Grey promises Serbia Bosnia and Herzegovina

The British chronology of the war records under 7 May 1915 that the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, gave Serbia’s envoy a conditional guarantee that his country would in future receive Bosnia and Herzegovina together with “wide access to the Adriatic”. Serbia’s minister in London since the end of 1913 was Mateja Bošković. According to the Serbian historian Dragan Bakić, who studied the envoy’s dispatches, Bošković spoke with Grey and with the Russian and French ambassadors two days before the arrival in London of the Yugoslav Committee on 9 May, that is, at about 7 May. The promise was not a treaty, nor even a note. It was meant to reassure an ally who watched with growing anxiety as the Entente powers disposed of lands that it was itself counting on.

Serbia passed over in London

The anxiety was well founded. On 26 April Italy had signed a secret agreement in London with Britain, France and Russia. In return for entering the war it had been promised, among other things, Istria, northern Dalmatia and most of the Dalmatian islands, that is, lands inhabited mainly by Croats and Slovenes. The rest of the coast, from Cape Planka to the mouth of the Drin, with the ports of Split and Dubrovnik, the agreement assigned to Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, without deciding who would get what. Nobody asked Serbia’s opinion, and the Treaty of London itself was to remain secret.

The government in Niš knew from several sources, however, that the allies were prepared to give Italy a large part of Dalmatia. As early as April the Prime Minister, Nikola Pašić, had sent the Entente capitals a note asking that the South Slav lands should not become the subject of bargaining with Italy at the expense of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. London’s attitude was not encouraging. The Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Arthur Nicolson, told Bošković on Grey’s behalf that Serbia would be assured “as a minimum” Herzegovina and a wide strip of the Dalmatian coast. For Pašić, who in the Niš Declaration had proclaimed the struggle for the unification of all Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, this was far too little.

A conditional guarantee

Grey’s assurance was in line with the Entente’s policy towards Serbia so far. At that time the powers did not intend to break up Austria-Hungary or to create a great South Slav state. Instead they promised Serbia acquisitions at the expense of the Habsburg monarchy, with Bosnia and Herzegovina and an outlet to the sea as a minimum, but only after a victorious war. At the same time they expected concessions from it. They were negotiating with Romania, to which they could promise the whole of the Banat, partly inhabited by Serbs, and with Bulgaria, which demanded part of Serbian Macedonia for joining the Entente.

In one of his May dispatches Bošković quoted Grey’s explicit warning that it would not be wise to risk losing Bosnia and access to the sea if the enemy could not be defeated. In other words, Serbia was not to obstruct the allies’ efforts to win new allies, because without victory it would get nothing. From his talks with Grey and the Russian and French ambassadors Bošković also came away with another disturbing impression: that the allies were inclined to accept the idea of an independent Croatia, which mattered particularly to the Italians, who wanted to separate the Croats from the Serbs.

What came next

On 9 May the Yugoslav Committee, made up of émigrés from Austria-Hungary and led by the Croats Ante Trumbić and Frano Supilo, arrived in London, which was to become its seat. Its members lobbied the British for the unification of all the South Slavs, and they soon fell into dispute with the Serbian envoy over what role Serbia was to play in it. For the time being, however, the Entente kept to its line. In August 1915, still trying to win over Bulgaria, the powers presented Serbia with a formal offer: in return for concessions in Macedonia they promised it after the war, among other things, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syrmia, Bačka and part of the Dalmatian coast. In the autumn, however, Bulgaria entered the war on the side of the Central Powers.