the rivers
and the Dinaric ridges--combined with divergent political and economic
possibilities, produced a dualism. The Croats on the Save and its
tributaries naturally expanded westward and aspired to closer
connection with the sea where their struggle with the remnants of
Roman civilization and a superior culture absorbed their energies.
They developed out of their tribal state more quickly, while the Serbs,
further inland and amid more difficult 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 native nobility and had been reduced to a disarmed, untutored, and
enserfed peasantry. In the absence of