5. Serbia Was a “Problem” Country Long Before the Breakup of Yugoslavia
The Serbian Black Hand’s founders first came together in 1903. That year, a group of junior officers, led by then-Captain Dragutin Dimitrijevic, later known as Apis, launched a bloody coup that culminated in the murder of the Serbian king and queen. The murder of royals shocked the era’s genteel sensibilities and cemented Serbia’s status as a “problem” country. In 1908, following Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, an act Serbia resented, the 1903 conspirators met with senior Serb officials to found a secret pan-Serbian organization. Its goal was to liberate Serbs living under foreign rule via a campaign of propaganda, sabotage, terrorism, and other clandestine means.
The following year, a furious Austria-Hungary forced Serbia, under threat of war, to abandon those activities. The Serbs did not stay cowed for long, however. In 1911, the Black Hand was established to resume the abandoned anti-Austro-Hungarian clandestine campaign, oversee its activities, and establish and coordinate nationalist revolutionary cells in Bosnia. The organization trained guerrillas, saboteurs, propagandists, and assassins, and sent them into the Hapsburg empire to destabilize it with terrorism and stir up nationalism and resentment among its Serbian subjects.
