ABSTRACT
Several self-governing territories had emerged after the Napoleonic wars on the Danubian border and on the maritime fringe of the Ottoman Empire. The Balkans was thus divided into three zones: the new so-called national states, the territories left under direct Ottoman rule, and the lands of the Habsburgs. The whole peninsula felt the consequences of that half-century of revolution framed by the French events of 1789 and 1830. Serbia, Greece and the Danubian Principalities became states that tried to consolidate their internal regimes by adopting institutions inspired by those recently introduced in Western Europe. The Serbian ustav and Greek syntagma were acceptable, as they could be translated as 'rules', even though the Greek constitution was modelled on the most advanced constitution, the Belgian one of 1831. The Principality of Serbia, the Kingdom of Greece and the United Principalities were the states of Serbs, Greeks and Romanians respectively.
