Alexander I (of Yugoslavia)

Alexander I (of Yugoslavia) (1888-1934), king of Yugoslavia (1921-1934), second son of Peter I Karadjordjević of Serbia. Alexander became Crown Prince of Serbia in 1909, upon the renunciation of the succession by his brother George. Alexander served in the Serbian army in the first Balkan War (1912) and in World War I. In 1918 he became Prince Regent of the newly established kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and three years later he became king. Disorders in the kingdom, arising chiefly from the Croatian autonomy movement, caused him to dismiss parliament in 1929, to abolish the constitution, and to set up a royal dictatorship. To emphasize the unity that he hoped to enforce, he changed the name of the kingdom to Yugoslavia, meaning “Land of the South Slavs” in Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. On October 9, 1934, while on an official visit to France, Alexander and Louis Barthou, the French foreign minister, were assassinated by a Croatian nationalist. Alexander was succeeded by his son, Peter II.