European Diplomacy and Nationalism in the Balkans, 1878 - 1914

At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Hapsburg Empire allied with Germany. These two powers were later joined by Italy to create the Triple Alliance. In 1904, France, Britain and Russia formed the Triple Entente. These two power-blocs competed for control over Africa and for the southeastern part of Europe, known as the Balkans. This territory is located south of the Danube from Greece to the Anatolian Peninsula. It was of strategic importance in the early 1900s to both Russia and the Austrian Empire, because it provided access to the Mediterranean Sea and thus to the rest of the world.

From the 1500s to the late 19th century, the Balkans were under the control of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was much like the Hapsburg Empire, in that it established one government that ruled over a vast territory on which lived many different nationalities. Like the Hapsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire in the later 1800s had lost much of its military power. By the 1870s, the Ottoman Empire was so weak that it had become known as the "sick man of Europe." This weakness encouraged nationalists in some of the formerly independent countries of the Balkans to call for their people to rise up and regain their long-lost independence from the Ottoman Empire. Such nationalist movements were particularly evident the regions of Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.