The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

which re-created Italy and resuscitated Bohemia worked for them also.

The nineteenth century was characterised by the awakening of national feeling throughout Europe. The principle of nationality was recognised as a new force and a new basis for the politics of the European States. We have seen that, thanks to the imperishable Serbian historical tradition, the Serbs never lacked that feeling and that their whole policy was directed towards the achievement of national autonomy upon a separate territory in Hungary. But the Croats —the Roman Catholic branch of their race—were sunk in apathy and looked indifferently enough upon the Serbian demands for national organisation and territory.

But the nineteenth century brought a very remarkable change in the mutual position of the Serbs and the Croats and in their relations to the Magyars. Even as the germanising policy of Joseph II had awakened the national feelings of the Magyars, so the chauvinistic policy of the Magyars in imposing the Magyar tongue as the official language in Croatia, and striving to magyarise all other nationalities in Hungary by force, awakened the national feeling of the Croats and was instrumental in relegating the religious differences between the Serbs and the Croats into the background and in bringing about co-operation between them for the defence and promotion of their national interests in Hungary.

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