English title: Allies in war, adversaries in peacetime: a perspective on the „Banat problem” in Romania and Serbia
Issue: 1/2023
Pages: 179-195
Language: Romanian
Author: Daniel LAZĂR
Abstract:
As parts of the Paris-Versailles Peace System, Romania and Serbia had to manage a whole amount of contentious territorial issues stemming from the post-war reconfiguration of Central and South-Eastern Europe. All based on the new paradigm of international relations: the principle of nationalities. Seen from this angle, the Banat Problem became a subject of regional dispute between Romania and Serbia before, during and after Peace Conference, detaching and individualizing itself in the context of similar disputes on the continent.
Two defining elements contributed to this: the degree of diversity of the province’s ethnic composition, as well as its dual claim – from the point of view of the position of future “regional powers” that the governments in Bucharest and Belgrade already attributed to their own states, in consolidation course. Under these auspices, the Peace Conference was to take a decision regarding the Banat. The fate of Romania’s claims was in the hands of the Territorial Commission.
Keywords: Romania, Serbia, Banat, World War I, Peace Conference, I.I.C. Brătianu, Nikola Pašić, Territorial Commission