Though formally established only in 1911- the Black Hand cast its
shadow long before. It engaged mostly in propaganda and in the
seeding of armed bands in Macedonia prior to the two Balkan wars.
Its biggest achievement was probably the inception of numerous
revolutionary cells among the Serbs of Bosnia.
The longer and more thorough the meddling, the more the languid
relationship between Austria and Serbia deteriorated. The former
imposed tariffs on the exports of the latter in an aptly named "Pig
War". As Serb subversion intensified in Bosnia, Austria annexed it
and Herzegovina outright discarding the pretence of autonomy it has
maintained. Stymied in one border - the Serbs reverted to another.
The Illinden uprising ignited Slav imagination. Serbia has long
hungered after its slice of a dismembered Macedonia and Thrace in a
banquet attended by both Bulgaria and Greece. But the fresh
atrocities - not devoid of religious and ethnic dimensions - endowed
the whole endeavour with an aura of a holy war. This delirium was
further stoked by the apparent disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
following the revolution of the Young Turks in 1908. Yet, in its
drang nach suden, Serbia found itself once more entangled with the
Austrians who had their own designs on Macedonia and Novi Pazar.
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