1878. ГОДИНА КАО ГРАНИЦА ЕПОХА
THE YEAR 1878 AS A BORDERLINE BETWEEN EPOCHS

Summary/Abstract: In 1878, the international and foreign policy position of Montenegro changed, along with the frame of its national and political activities, the social, economic and culture climate. The political, social, economic and cultural changes which occurred were anticipated, but there was no telling how deep they would be and which course they would take. And an equally important matter is the fact that many changes 1878. година као граница епоха 55 which occurred were not desired, but rather caught the war victors unprepared and forced them to accept them unwillingly. Another unexpected thing was the extremely disadvantageous change in the foreign policy status of Montenegro due to the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the legitimacy of the established Austro-Hungarian control. Montenegro, thus, entered the war focusing primarily on the enemy, and very little, if at all, on the territory it planned to usurp from it. To Montenegro, 1878 was the last year of its “heroic age” and the end of the constitutive and national action, which started in the early 18th century. The officially recognized independence and the largest territorial expansion in its history were the results strived towards for over a century. This age also saw the end of an ideological doctrine, which portrayed the Montenegrins as prisoners of a national legacy and of the Kosovo myth. And finally, the belief in the plausibility of the idea of creating large national empires in the Balkans was forever buried in 1878. In 1878, the circumstances which made real the idea of struggle for national liberation ceased to exist for Montenegrin state policy. The war of 1876 was entered with the idea to liberate the oppressed Serbs, but the war “liberated” the Ottoman authorities, which were not Serbs and were not oppressed. It was an important lesson for the wars which Montenegro was planning to wage. The concept of Montenegro as a national state began to die then, never to be revived again. More specifically, it became clear that, if it wanted further territorial expansion, Montenegro could not wage wars defined as national, nor could it be a national state in the sense which applied in the 19th century. Nevertheless, after the war with the Ottoman Empire, Montenegro gained its realistic boundaries, i.e. borders which allowed for homogenization and harmonization of a state territory.

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