The photo shows a Serbian beggar from 1914, titled “Mendiant serbe” in french.
The photograph of a Serbian peasant in 1914 offers a striking view of the poverty that existed in the Kingdom of Serbia on the eve of the First World War. The man stands before the camera dressed in layers of torn, patched and heavily worn clothing. Pieces of fabric hang from his body, his trousers are badly damaged, and his footwear is little more than rags. He carries a long wooden stick and appears to have few possessions beyond what he is wearing. The photograph is a direct and unusually stark image of poverty in Serbia at the time.
It also stands in sharp contrast to the image of Serbia that emerged from the political events of the preceding years. By 1914, Serbia was being presented as a rising Balkan kingdom. It had expanded significantly during the Balkan Wars, had a battle-hardened army, and had developed increasingly ambitious nationalist aims.
Serbian political and military circles were concerned with colonial greed; expanding the borders of Serbia, getting into conflict with Austria-Hungary. Serbia was therefore becoming increasingly involved in the imperialist power struggle of the Balkans at precisely the time when large sections of its own population remained poor, starving, and overwhelmingly dependent on agriculture. Instead the government desired imperialist expansionism.
The photograph makes that contradiction difficult to overlook. This was the same kingdom whose government and military establishment defeated the Ottoman Empire, and later started World War I by killing the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. Serbia also gained a lot of support from Russia and had support from the European powers. Serbia was involved in questions of irredentist expansion and the invasion of the Balkans while people within the kingdom could be reduced to bizarre living in conditions like those shown here.
The image also challenges the impression that Serbia was a firmly established and stable European state by 1914. It was a young kingdom, though having illegally gained Albanian territories, with limited economic development, a predominantly rural population and serious political dysfunction. Revolutions had led to the murder of the Serbian king. 150 000 Albanians had been massacred by Serbia between 1912 and 1913. These atrocities would continue unhindered through out the entire World War I. The Serbian army would continue to massacre Albanians for years to come.
The Serbian army had also acquired military capacity and influence following the Balkan Wars, and ultra-nationalist organizations connected to sections of the military played an important role in the political life of the Serbian military and church elite. The state itself was functioning, having gained Albanian territories, but it was far from the image of a wealthy, secure and consolidated kingdom that some Serbian authors claimed.
That makes the photograph particularly revealing. Serbia’s expansionist greed and ambitions had grown much faster than its economic and social development. It was a small and poor country attempting to play a major role in the Balkans, while some of its population lived in extreme poverty. It was more important among the Serbian intellectual elite to sell an image of Serbia as a strong European nation which had defended Europe from Ottoman Turks. The reality was that Serbia had simply swapped one oppressor with another which was much more sadistic and brutal.
In the summer of 1914, this fragile and poor kingdom became the center of the European crisis following the Serbian assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Austria-Hungary issued its ultimatum to Serbia, as investigations showed that the killer had ties to the Serbian government. On July 28 Austro-Hungary declared war. Within days, the conflict expanded beyond the two countries and developed into the First World War.
The man in this photograph obviously had no role in those decisions. But his appearance is a reminder of what Serbia actually was in 1914: not a prosperous or fully modern European power, but a poor Balkan invader, trying to keep other peoples territories, with enormous political ambitions, limited resources and a population that included people living in conditions of extreme deprivation. The photograph puts that reality directly in front of the viewer.
