The question was whether the considerable Slovene-speaking majority in the state's southeastern region, adjoining the Karawanks range, would carry the vote for union with Austria or whether that majority wished to join a newly created South Slavic state. This was to a large extent a consequence of rising romantic nationalism under the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy and the idea of an autonomy of the "Slovene lands", referring to the early medieval Slavic principality of Carantania, which had perished in the ninth century. A common state with other southern Slavic peoples seemed the most acceptable compromise toward fulfillment of nationalist strivings.