World war one : Serbians living in austria hungary.?

Question

Serbians living in austria hungary wanted to be rules by serbia? A detailed paragraph? Why?

Answer 1

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Because nation states have a tendency of wanting to rule all areas inhabited historically and in the present by their core ethnic group. Germany under Bismarck unified from a whole bunch of mini-states into a single state. Also Garibaldi in Italy. France, Spain, and the UK had these sorts of consolidations in medieval times.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, many eastern European countries, including Serbia, tried to create states incorporating all or most members of their ethnic groups. There are many cases of this. Serbs in Austria-Hungary wanted to live in a state jointly with Serbia. Most of them were set on creating a multiethnic South-Slav state called Yugoslavia, where Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes would live together. This was a good option because Serbs were dispersed all over Croatia and Bosnia (as well as Serbia), and there was a good deal of Croats in Bosnia and northern Serbia, so creating a joint state made sense in that all these people could be in one state, but not necessarily one ruled or dominated by just one ethnic group.

Austria-Hungary was intent on expanding influence in the Balkans because the Ottomans were in decline. It ended up being a turf war between Russia, which wanted an entry into the Mediterranean, and Austria-Hungary/Germany, which wanted to block Russian entry into the Mediterranean. The British and French kept on propping up the declining Ottoman empire in the 19th century to prevent a Russian presence in the Mediterranean. That is why they supported the Ottoman empire throughout the 19th century against the Balkan nations like Serbs, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, and Croats. They also sided with the Ottomans against Russia in the Crimean war. By the early 20th century, the Ottomans were past any help and independence for the native peoples of the Balkans was inevitable and irreversible. However, these states were week and looked to greater powers as mentors or supporters. Serbia looked to Russia, the Greeks looked to British/French help, the Romanians to French support, the Bulgarians alternately to Russia or Germany.

Austria-Hungary felt threatened by Serbia because most of the empire was Slav (over 50%, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Ukrainians) and these Slavs wanted autonomy or independence from German and Hungarian political and cultural domination. If the Serbs of Austria-Hungary managed to unite with Serbia and if Serbia had clear access to the Adriatic (and therefore their ally, Russia, too), then that could pose a great threat to the very existence of the Austro-Hungarian empire. This is why Austria-Hungary maintained an anti-Serb policy in the early 20th century, and this contributed to the events leading to WWI.