Serbian government on Corfu

The British chronology of the war records under 9 February 1916 the establishment of the Serbian government on Corfu. The ministers did not, however, arrive on the island that day. The prime minister, Nikola Pašić, and part of the cabinet had sailed there from Brindisi as early as about 18 January, and two days later held their first meeting. It has not been possible to establish what act the chronology associates with 9 February in particular. What is known is that in the first days of February the whole leadership of the state gathered on Corfu: the government, the high command and the heir to the throne. Only then did the island fully become the seat of Serbia in exile.

The regent’s arrival

The regent Alexander had remained throughout January with the army, which was marching along the muddy Albanian coast to the ports of evacuation. According to a dispatch from a Reuters correspondent, he arrived from Albania on a French torpedo boat on the afternoon of 6 February. He came ashore accompanied by a French admiral, amid the cheers of the crowd and to the strains of the Serbian and French anthems. Waiting for him on the quay were all the Serbian ministers, representatives of the Allied powers, Serbian and French officers, and also the Greek civil and military authorities. The regent greeted the ministers, inspected two guards of honour and drove to the hotel where apartments had been prepared for him.

The presence of Greek officials at the welcome was telling. The government in Athens had protested against the occupation of the island, but the Greek authorities had not been removed from it and had to come to some arrangement with the guests. The high command arrived on Corfu together with the regent. At its head by then stood General Petar Bojović, who according to the British official history had in January replaced the ailing vojvoda Radomir Putnik as chief of staff. King Peter I was at that time taking a cure at the Greek spa of Aidipsos, and Alexander exercised power in his name.

A state on an island

Corfu had to accommodate not only the army but the whole apparatus of the state. The London weekly The Near East reported in its issue of 11 February that members of the government were still arriving on the island. Pašić, several ministers and some deputies were already there, and it was said that the Serbian parliament would soon meet there. Diplomats followed the government. The same weekly wrote that the minister of neutral Romania to the Serbian government had moved with it to Corfu and was continuing to perform his duties.

According to Serbian studies, the government had its offices in the Hotel Bella Venezia in the town of Corfu, and over the following months almost all levels of the administration were re-established on the island. The official gazette Srpske novine was published there, books and textbooks were printed, and a Serbian elementary school and a gymnasium were opened. All this operated on foreign territory, without any land for the government to administer, because the whole of Serbia was under Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian occupation.

A capital in exile

Corfu remained the seat of the Serbian government until the end of the war. The regent and the war ministry moved with the army to Salonika in July 1916, but Pašić and most of the cabinet stayed on the island. Parliament met in the municipal theatre only in September 1916, and in July 1917 Pašić and representatives of the Yugoslav Committee signed on Corfu the declaration announcing the creation of a common state of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.