The Croatian Problem in the Habsburg Empire in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The fundamental fact in the nationality issue in Croatia in the nineteenth century is that by 1914 the majority of the most influential political leaders of the Croats assumed that the indefinite survival of an independent united Croatia, based on the national principle alone, was a political and international impossibility. Once having accepted this premise, which was based on careful consideration of the conditions of their historical past and their position in Europe, the Croatian leaders were compelled to seek a solution to their political future which was in conflict with the major trend of the nineteenth century, namely, the political unification of ethnically homogeneous people into a sovereign state. Although there was a strong nationalist movement in Croatia, which aimed at the creation of an independent state, it could not deal with the realities of the Croatian position. Practical considerations thus left the Croatians with two alternatives: they could either remain within the framework of the Habsburg empire, in union with Vienna or Budapest or both; or they could join with the Serbs and Slovenes in a federal South Slav state. The story of nineteenth-century nationalism in Croatia centers on the vacillation between these two possibilities. The aim at all times was to find the combination which would best protect the Croatian national individuality, since Croatia alone did not have the necessary prerequisites for a completely independent national existence.2