“I Have the Honour to Report”: Reports of the Austrian State Police on the Political Processes among the Serbs on the Eve of the Signing of the Compromise of 1867

Abstract

The political activity of the Serbs of the Habsburg Monarchy was traditionally perceived by scholars in connection with ideas of possible unification of the Serbian people in an independent state. Owing to the active inclusion of a new range of sources in historical research in Russia, it seems possible to reconstruct the reaction of Serbian society in the context of the struggle for national rights within the framework of a multi-ethnic state. The political elite hoped to resolve this issue by means of the reorganisation of the Habsburg Monarchy on the principles of the Compromise of 1867. Discussions about the role and place of the Serbian community in this process became the starting point for the ideological demarcation between the supporters of Vienna and Pest and the segment of the political spectrum that throughout the second half of the nineteenth century kept their very specific features. In fact, only the Serbian National Party of Freethinkers (traditionally called liberal in literature), whose factions were in a constant struggle for influence, was active. In the present study, an attempt is made to reconstruct the political processes among the Serbs of the Habsburg Monarchy on the eve and shortly after the signing of the Compromise of 1867 on the basis of the reports of the Austrian State Police, to assess what factors allowed the liberal party to lead the national movement in a short space of time, and to suggest why the conservative wing failed to compete with it.