Killing Nationalism with Liberalism? Austria–Hungary and the Serbian Constitution of 1869

Based on material from the Hungarian archives hitherto unpublished in English, this article examines the contribution Austro–Hungarian diplomacy made to the approval, by the Ottoman government, of a new constitution for its vassal-state Serbia in 1869. The episode reflects the emergence of a Hungarian influence on the Habsburg Monarchy's policy towards Russia, the Ottoman Balkans, and especially Serbia in the years immediately following the Ausgleich of 1867. Hungarian Minister-President Count Gyula Andrássy, through the new Austro–Hungarian consul in Belgrade, Benjámin Kállay, lobbied Vienna to support the new constitution. He did so in the hope that a more liberal political system in Serbia would impede the Serbian government's tendency to foment nationalist unrest within the Habsburg Monarchy and distract Belgrade from its policy of territorial expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire.