Henry Baerlein’s second volume on the formation of Yugoslavia continues his on-the-ground account of the turbulent post-war negotiations, territorial disputes, and ethnic tensions that accompanied the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918. Baerlein travelled widely through the Balkans and writes with the authority of a close observer of the Paris Peace Conference and its consequences.
The book offers an invaluable contemporary perspective on the successor states carved from the Habsburg and Ottoman empires and the intractable national questions they inherited — questions that would shape European history for the rest of the century.