 Serbian nationalism was an important factor during the Balkan Wars which contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, during and after World War I when it contributed to the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and again during the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.After 1878, Serbian nationalists merged their goals with those of Yugoslavists, and emulated the Piedmont's leading role in the "Risorgimento" of Italy, by claiming that Serbia sought not only to unite all Serbs in one state, but that Serbia intended to be a South Slavic Piedmont that would unite all South Slavs in one state known as Yugoslavia.Serbian nationalists supported a centralized Yugoslav state that guaranteed the unity of the Serbs while resisting efforts to decentralize the state.