surroundings, developed more slowly. The people who lived along the Save
aspired to control the Dalmatian coast which military and geographical
authorities claim can best be held from the mainland. The people who lived
in Montenegro or along the Morava, which was the gateway to the peninsula,
would naturally expand south and east toward the other cultural center,
Constantinople, and thus seek to dominate the Balkan peninsula. In both
cases, the attraction proved too much for feudal kings and led to the
formation of cosmopolitan empires instead of strong national monarchies.

The kingdoms of Croatia and Serbia thus parted company politically. The
former became a separate kingdom attached to Hungary in 1102 and to the
Habsburg dynasty in 1527, while the Serbs began their expansion under
the Nemanja dynasty late in the twelfth century and almost realized the
dominion over the Balkans under Stephen Du[s]an in the fourteenth century.

This political, geographical, and economic dualism became still greater
when in 1219 the Serbs cast their lot with orthodoxy. The Croats, like the
Slovenes, adopted Roman Catholicism, the Latin alphabet, and the culture of
Rome. The Serbs accepted Greek Orthodoxy, the Cyrillic alphabet, and the
culture of Constantinople.

The Slovenes became a part of the Austrian possessions of the Habsburgs;
the Croats fell under the dominion of the Hungarian crown and the republic
of Venice; and the Serbs succumbed to the Turks by the middle of the
fifteenth century. The loss of political independence brought with it
ultimately the loss of the native nobility, the sole guardians of the
constitutional and historical rights of the nations down into the
nineteenth century in central Europe. In addition, many towns were
Germanized and the middle class disappeared. The Jugo-Slavs, like the
Czecho-Slovaks, appeared in modern times as a nation which had lost its