Hungary and Serbia

The Hungarians used the liberty they won in 1867 to subject the Slavonic population between themselves and the sea, and prevent its union with the free principality of Serbia [1817-82, when it became a kingdom, which lasted until 1918] of the same Slavonic nationality. This drove Serbia in 1913 to follow Hungary’s example by seizing the coast of the non-Slavonic Albanians; and when Austria-Hungary prevented this (a right act prompted by most unrighteous motives), Serbia fought an unjust war with Bulgaria [Second Balkan War] and subjected a large Bulgarian population, in order to gain access to the only seaboard left her, the friendly Greek port of Salonika.

Greece and Bulgaria had competed for Ottoman Salonika in the First Balkan War. Greece got it, and held it in the Second. Bulgaria had been liberated from Ottoman rule in 1878. Summary of the Balkan wars.

Hungary and Serbia are nominally national states: but more than half the population in Hungary, and perhaps nearly a quarter in Serbia, is alien, only held within the state by force against its will. The energy of both states is perverted to the futile and demoralising work of “Magyarising” and “Serbising” subject foreign populations [Albanians, Bosnians, Bulgarians, Croats, Germans, Jews, Macedonians, Magyars, Montenegrins, Roma, Romanians, Ruthenes, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Vlachs], and they have not even been successful. The resistance of Southern Slav nationalism on the defensive to the aggression of Hungarian nationalism has given the occasion for the present catastrophe.

Nationality and the War, Dent, 1915