Revolutions and Resurrected States

Abstract

Once the Balkan populations were exposed to ethnonational concepts, it was only a matter of time before they actively attempted to attain some measure of group self-governance within the multiethnic empires that they inhabited. While autonomy initially was acceptable to many of the new nationalists, outright ethnonational independence was the ideal goal of most. Neither the Ottomans nor the Habsburgs could hope to satisfy such aspirations and still escape the likely internal dissolution and ultimate collapse of their respective states. Given that situation, revolutionary action was seen as the only alternative by most Balkan nationalists. National revolutionary activity began among the Serbs and the Greeks during the opening decades of the nineteenth century amid chaotic conditions in the Ottoman Empire’s provinces. The Revolution of 1848–49 in the Habsburg Empire offered the principality Romanians an opportunity to break free of titular Ottoman vassalage and Russian occupation. All three revolutionary movements eventually succeeded in establishing new states grounded in Western European ethnonational principles.