広島平和科学 Volume 25
published_at 2003

南スラヴ人統一国家構想の起源と展開 : 1917年「コルフ宣言」に至る過程

A short history of the South Slov unification movement : From the Illyrian conception of 1830s to the Corfu declaration in 1917
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Abstract
Yugoslavia was established in 1918 and broke down in 1991 with interethnic war. During 70 years of its history, there was almost always a manifest or latent conflict on the power distribution of the state. Before World WarⅠ, there was the Croatian question initiated by the Croats fighting for autonomy against Serbia wanting to keep the power under the central government. After World WarⅡ, when the Communist reconstructed Yugoslavia as a federal state, Serbia lost hegemony and was reduced to one republic with two autonomic provinces. The dissatisfactory Serbs deprived of the power raised the Serbian question. The author argues that Yugoslav conflict was already seeded before Yugoslav state started in 1918. It was originated in the Corfu Declaration announced in July 1917, a joint statement in which the Serbia's government and the Yugoslav Committee agreed to work for union and a ‘constitutional, democratic and parliamentary monarchy under the Karadjordjevic dynasty'. The significance of the agreement was at first lie in the point that it became a blueprint for a forthcoming new state. However, it was a compromise in which all the divisive issues were put aside. One of the biggest problems was that they left unclear whether a state would be unitary or federal. Though Trumbi?, the chairman of the Yugoslav Committee refrained from using the word of ‘federal', he was decidedly against centralism espoused by the Serbia's perennial premier, Nikola Pa?i?. Instead, Trumbi? spoke in favor of limiting the power of the future central government to foreign and military affairs, customs, currency and credit, postal service, and transportation, leaving the internal affairs, education, judiciary, and most economic matters outside its competence. Pa?i? was in favor of fairly extensive local autonomy, but administrative units could not be historical entities. Significantly, the Corfu Declaration made no mention of any historical territories, so that it was later interpreted as break with historical right and the