ABSTRACT
War and nationalism have been the dominant themes in the history of the Serbs during the twentieth century. During the nineteenth century era of nationalism which had seen the emergence of the German and Italian nation-states, the idea of a Serb nation-state was a dominant theme in Serb political history. The year 1903 was a turning point in the modern history of the Serbs. For much of the preceding century internal Serbian politics had been dominated by an intense and often violent dynastic rivalry between the Karadordevic and Obrenovic families. The Obrenovic family had been in power since 1858. Serbia’s success in the Balkan Wars aroused considerable concern in Austria-Hungary. Vienna feared that Serbia’s next step would be to threaten the empire’s recently annexed Bosnia-Hercegovina, where the Serbs were the majority population. The South Slav state envisaged by the Corfu Declaration was proclaimed on 1 December 1918.
