Background
Trumbić was born in Split in the Austro-Hungarian crownland of Dalmatia and studied law at Zagreb, Vienna and Graz (with doctorate in 1890).
Trumbić was born in Split in the Austro-Hungarian crownland of Dalmatia and studied law at Zagreb, Vienna and Graz (with doctorate in 1890).
He practiced as a lawyer, and then, from 1905 as the city mayor of Split. Trumbić was in favor of moderate reforms in Austro-Hungarian Slavic provinces, which included the unification of Dalmatia with Croatia-Slavonia.
He soon emerged as a leader of the Croatian nationalist movement, elected to the Dalmatian Diet in 1895 and the Austrian Parliament two years later. In 1905 he won election as mayor of Split. A Croat living in the relatively benign political circumstances in the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire, Trumbic only gradually moved away from moderation. He came late to the cause of Croatian separatism and to the parallel movement for a South Slav state combining the southern provinces of Austria-Hungary with the kingdom of Serbia. In 1905, for example, despite the harsh conditions under which Croats had to live in the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy, Trumbic launched a futile attempt to bring together Croatian and local Serb leaders to meet with Hungarian political figures.
By the eve of World War I, Trumbic was convinced of the need to escape Habsburg control entirely. In early August 1914, he fled to Rome, where, along with Frano Supilo, he came to lead the community of South Slav exiles from the Habsburg Empire. While Supilo traveled widely, Trumbic maintained links with dissidents back home. In May Trumbic and Supilo set up a Yugoslav Committee in London, with Trumbic serving as chairman. The group claimed to represent the true wishes of the repressed South Slav peoples of the Dual Monarchy. Official Allied policy, however, did not yet envision the end of Austria-Hungary, and the Serbian government under Premier Nikola Pasic viewed the Yugoslav Committee with alarm. Pasic insisted Serbia spoke for all the South Slavs, and he looked to a postwar Serbia strengthened by the annexation of southern provinces of the Habsburg Empire. Trumbic's committee nonetheless began a propaganda campaign picturing Austria-Hungary as a jail for oppressed Slavs. Financial support from South Slav émigrés in North and South America made the Yugoslav Committee, despite its unofficial status, hard to ignore.
The intractable problem of policy toward Pasic's Serbia led to a split between Trumbic and Supilo. Trumbic was willing to defer a clear agreement with the Serbian premier over the form a future Yugoslavia might take. In mid-1916 the issue became critical. Supilo insisted on a clear Serbian commitment to a federalist state; disappointed, he left the Yugoslav Committee to work for an independent Croatia. Trumbic was hardly more optimistic. In the winter of 1916/1917 he prepared to give up the struggle and to emigrate to Latin America. There he intended to drive a taxicab!
The Russian Revolution changed the picture. Pasic had lost his firmest foreign ally. The United States entered the war, raising hopes or in Pasic's case, fears American influence would promote the for mation of a united South Slav state. Trumbic and other exile leaders were invited to meet Pasic on Corfu to sketch out a compromise plan for future unity: Trumbic gained Serbian agreement to a united country in which all citizens would be equal. But he failed to move Pasic to pledge clearly to form a federation, and Croatian nationalist historians still condemn Trumbic for this omission.
The Croatian leader found Pasic lukewarm in implementing the Corfu agreement. The premier pursued the dream of outright territorial gains for Serbia, even though he had to appease Entente circles friendly to Trumbic's position. Trumbic found his other major problem in Rome. Italian foreign policy looked to territorial gains along the Adriatic coast. Trumbic spent much of the final year of the war trying to win Italian agreement to the creation of Yugoslavia. Following the debacle at Caporetto, Premier Vittorio Orlando met Trumbic halfway. At Orlando's suggestion an anti-Habsburg gathering of refugee leaders, the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities, met in Rome during April 1918. Trumbic was persuaded not to raise the explosive issue of the future border between Italy and Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, he appealed with some success to South Slav troops to refuse to fight in the Austrian army; Italian planes dropped Trumbic's leaflets calling for an independent Yugoslavia over the southern provinces of the Dual Monarchy.
As the war rushed to a close Trumbic found his efforts to gain official recognition for the Yugoslav Committee stymied by Pasic. Despite Pasic's declining role in Serbian affairs in November 1918, the new kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes did not meet Trumbic's hopes for a federation. Appointed the nation's first foreign minister, Trumbic left at once for the Paris Peace Conference, where the issue of the Yugoslav frontier with Italyevaded during the war had to be faced.
At Paris, Trumbic clashed repeatedly with Pasic, also a member of the Yugoslav delegation. Trumbic proved an effective emissary; carefully timed and skillful appeals to Woodrow Wilson bolstered the Yugoslav position against the Italians. By early 1920, however, Wilson was gone; the French and the British were supporting the Italian demands; and Trumbic's health was collapsing. In the end, he negotiated the Treaty of Rapallo with the Italians; it was signed on November 12, 1920. Trumbic at least succeeded in limiting Rome's claims, notably in regard to Dalmatia.
Trumbic then turned to domestic affairs. He served in the Yugoslav Parliament in the 1920s. Like many other Croats, he found himself disillusioned by the workings of a Serb-dominated central government, far distant from his wartime hopes. By 1929 Yugoslavia was under a royal dictatorship and Trumbic's career was in shambles. He bitterly expressed doubts about the wisdom of breaking from the shelter of the Habsburg Empire in 1918. Trumbic died in Zagreb (formerly Agram), November 18, 1938.