Nicholas J. Miller's work is the first in English to focus on the Serbian community of Croatia, examining the political alternatives faced by Serbian political leaders in Croatia before 1914. During this time, Serbs and Croats living in Croatia formed the Croat-Serbian Coalition and attempted to overcome their mutual suspicion and work together to gain autonomy for Croatia.

Miller argues that their failure contributed mightily to their inability to establish a civic/democratic tradition in interwar Yugoslavia. The cleavages - political, ethnic, and regional - that Miller analyzes are still relevant today. While the core of the book focuses on the behavior of two Serbian parties in Croatian politics between 1903 and 1914, in his conclusion Miller carries the story of the Serbian community of Croatia to their forced exile from Croatia in 1995.