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UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT Course: History 326 PAPER Toward World War I Count Aehrenthal and the Annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 by Sven-Ole Andersen (student) In October 1908 the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy proclaimed the annexation of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the same time, Bulgaria declared its independence of the Ottoman Empire. Both actions involved no change in either the territorial or the political arrangements of the Balkan peninsula. Austria-Hungary had occupied and administered the two provinces for thirty years, and the Sultan of Turkey had never exercised the slightest control over the autonomous principality of Bulgaria set up in 1878. However, the policy and action taken by the two governments constitute violations of the Treaty of Berlin because other signatories were not consulted. As a result, a diplomatic crisis followed the events of October 1908. Moreover, memories of what happened between October 1908 and April 1909 were not without bearing on the events of July 1914, when Austria-Hungry declared war on Serbia which ultimately ended in the outbreak of World War I (Schmitt Preface). The architects of the plan for annexation, and the following crisis also, were the Russian foreign minister Alexander Petrovic Izvolsky and the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister Alois Lexa Graf von Aehrenthal. The latter was the most intriguing and most crucial figure of both. Aloys Leopold Johann Baptist Graf Lexa von Aehrenthal was born on 27 September 1854, at Gross-Skal in Bohemia. He began his career in 1877 as an attaché in Paris in the foreign service of the k.u.k. Monarchy. After that, he became the diplomatic counselor to Russia (1888), ambassador to Bucharest (1895), and Austria’s ambassador to St. Petersburg (1899). In 1906, Baron (later Count) Aehrenthal replaced Graf Goluchowski as foreign minister. His intention was to revive the foreign policy of Austria-Hungry and to ensure a more active role of the Monarchy in Europe. He was a Bohemian-German who had been brought up in the Clerical and bureaucratic school of ambassador Count Gustav Kalnoky (Wank XVIII). Henry Wickham Steed calls him “a man of few words, to each of which he gave a special meaning”. Aehrenthal on one side, was a hard-working foreign minister. Due to the “special meanings” of his words, however, a lot of ambassadors who negotiated with him complained within a few months that it was not easy to work with him and to rely on his words. He, who came from St. Petersburg, had the reputation for Russophilism, which means that his reputation was valuable to a diplomat in Russia but embarrassing to a diplomat in Austria, due to his sometimes harsh attitudes. In addition to that, he was accused of being servile to Germany. Aehrenthal surveyed European politics from a Russian reactionary angle of vision – he distrusted Liberal States. Germany, however, he respected for its “Realpolitik”. On the other hand, his attitudes towards England and France were that of distrustful contempt qualified by ignorance because both countries were members of another Entente. As the foreign minister of the monarchy, he wanted to restore a greater measure of diplomatic independence of the Habsburg Monarchy. “The League of Three Emperors”, as Steed put it, was intended to defend conservatism and monarchical principals (Steed 228). In order to understand the development toward the Bosnia Crisis of 1908 as a whole, one has to look at the inner problems of the Habsburg Monarchy during the course of time. Since its constitution upheld a dual monarchy, Austria-Hungary had to deal with inner struggles and problems of nationalities. Here, a distinction can be made between nations that existed entirely within the boundaries of the monarchy and nations that existed in parts within the borders, but had their larger parts outside of Austria-Hungary. In case of the latter, another distinction must be made between minorities who wanted an independent national state - as Italians, Serbs, and Rumanians for example - and nations that had no state of their own, as was the case of Poles and Ukrainians. However, German Austrians or Austrian Germans cannot be put in one of these categories. Their situation is partly comparable to that of Italians or Serbs. Some of those Germans were disappointed with their political situation, but, only by remaining in the monarchy, these German Austrians could continue to control other groups, which were economically weaker than themselves. The German Austrians, however, had to recognize the equal rights guaranteed to the Hungarians in a compromise, negotiated in 1867. Together about twenty-two million people, the Germans and the Magyars were inferior in number to twenty-four million Slavs. Among others, the controversies between Magyars and Croats were dangerous for the monarchy because they opened the “Yugoslav question”; a Yugoslav unity or “separation”. Although there were old rivalries that separated Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs, the movement toward a Yugoslav unity was in progress. But, some of the Yugoslavs were under Austria and, therewith, had to face either German or Italian antagonism in at least five different provinces. To solve the problems, politicians even tried to give Yugoslavia a status that would equal that of Austria and Hungary. This, however, was unacceptable for the Germans and Czechs (Bérenger 248,249). At the beginning of the twentieth century, two big political powers existed in Europe. Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy formed the Triple Alliance (Bérenger 218). The countries agreed to support each other if attacked either by France or Russia. France, on the other hand, felt threatened by the Alliance; Britain feared the growth of the German Army. As a result, in 1904 both countries signed a contract known as the Entente Cordiale. Three years later, Russia joined both countries and, subsequently, the Triple Entente was formed (Carlgren 24). Politically, Count Aehrenthal always wanted to extend Austria’s control over the Serbs in the Balkans. Three main events lead to the crisis of 1908. A new King had ascended the throne in Serbia. This King had an anti-Austrian attitude. Moreover, he wanted a unification with his fellow nationals in Bosnia. Also, Russia’s defeats in the Far East had turned its attention back to the Balkans.
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