Corfu Declaration

On 20 July 1917 (7 July by the Julian calendar, then used in Serbia), on the Greek island of Corfu, where the Serbian government in exile had been based since the winter of 1916, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Serbia, Nikola Pašić, and the president of the Yugoslav Committee, Ante Trumbić, signed a joint declaration. The so-called Corfu Declaration announced that the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, recognised in it as a single “three-named” nation, would form a common, independent kingdom after the war under the sceptre of the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty. It was the first programme of unification signed both by the government of Serbia and by politicians from the South Slav lands of the Habsburg monarchy.

Why the talks took place

As early as December 1914 Serbia had announced in the Niš Declaration that it was fighting for the liberation and unification of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Yugoslav Committee, formed in 1915 by émigrés from Austria-Hungary, mainly Croats from Dalmatia, supported unification, but from the outset argued with Pašić about its form. Pašić wanted a centralised state governed from Belgrade. Members of the committee, and especially Frano Supilo, who had earlier left the committee in a dispute with the Serbian prime minister, accused him of seeking a “Greater Serbia” and preferred a federation.

In the spring of 1917 both sides came under pressure. After the February Revolution Serbia lost its most important protector in Russia. The Allies were still looking for a way to persuade Austria-Hungary to make a separate peace, which could wreck Serbia’s war aims. On 30 May, at the first sitting of the reconvened Austrian Reichsrat, the South Slav deputies led by Father Anton Korošec issued the May Declaration, demanding the union of the lands of the monarchy inhabited by Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in an autonomous state body, but under the sceptre of the Habsburgs. Pašić and the Yugoslav Committee risked losing the initiative to politicians working inside the monarchy itself. The committee’s members were also alarmed by the Treaty of London of 1915, in which the Allies had promised Italy Istria, part of Dalmatia and islands in the Adriatic. Without Serbia’s support they had nothing with which to oppose these claims.

The talks on Corfu

Pašić invited the committee’s representatives to Corfu. The talks lasted from 15 June to 20 July. They were attended by members of the present and of the previous coalition Serbian government and by the president of the Serbian parliament, and on the committee’s side, according to the Italian minister to the Serbian government, Count Carlo Sforza, by Trumbić together with Dinko Trinajstić, Dušan Vasiljević, Bogumil Vošnjak and Franko Potočnjak. According to historians, 28 plenary sessions were held in 35 days. Trumbić defended the autonomy of the historic lands, such as Croatia, and a federal system, but had weak support in his own committee, which was more worried by the threat from Italy. Pašić replied that if the Croats insisted on federation, Serbia would abandon unification and content itself with enlarging itself.

What was agreed

The declaration began by stating that the nation of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was one “by blood, by spoken and written language”, and that in Austria-Hungary alone it was divided among eleven provincial administrations and thirteen legislative bodies. It named France, England, the United States and “the new, free and democratic Russia” as defenders of the right of nations to self-determination. In the following points it laid down that:

• the future state would be called the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and would be a constitutional, democratic and parliamentary monarchy headed by the Karađorđević dynasty;
• it would have one coat of arms, one flag and one crown, but the Serbian, Croatian and Slovene flags and the three national names would enjoy equal rights;
• the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets would have equal status, and Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Islam would enjoy equal rights before the state;
• the calendar would be unified as soon as possible;
• the territory of the kingdom would include all the lands inhabited in a compact mass by the “three-named” nation, and no part of them could be annexed to another state without the nation’s consent. The Adriatic was to be free and open to all;
• elections would be by universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage;
• the constitution would be adopted after the conclusion of peace by a constituent assembly elected by universal suffrage, “by a numerically defined majority”, and would come into force once approved by the king. The constitution was also to allow for the creation of local self-government.

The most important point of dispute, the choice between a centralised state and a federation, was left unresolved. The declaration referred it to the future constituent assembly, without even specifying what majority would be needed to adopt the constitution. Trumbić also proposed setting up a provisional government of the future state, but Pašić refused, so as not to weaken Serbia’s position as a state recognised by the Allies. The declaration also passed over the views of Montenegro. Its king, Nicholas I, who was in exile in France, took no part in the talks.

First reactions

It was decided to publish the declaration a few days after its signature. On 24 July Sforza telegraphed the Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino, that it was to be published the next day. He pointed out that Italy was missing from the powers named in the preamble and warned the Serbian ministry that such an omission would make a bad impression in Rome. He supposed that the Serbs had not wanted to alienate the Croats and Slovenes who were fighting the Italians in the Austro-Hungarian army. The point about a free Adriatic and the nation’s right to all the lands it inhabited was in any case aimed at the Treaty of London, and in Italy the declaration was received as anti-Italian. The British government remained reserved. In those same days the Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Robert Cecil, stated in the House of Commons that Britain wanted the liberation of the Slavs from foreign rule, but did not commit itself to any particular formula for that liberation.

The Corfu Declaration did not settle whether unification would take place. For many months to come the Allies had no intention of breaking up the Habsburg monarchy. The document did, however, become the programme to which people appealed when Austria-Hungary fell apart in the autumn of 1918. On 1 December 1918 the Regent, Alexander, proclaimed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Belgrade. The disputes over centralism and federalism, left unresolved on Corfu, weighed on the new state throughout the interwar period.