The Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the Peace Conference and its Aftermaths

Abstract

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia grew out of Serbia's victory in the Great War on the side of the Entente Powers, emerging from the ruins of the Habsburg Empire, and constituting perhaps the most complex state in Europe in terms of its ethnic, religious, and cultural make-up. This was a consequence of the mixture of Habsburg and Ottoman legacies, since the north-western parts of Yugoslavia had formed part of the Habsburg Empire for centuries. Serbia as well as Montenegro, meanwhile, had carved their independence out of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. To illustrate the complexities that Yugoslavia had to deal with, it should be noted that the country inherited and had to digest six different customs jurisdictions, five currencies, five railway networks, and three separate banking systems