Serbia's Diplomatic Preparations for the Creation of the First Balkan Alliance, 1861-64

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Introduction

My aim in this article is to investigate the case of the diplomatic preparations for the creation of the First Balkan Alliance (1866-68) against the Ottoman Empire by the Principality of Serbia in its initial stage which covers the years of 1861-64 in the light of territorial requirements of the Balkan states and nations at the expense of the decreasing military and political power of the Ottoman authorities and the territorial integration of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. One of the main focuses is on the question of the territorial division of Albanian inhabited lands by Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria. Therefore, crucial attention is directed on the territories of Albania proper, Epirus, Macedonia, and Kosovo and Metohija. Methodologically, the investigation is based primarily on the use of the primary archival-historical material from different Serbian and international archives coming from the official state institutions involved in the process of diplomatic preparations for the creation of the First Balkan Alliance.

"Outline of Serbian-Greek Convention from 1861"

The sources indicate that the pivotal impetus for the establishment of the First Balkan Alliance came from Serbia's Prince Mihailo I Obrenovic whose predominate political task in Serbian foreign policy was to create a united South Slavic state under Serbian leadership, which would be composed of all South Slavic territories within the Ottoman Empire. For this purpose he needed close cooperation with other Balkan Christian states and people as Serbia was not strong enough to alone defeat the Ottoman Empire on the battlefield. Consequently, the most reasonable solution was to create a joint Balkan military-political defensive-offensive coalition, which would militarily defeat Turkey and expel Ottoman authorities from the Balkans as a fundamental precondition for the creation of the united South Slavic state in the Balkans.

It has to be said that the Second Balkan Alliance (1912-13), which was put into effect during the First Balkan War (1912-13) against the Ottoman Empire was actually to a great extent a revitalization of the First Balkan Alliance (1866-68).

The nucleus of both of these Balkan Alliances for the general Balkan war against the Ottoman Empire can be found in the 1861 project of the Serbian prime minister and minister of foreign affairs from 1861 to 1867, Ilija Garašanin (1812-74)—the author of Načertanije 1844 (a secret program of Serbian political unification into a single national state)—to make a political-military pact with the Kingdom of Greece. To be more precise, Ilija Garašanin submitted in early March of 1861 a secret memo to Serbia's Prince Mihailo Obrenović (1825-68), prince from 1839 to 1842 and from 1860 to 1868, in which the author urged the prince that Serbian national interest called for a pact with Greece¹ that would be a foundation for a wider Balkan pact against the Ottoman authority. This memo was based on Garašanin's previous proposal on the Balkan coalition in which he dealt with the Albanian question and relations with the Habsburg Monarchy.² The memo provided detailed instruction for the Serbian deputy to the Greek court to negotiate with Athens about the creation of bilateral Serbian-Greek military-political alliance that was directed against the Ottoman Empire. The deputy was obliged to investigate the inner political and military situation of Greece with special attention to the questions of 1) what was the main task of Greek national policy, and 2) which foreign power had the predominant role in Greek foreign policy. The deputy was authorized to inform the Greek king that the Serbian prince hoped that Greece was willing to conclude a pact with Serbia for the common Christian interest in the Balkans.

According to the memo, there were crucial reasons for the alliance, firstly between Serbia and Greece and, later on, among all other Balkan Christians interested in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire:

1. 1. the common Christian faith of the Serbs and Greeks;

2. 2. the common necessity and desire for freedom;

3. 3. the creation of united national independent states of the Serbs...