Initially Serbia was content to live within its small borders, which encompassed only a fraction of the ethnic Serbian population. Under this same treaty, Serbia was at last recognized by the Great Powers as a fully sovereign state, as the Kingdom of Serbia.

Under the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Austria-Hungary received the mandate to occupy and administer the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina while the Ottoman Empire retained official sovereignty. Neither of the two unified states survived either both have subsequently split along mainly ethnic-linguistic lines into smaller entities although several are now members of the European Union. In an increasingly pluralist and multi-cultural world, finding ways of living together peacefully and of ensuring that no community dominates at the expense of others due to race, creed or to privilege built into the system, is a challenge to which humanity must respond, or face the bitter consequences of inter-civilizational conflict. This raises the question whether, if more freedom and devolved power had been vested in regional assemblies, the larger polity might not have survived. The collapse of the empire, precipitated by Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination, saw a larger multi-cultural empire disintegrate into smaller, more culturally homogeneous nation-states.

He and his ministers, though, were unable to satisfy the demand for more autonomy from the regions. Ironically, Franz Ferdinand's uncle, the reigning Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria had over the years allowed the development of greater democracy. The price Austria paid for suppressing nationalism in its provinces was not only the death of the heir to the throne but the end of the throne itself. A Serb-led union, this was seen by many as a revival of the ancient Serbian Empire, which had been one of the largest states in Europe. Bohemia with its mainly Czech and Slovakian people became independent Czechoslovakia, the union with Hungary came to an end, some territory went to Romania, some to Poland, some to Italy and indeed the Serbian speaking provinces became part of the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia. As a result of its defeat in World War I, these provinces gained independence in various forms.

The Austria-Hungarian empire had been wrestling with the demands of various nationalities within its multi-cultural, multi-linguistic space since the middle of the nineteenth centuries. The bombing and murders of June 28 led to the outbreak of World War I a month later. Serbian military officers are believed to have played a part in organizing the attack. The assassins' motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as 'Young Bosnia'. The political objective of the assassination was to break Austria-Hungary's south-Slav provinces off so they could be combined into a Greater Serbia or a Yugoslavia. On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead (while traveling in an open-topped car) in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six assassins coordinated by Danilo Ilić. A new plaque commemorating the location of the Sarajevo Assassination

Archduke franz ferdinand assassination