The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

by side. These cities enjoyed important privileges granted by the Serbian kings, tsars and despots, and their citizens occupied important positions in the Government service, the ruling princes themselves often visited these districts. The ports plied a busy trade,” ete.’

The Serbian Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), the secular rival of Venice, well known in Western Europe by her wealth and polity, made all her riches by trade with medieval Southern Slav States: Bosnia, Serbia, Zeta, and Macedonia. Dubrovnik had her colonies all over the Balkan Peninsula, and her consuls visited and regularly reported on all important mining and commercial centres in the Southern Slav countries. Her colonies flourished in Great Britain, as is proved by the Ragusan cemetery in Southampton, and in the Low Countries, besides Spain and the Near East. Her vessels plied in all the European seas, bringing the western commodities to Southern Slay countries, and selling in the western markets the raw products of Balkan mining and agricultural industries. The Austrian occupation of Dalmatia has not only strangled the liberty of a commercial republic, independent for twelve centuries, but has killed also the commerce of her ports and obliged a population of the finest sailors in the world to emigrate to the United States, Argentina, and elsewhere.

1 Villari, The Republic of Ragusa, p. 187. 235