Transnationale Allianzen und Ethnisierung für die Anerkennung Jugoslawiens: Nationale Konstruktionen eines Autorenkollektivs um den Publizisten Milan Ćurčin (1919)

Abstract

This article examines the construction of a Yugoslav nation in Great Britain against the background of the Paris Peace Conferences at the end of the First World War. It examines the ethnicisation strategies of a group of authors who aimed for the British recognition of a Yugoslav state and long-term British-Yugoslav relations. The British and South Slavic authors of the published articles used art to convey their idea of nationhood, as in an artist’s portrait of the Croatian sculptor, Ivan Meštrović, which is taken into focus as source. It is argued that they drew on nationalist narratives with which British readers could identify themselves, and constructed the Yugoslav nation akin to imaginings of a British one. The contributions collected by Serbian publicist Milan Ćurčin as editor are contextualized within a discourse about the European post-war order. Their strategies of ethnicisation show the mutability of ideas of nationhood as well as the purposeful actions of nationalist actors who adapted their constructions to the existing political power relations and their audience.