Yugoslav Committee

Yugoslav Committee (Jugoslavenski/Jugoslovenski odbor) was a political interest group formed by South Slavs from Austria-Hungary during World War I aimed at joining the existing south Slavic nations in an independent state. Founding members included: Frano Supilo Ante Trumbić Ivan Meštrović Hinko Hinković Franko Potočnjak Nikola Stojanović Dušan Vasiljević Supilo, Trumbić and Meštrović were Croats from the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Hinković and Potočnjak were Croats from the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, while Stojanović and Vasiljević were Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yugoslav Committee's initial gathering happened in late 1914 in Florence while the committee was officially formed on 30 April 1915 in the Parisian Hotel Madisson. As Britain was the leader of the Entente, London was chosen as the headquarters of the Committee. The president was Ante Trumbić. In 1915, there were 17 members in the Committee, of which 11 from the Croatian and Dalmatian littoral regions. During that year, the Committee formed branches in Paris, Geneva, St. Peterburg, Cleveland, Valparaiso and Washington. Their liaisons in the homeland were the United Yugoslav Youth, an illegal youth organisation formed in 1914 in Vienna (within Austria-Hungary), and the Government of the Kingdom of Serbia. Their relationship with the Serbian official politics was seen by the Committee members as necessary, but strained because of their occasionally conflicting political stances. The Committee reacted negatively to Nikola Pašić's government open courting of Italy in 1916, which had said that Serbia recognized the Italian hegemony over the Adriatic and particularly the naval bases. Later the same year, they learnt of a memorandum by the Serbian government to the British where they explicitly staked a claim on various territories of Austria-Hungary where there were Serb Orthodox monasteries. However, they could not come to an agreement on that issue, and Frano Supilo left the Yugoslav Committee on 5 June 1916. He died the following year.