Like the Lord Lieutenant of a County”

On the basis of largely neglected Hungarian sources and Austrian archival material, this article argues that, with the emergence of a “Hungarian factor” in Habsburg foreign policy after 1867, policy towards Serbia increasingly relied on the Monarchy’s personal hold over Prince Milan Obrenović. This strategy in turn can be seen as part of a Hungarian surrogate “imperialism,” through which the Habsburg Monarchy would enhance Hungary’s security through hegemony in the Danubian basin. The policy was eventually consolidated in 1880–1881 by a series of treaties which made Serbia an economic and political satellite of the Monarchy, but the linch-pin of the structure remained Milan Obrenović. Milan, however, proved an imperfect instrument since he loathed Serbia, was unpopular because of his obvious subservience to Austro-Hungarian interests, and longed for the fleshpots of Western Europe. The article suggests that such a “personal policy” was increasingly unlikely to succeed after the granting of a more liberal constitution to Serbia in 1869, and as the country became politically a more complex society. The article thus demonstrates the essentially futile nature of this exercise in personal diplomacy, and the inherent impossibility of controlling an entire society through the person of its ruler

Constitution · Constitutional monarchy · Convertibility · Diplomacy · Economic history · Economics · Foreign policy · Hegemony · Monarchy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Ruler · Sociology · Balkan and Eastern European Studies · History · Law