macedonia.
In all the other Serb countries the families which naturally took a leading part in affairs were either extinct or in exile, as in Serbia, or had become Mohammedan, and therefore to all intents and purposes Turkish, as in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Ragusa, since the great earthquake in 1667, had greatly declined in power and was no longer of international importance.
The coalition was wisely inclined to postpone the programme of final political settlement, and aimed immediately at the removal of the material and moral barriers placed between the Serbs of the various provinces of Austria-Hungary, including Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Another very interesting phase of his life had been spent in the Hercegovina, where he fought as an outlaw for many years against the Austrians. He still possesses two mementoes of his adventures in that land, one in the form of an officer's undress jacket, technically called a "blouse," and the other of a more permanent character, namely, a maimed hand.
The imminence of this movement was known to Austro-German diplomacy, and doubtless this knowledge, as well as the fear of the Pan-Serb movement, prompted the Austrian foreign minister to take steps towards the definitive regularization of his country's position in Bosnia and Hercegovina provinces whose suzerain was still the Sultan of Turkey.
About 1906 the two movements found expression in the formation of the Serbo-Croat or Croato-Serb coalition party, composed of those elements in Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia which favoured closer union between the various groups of the Serb race scattered throughout those provinces, as well as in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Turkey.
Even Dalmatia, Bosnia, and the Hercegovina, where a three-languaged man is the rule, paled into insignificance. There was a Turkish official staying at Reinwein's, transacting business for his Government, and every evening men came to see him; that man was to be heard he was a Neapolitan by birth conversing fluently in Turkish, Albanian, Serb, Greek, Italian, and French, alternately.
To the south-east lies Albania, while Austria again borders Montenegro in Bosnia and the Hercegovina in the north-west and in Dalmatia to the south-west. Dalmatia and a narrow strip of the Adria complete the circuit, so Austria practically surrounds Montenegro on three sides. The land may be said to possess three distinct belts of vegetation, each of an entirely different character.
A great exodus of the Serb population took place to the south, west, and north; but large numbers, especially of the landowning class, embraced the faith of their conquerors in order to retain possession of their property. In 1482 a similar fate befell Hercegovina. Albania had already been conquered after stubborn resistance in 1478.
Hercegovina and eastern Bosnia have always been predominantly Orthodox, Dalmatia and western Bosnia predominantly Roman Catholic. The loyalty of the Croatians to Austria-Hungary has been largely owing to the influence of Roman Catholicism. During the first centuries of Serbian history Christianity made slow progress in the western half of the Balkan peninsula.
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