The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

But yet another event which took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century was destined to exercise a strong influence upon the future.

Napoleon, whose brilliant career wrought so many changes in Europe, also exercised a profound impression upon the future destiny of the Southern Slavs. After having conquered Dalmatia, and deprived Austria of Istria, Gorizia, Carinthia and Carniola, together with part of Croatia, he united all these provinces on the basis of their ethnographic coherence in the one kingdom of Illyria with its capital at Ljubljana (Laibach). This kingdom of Illyria was the first purely Southern Slav state since the ninth century in which all three branches of the raceSerbs, Croats and Slovenes—were united under one administration. Notwithstanding its short life this State awoke high hopes for their ultimate unification, and has ever since remained the ideal of the Southern Slay patriots. Later on in the *thirties of last century the Croatian patriot Ludevit Gaj, in his desire to give a common form to the new national movement amongst the Southern Slavs, proposed that all Southern Slavs should discard their provincial names of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and adopt the common name of Illyrians, because their country was called Illyria in Roman and Byzantine times and because the Serbs were commonly referred to as “ Tilyrians ” in Vienna. He also advocated the discontinuance of the use of local dialects in

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