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Royal intrigue in Podgorica yielded to genuine South Slav unity.

King Nicholas of Montenegro sought to preserve his autocratic dynastic power by playing Austro-Hungarian and Allied interests against each other during World War I. His secret negotiations destroyed his standing among his own subjects, who increasingly saw their future tied to a broader South Slav state. The 1918 Podgorica Assembly formally deposed Nicholas and voted for union with Serbia, ending centuries of Montenegrin isolation.

Secret wartime diplomacy fueled fierce Adriatic territorial conflicts.

The 1915 Treaty of London secretly promised Italy vast swaths of Dalmatia and the Istrian peninsula in exchange for entering World War I against the Central Powers. This secret agreement ignored the ethnic reality of the South Slav populations living along the coast. Ante Trumbić and the Yugoslav Committee fought diplomatic battles in London and Paris to counter Italian annexations and secure Dalmatian ports for the new state.

The Corfu Declaration created a unified constitutional monarchy.

Nikola Pašić, representing the Serbian government in exile, met with Ante Trumbić on the island of Corfu in 1917 to draft a joint plan for unification. The resulting Corfu Declaration proclaimed a democratic, constitutional monarchy under the Karađorđević dynasty that guaranteed religious freedom and equal rights for Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. On December 1, 1918, Prince Regent Alexander officially proclaimed the unified kingdom in Belgrade.

Book

The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2

An account of how World War I and regional diplomacy produced the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.

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