Between occupation, exile and unification: sequestered and ‘abandoned’ properties in Serbia and Yugoslavia during and after the First World War

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines Serbia’s policies regarding the treatment of enemy subjects, and, in particular, enemy property during and after the Great War. It situates these policies in the context of the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, when tens of thousands of Muslims are estimated to have fled the Macedonia and Kosovo regions, leaving behind their property and belongings. After the subsequent world war, the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes struggled for international recognition, internal legal harmonization and the naturalization of former enemy subjects. These struggles often manifested themselves in Serbian policies towards issues of land redistribution, ownership rights and regional variations, as well as the legal status of the private and public property belonging to the former Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. These questions lingered right up until the late 1930s, when the Yugoslav state finally resolved these longstanding disputes with the successor states – Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey.