The new ‘old country’ and its ‘tenth province’: Yugoslav pavilions and the ‘Emigration Question’

ABSTRACT

What can three exhibitions in the 1930s tell us about diaspora nationalism and Yugoslavia? During the interwar period, the newly-formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia struggled to win the loyalty of its overseas population, which it called its ‘tenth province’, through symbolic displays at World Fairs and International expositions in the United States. Although initially emigrant activists controlled these exhibitions, over the decade the Yugoslav foreign service took control. By analyzing this power struggle, I unravel how both the homeland and the host country shape the expression and presentation of diaspora nationalism.

KEYWORDS:

• National identity
• diaspora
• World Fairs
• Expos
• Yugoslavia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ethan Larson is a PhD Candidate at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. His research interests include the politics of diaspora, emigration, and asylum, along with national movements in Southeastern Europe.

Notes

1 A note on language. In this article, I say ‘Yugoslav’ to refer to the idea that there is a national community of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes possessing a common ‘Yugoslav’ culture. Yugoslav without quotation marks refers to the state/government of Yugoslavia and its citizens, or as a convenient shorthand to refer to South Slavs without having to say Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes every time. While Montenegrins, Macedonians, Bosnians, and Bulgarians are also Southern Slavs, they were either excluded from the imagined ‘Yugoslav’ national community (in the case of the Bulgarians and Macedonians) or counted as one of the other nationalities (in the case of Bosnians and Montenegrins) by contemporaries in the 1930s. Lastly, when quoting from English language sources I use the archaic spelling ‘Jugoslav’, but when I translate from Serbo-Croatian sources I use the modern spelling ‘Yugoslav’.

2 King Alexander’s royal predecessor, King Peter (1844–1921) led Serbia to victory in World War I, ‘liberated’ the South Slavs from their Hapsburg rulers, and presided over the creation of Yugoslavia, before dying of old age.

3 California was isolated from the bulk of the ‘tenth banovina’ in the Midwest. Ivan Mladineo’s 1931 tally put the number of Yugoslavs in California at 26,000, compared to 172,000 for Pennsylvania, 102,000 for Ohio, 80,000 for Illinois, 44,000 for Michigan, and 35,000 for New York.

4 She spells her name inconsistently.

5 A consular report from 1936 noted that support of the monarchy was restricted to the tenth banovina’s Serbian population, who accounted for 20% of all Yugoslavs overseas, and a subsection of conservative Slovenes, who accounted for 30% of the diaspora population. As for the Croats, who made up 50%, almost all opposed the regime, although only a very small minority supported Croatian ultranationalist movements like the Ustaša, the rest favoring either the Communists or the Croatian Peasant Party, who both were pro-Yugoslav but anti-monarchy.

6 A stringed instrument popular in Southeastern Europe.

7 As it was regarded during the interwar period.