Ian Armour has written an admirable book on an intriguing aspect of nineteenth-century Habsburg–Serbian relations. Although this subject is not wholly unknown to historians, here it is illuminated with a wealth of interesting detail and thought-provoking interpretations. At its core is the “Bosnian scheme” (3), whereby the Hungarian prime minister and later imperial foreign minister Gyula Andrássy and his protégé Benjámin Kállay, Austro-Hungarian consul-general in Belgrade, promised to support Serbia gaining control over most of Bosnia-Herzegovina (under Turkish suzerainty), while Serbia would bind herself to the Habsburg monarchy, not Russia, and abstain from supporting the Balkan insurrection or Hungary's South Slavs. Conceived independently of the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister Friedrich von Beust, such a Hungarian–Serb agreement would strengthen newly autonomous Hungary's position in an uncertain climate while making Bosnia, in Kállay's phrase, an “apple of discord” (70) between Serbs and Croats. Kállay is indeed a central figure in the book. Ten of the twelve chapters that follow its historiographical introduction explore the Bosnian issue between 1867 and 1871. Further volumes on Habsburg–Serb relations are planned to extend the story to 1903 and then 1914.

The present volume, exploiting extensive archival resources and Kállay's revealing diary, has the density characteristic of diplomatic history. It is relieved, however, by the abundance of fascinating detail, Armour's skill in narration and dissection of diplomatic exchanges, and his trenchant comments on a story yielding, he claims, “a lesson in Realpolitik, but also a sort of morality tale” (xix). Andrássy and Kállay's calculations, he argues, were unrealistic and often disingenuously manipulative; the mutual disillusionment that accompanied their failure helped to poison relations between the monarchy and Serbia down to 1914. The Bosnian scheme involved arrière-pensées in so many directions that it was self-defeating, undermining Kállay's Serbophile credentials with Belgrade. His and Andrássy's obsessive Russophobia was not in the monarchy's interests, which were best served in periods of entente with Russia. A high-handed disregard for judicial process and readiness to resort to bribery and threats of force to ensure Serbian compliance are amply documented in the case of Kállay, who later became architect of the secret Austro-Serb treaty of 1881. This pact reduced Serbia to satellite status, and imposed a long-serving anti-Serb administrator of Habsburg Bosnia. Thus, though Armour is no friend of Serb nationalism, he concludes, in contrast to Christopher Clark, that it was Austro-Hungarian pursuit of “an unattainable control” that motivated the 1881 treaty (xx). Moreover, this impetus led to the misconceived reliance on the unpopular Obrenoviċ dynasty, which led to the “final explosion” of 1903 and Serbian determination to break the “stranglehold” (311).

Should historians be in the business of telling “morality tale[s]”? For this reviewer, Armour is legitimately pointing out that Andrássy and Kállay's Serbian policy was a Realpolitik undone by dubious assumptions and methods. It is the direction of the failure that is particularly interesting. In the context of an age inclined to look askance at nationalism's disruptive potential, Armour's book is a reminder of the disruptive potential of large states' sense of entitlement to domination over small ones. It takes a line, but its scholarly thoroughness opens the possibility for debate concerning the exploitative nature of Austro-Serb trade relations. It is surely right to take down, in Kállay, a figure overpraised in the imperial heyday. If the “unmitigated disaster” of his Serbian policy (2; emphasis added) rather sweepingly discounts interim successes—the Bosnian scheme did help divide the Belgrade government from Croats and Hungarian Serbs at a crucial time—ultimately the verdict holds.

The book provides illuminating contemporary comments on Hungarian Balkan policy, particularly from the Habsburg ambassador in Constantinople, Anton von Prokesch-Osten, and from Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck observed in 1871 that Andrássy would bolster Hungary's position better through good relations with Germany and Russia than through deals with weak states like Serbia and Romania, for Russia would always have the stronger cards. This more plausible Realpolitik anticipated the Three Emperors' League. Hungarian schemes, indeed, arguably combined the worst of both worlds: the arrogance of great power imperialism, shared by Austrian diplomats like Haymerle and Kálnoky, and the phobias of ethnic nationalism. The monarchy's paranoia about tiny Serbia (though not a mere “thousand square kilometres”! [34])—incidentally, Jovan Ristiċ emerges as a shrewd and tenacious politician—was heightened by specifically Hungarian concerns for Magyar regional dominance vis-à-vis peoples only slightly less numerous, if at all. Here the role of the German question of the late 1860s—Hungarian fear of Greater Austrian action against a still unconsolidated dualism—may also merit more background mention, linking the material to the related issue of the Military Border. Beust's Balkan policy and his much-discussed attitude toward the Bosnian scheme, however, receive full attention, explaining his ultimate acquiescence in terms of Andrássy's influence with Francis Joseph. The parallel with Kállay's dependence on Milan Obrenoviċ suggests the thinness of the Hungarian liberalism to which he and his chief originally subscribed, though the difficulties they faced in an age of competing nationalisms, their own included, were of course great. Professor Armour conveys the spirit of this age with impressive scholarship, allied to cogent analysis.