Original scientific paper
ROBERT WILLIAM SETON-WATSON AND THE YUGOSLAV QUESTION
Hugh Seton-Watson
Abstract
Robert William Seton-Watson (1879—1951), the son of a Scottish business-man and landowner, studied History in the university of Oxford, and after some years of further study in Berlin, Paris and Florence, came to Vienna in the autumn of 1905. Not being obliged to earn his living, he proposed to devote himself to historical writing, and the subject which most attracted his interest was Austria-Hungary. He began his studies with great admiration for the Habsburg dynasty and for the Monarchy as a factor of European peace, as well as with a strong belief in Austro-British friendship. His respect for Emperor Franz Joseph was however limited by his sympathy, as a Scottish liberal, for the aspirations of the Hungarian liberals, whose struggle against Vienna was at its height at the time of his arrival.
In the summer of 1906 he made a journey through Hungary, and became more keenly aware of the problems of the non-Magyar nations. He had revealing conversations not only with Magyar politicians but also with leaders of the Roumanians and of the Vojvodina Serbs. In 1907 he made a second visit to Hungary, and met the leaders of the Slovaks, with whom he was first brought into contact by the help of the Austrian -socialist leader Karl Renner. His Book Racial Problems in Hungary, published in 1908, was violently attacked by Magyar polemists, but won him a good reputation in Austria as -well as in the English-speaking countries. In 1908 he visited Zagreb and Belgrade, in 1909 Dalmatia and Montenegro and in 1910 Bosnia and Hercegovina. The result of these journeys, and also of much study of books and the press, was his book The South Slav Question, published in 1911.
His attitude to the Monarchy was profoundly affected by his personal observation of the Zagreb Treason Trial and the Friedjung Trial, which convinced him that sinister forces were influencing Austrian foreign policy. He was aware of the growing desire of many of his South Slav friends to break away from the Monarchy. Nevertheless he continued to hope that the Monarchy would survive, partly because he believed that the best hope for the Slovaks and Roumanians vas to obtain Austrian support against Magyar oppression, and partly because he placed hopes in the heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand as a reformer. However, the Archduke's assassination and the outbreak of the First World War put an end to these hopes, and from this time onwards Seton-Watson worked for the establishment of a Yugoslav state.
During the war he and his friends Wickham Steed, Sir Arthur Evans and Ronald Burrows worked closely with the Yugoslav Committee, especially with Supilo and Trumbić. He had close and cordial relations also with many leading figures of the Kingdom of Serbia, especially with Cvijić, Jovan Jovanović and Bogdan and Pavle Popović. However, his relations with Pašić deteriorated. During the summer and autumn of 1918 the influential review New Europe, edited by Seton-Watson, strongly supported the Yugoslav Committee against Pašić. Seton-Watson also, together with Steed, worked tirelessly, though unfortunately without success, for a just settlement between Yugoslavs and Italians. He opposed the Treaty of London, helped to organise the Rome Congress of April 1918, and vas one of the originators of the "Wilson Line" proposal at the Paris Peace Conference.
After 1918 Seton-Watson, now an university professor without any official position, nevertheless exercised some influence by his writings and by his personal friendships and contacts. He consistently worked for equality and friendship between the peoples of Yugoslavia. This brought him into frequent conflict with both Greater Serbian and Greater Croatian nationalists. During the last thirty years of his life he had many political disappointments as well as some successes, but he never lost his affection for the Yugoslavs or his confidence in their future.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
166575
URI
Publication date:
1.3.1971.
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