When Diplomacy Fails

The July Crisis Anniversary Project

A day-by-day account of the events that occurred 100 years ago.

Profiles The powers, plans and politics involved in the July crisis are very intricate and require

a certain level of background information. These profile episodes will seek to investigate

the background details of the key powers involved, giving you a unique profile

of each one. In this case, the profile in question focuses on Serbia.

The Serbian War of Independence had recreated Serbia as the principality of the Ottoman Empire

in 1817. But by 1878, Serbia had established itself as an independent state. Within this

state an awkward monarchy resided, led by the Abranovich dynasty. The Abranovich dynasty competed with its rival

vying for the monarchy, the Karadjordievich line, and had been doing so since the earliest days

of the Serbian rebellion against their Ottoman masters. It was the grandson of the first

Obrenovitch king, King Milan, who ruled from 1868, 1889, that provides the best anecdotal evidence

of Serbia's turbulent political and monarchical history.

The emergence of Serbian political parties in the mid-1880s transformed Serbian political culture,

and these were followed by newspapers, local committees and manifestos.

King Milan worked hard to suppress these elements, when they conflicted with his perception of what Serbia should be, an absolute monarchy.

Elections in 1883 produced a negative political atmosphere for King Milan, so he attempted

to dissolve Parliament and set up a bureaucratic government of his own.

This was bad enough, but the war against Bulgaria in 1885 was so badly planned and conducted

that by 1889 King Milan, having caused a scandal by divorcing publicly his wife in the hopes of marrying,

some suspected, the wife of his personal secretary, abdicated in favour of his wife in the hopes of marrying, some suspected, the wife

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