Bulgaria and Greece both had a large Macedonian speaking population. The Serbian and Macedonian Slavs were interrelated ethnically, and through their churches and customs. The closing decades of the century saw frenetic Serbian, Greek and Bulgarian attempts to stimulate Diaspora nationalism in Macedonia, from funding schools in their languages to supporting guerrilla groups.

But it was an internal Ottoman revolution that precipitated events. Disaffected by the string of Ottoman defeats, and alarmed by the Empire’s stagnation in the face of demands for change, a group of army officers (the “Young Turks”) seized power from the Ottoman rulers in 1908.

The Young Turks promised a series of reforms, including autonomy for Albanian territories, which were welcomed by the emerging nationalist groups in the Empire.

Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria concluded that the Turkish Empire, as the successor to Ottoman rule was called, might fall sooner than they had anticipated. Bulgaria declared independence from the formal suzerainty of the Empire, and Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia in 1908.

When the Albanians rebelled against delays in the implementation of autonomy in 1910, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria began negotiating a series of secret bilateral treaties to divide the South Balkans between them.

However, in 1912 the Young Turks agreed to the Albanians’ demand for immediate implementation of the promise of autonomy. Alarmed that this grant of autonomy would undermine their expansionist claims, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro, who had made separate plans to partition the South Balkans without Bulgaria, declared war on Turkey in October 1912, and the three armies occupied the Albanian territories.

The Turkish army was driven back to the gates of Constantinople (Istanbul) in weeks, and the Great Powers stepped in to preempt any new equations of power that might challenge the status quo.

The 1913 Treaty of London that concluded the war, drafted by Britain, Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Italy, forced Serbia and Montenegro to yield some of the territories they had conquered. The treaty created an independent state of Albania, but under Serbian and Greek pressure allotted Kosovo to Serbia and part of Epirus to Greece.

At Austrian insistence, the treaty also partitioned Macedonia between Serbia and Greece, requiring Serbia to cede Salonika, Kavála and coastal Macedonia. The exclusion of Bulgarian claims in Macedonia led to a brief second Balkan war, ended by the Treaty of Bucharest in August 1913, which left Serbia the clear winner.

Serbia divided the Muslim majority Sandzak belt lying between itself and its neighbor with Montenegro, and acquired the lion’s share of Macedonia. Serbia’s territory was expanded by some 80 %, and its population by more than half.

The Austrians had demanded the partition of Macedonia because they feared the additional strength that an outlet to the sea would offer Serbia. The emergence of a strong Serbia was a threat to Austrian dominance in the western Balkans, especially to the newly annexed Bosnia & Herzegovina, where Serbian nationalism had already developed a Diaspora base.

Map Courtesy of the National Geographic Society Map B.5: The Tinderbox of World War I (click to enlarge)

On June 28, 1914, Serbia’s national day, the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand went to attend a military review in Sarajevo, chiefly as a show of strength against Serbia. Instead, he was assassinated by a twenty year old Bosnian Serb, a member of the secret society Mlada Bosna (“Young Bosnia”), that dreamt of Bosnian independence.

The Austrian authorities issued an ultimatum to Serbia that included demands for an Austrian investigation of the crime in Serbia, suppressing anti-Austrian newspapers and dismissing anti-Austrian teachers and military officers. In July Austria went to war with Serbia.

Germany joined the Austrian side a short time later (the alliance was known as the “Central Powers”). Germany’s rulers scented an opportunity in the war, to extend the country’s reach eastwards and so to strengthen Germany’s ambition to be a European power.

Germany's pursuit of this ambition brought Britain and France, and later Russia (the “Triple Entente”), into the war. Germany’s ambition, the Allies argued, would threaten the balance of power across Europe; Britain, with its colossal colonial empire, was especially vehement. The war was no longer about the Balkans; it was about containing Germany.

Serbia was able to resist Austrian offensives in August and November 1914, but in the winter of 1914-15, a terrible epidemic of typhus hit the country, devastating both civilians and the military.

When Bulgaria entered the war, and helped the German army to open a second front in October 1915, the enfeebled Serbian army was unable to sustain defense of two fronts and was forced to retreat across Albania to the Adriatic coast.

The Central Powers captured Belgrade, and after a murderous winter crossing the Albanian mountains, the Serbian leaders and remnants of the Serbian army were shipped by the British and French navies to the Greek island of Corfu, from where they ran a government in exile.

In November 1916, the Greeks entered the war on the Allied side, and a new front was opened against the Bulgarian-German forces in Macedonia, with the Serbian army playing a key role alongside British, French, and Greek units. After two weeks of hard fighting, the Bulgarians surrendered.

The collapse of the Macedonian front was the beginning of the end for the Central Powers. After Belgrade was recaptured on November 1, 1918, the Central Powers agreed to an armistice, and the First World War came to an end, bringing down the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Empires.

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