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Arthur J. Evans in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1875 revolt
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Università degli Studi di Padova
Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue Moderne per la Comunicazione e la Cooperazione Internazionale
Classe LM-38
Tesi di Laurea
Relatore Prof. Francesco Giacobelli
Laureando Jelena Ottaviani
n° matr.621130 / LMLCC
Arthur J. Evans in Bosnia and Herzegovina
during the 1875 revolt
Anno Accademico 2011 / 2012
1
Content
Introduction 5
I. The historical overview of Bosnia and Herzegovina
1. Medieval Bosnia
2. Ottoman Bosnia
2.1 The origins of the Ottoman Empire
2.2 The Ottoman system
2.3 Bosnia Herzegovina under Ottoman rule
3. Ottoman decline
3.1 The destabilization of the Ottoman Empire
3.2 Effects of Ottoman decline in Bosnia and Hercegovina
3.3 Ottoman reforms and the Tanzimat period
3.4 Tanzimat effects in Bosnia and Herzegovina
II. The 1875 revolt
1. The situation of the peasants in Bosnia and Herzegovina
2. Influence of Croatian and Serbian nationalism in Bosnia
3. The international situation and Bosnia and Herzegovina
4. The 1875 revolt and the relations between Britain and Bosnia and
Herzegovina
2
III. Arthur J. Evans in Bosnia and Herzegovina
1. Arthur J. Evans
2. Arthur J. Evans and British travel writing on Bosnia and
Herzegovina
3. Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and
September 1875
4. Arthur J. Evans and the 1875 revolt
Conclusion
Bibliography
3
4
English travelers are the best and the worst in the world. Where no motives of
pride or interest intervene, none can equal them for profound and philosophical views
of society, or faithful and graphical descriptions of external objects; but when either the
interest or reputation of their own country comes in collision with that of another, they
go to the opposite extreme, and forget their usual probity and candor, in the indulgence
of splenetic remark, and an illiberal spirit of ridicule.
Hence, their travels are more honest and accurate, the more remote the country
described.
Washington Irving
5
Introduction
The most striking feature of Bosnia and Herzegovina in
today is its predominantly Muslim population. The English public opinion discovered
Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1870s, when Arthur J. Evans in his
travelogues and writings depicted the Islamic nature of the country, perceiving it as its
most distinguishable trait. By 1463 a powerful new empire came to dominate Bosnia
and most
during the centuries under the Ottoman Islamic rule. To properly understand the
importance of the Ottoman inheritance we shall briefly go through the most important
events of the conquest and the rule of the Ottoman Empire in Bosnia and in the Balkans,
but we shall also see how the conquerors found Bosnia when Mehmet II eventually
overran it in the second half of the fifteenth century.
When the Ottoman Empire was at its highest, Bosnia and Herzegovina
developed economically and flourished culturally under the Ottoman dominion. In
Bosnia the Ottomans established a multicultural empire where non-Muslims, despite
being underprivileged and paying extra taxes, were given large degrees of autonomy in
administration and religion, and success in the Ottoman government and administration
was possible if they converted to Islam, regardless of the ethnicity. However, when the
Ottoman Empire began its decline in the middle of the sixteenth century, the situation in
Bosnia got worse. The Ottoman Empire was undergoing a crisis in government,
administration and economy and, as a consequence, the citizens and peasants lost their
privileges. They were victims of corruption and obliged to pay exorbitantly high taxes
to the Ottoman government, to the Catholic and Orthodox religious institutions and to
6
the local landowning nobility who escaped central control from Constantinople and
became strong and independent. In an attempt to halt the decline of the empire, the
Ottoman government introduced a series of Western-inspired reforms, called Tanzimat,
to recover political power in the provinces and save the economy and finances. The
Muslim population of Bosnia strongly opposed the reforms, and only through military
intervention the Ottoman government managed to regain power. However, the Tanzimat
reformers failed to solve most critical problem: the agrarian reform. They did
not lessen change the difficult
relationship between the peasants and landowners. The land was mainly owned by
Muslim landowners, who mercilessly exploited the peasants who worked on it and
whose condition resembled that of medieval serfs, forced to pay high taxes both in
money and in kind, and expected to render any kind of service to their landlord when
requested.
The situation got particularly critical in1875 when the relentless financial
pressure, despite the comple caused an armed
protest of the peasants against the agrarian system, demanding the redistribution of the
lands owned by landlords, fair taxes and tax collection system. Only later, when Serbs,
Croats and Montenegrins joined the Bosnian insurgents, the insurrection became a national war
for the liberation of the South Slavs from Ottoman domination. The revolt lasted three years
and was brought to an end only through the diplomacy of the Great Powers that
culminated in the 1878 Congress of Berlin, where it was decided that Bosnia and
Herzegovina would be occupied by Austria-Hungary.
The insurrection had a vast echo in the European political circles and was
followed with great attention because of the conflicting interests of the Great Powers in
7
the area. In England the Liberal leader Gladstone used it for his election campaign,
which eventually led his party to power in 1880. He advocated the end of Ottoman
domination in the Balkan Peninsula and the independence of the South Slavs, thus
reverting the long British tradition in foreign policy which supported the integrity and
inviolability of the Ottoman Empire.
In the 1870s, and especially in the year of the revolt, the British public opinion
became interested in the events occurring in the distant and largely unknown Balkans,
and it helps to understand the popularity of Arthur J. Evans travel account Through
Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and September 1875.
Evans travelled through Bosnia and Herzegovina on foot in the summer of 1875 and
witnessed at first hand the outbreak of the revolt. Even if the travelogue is about Bosnia,
it also reflects the way in which the region was seen by the British. The Islamic religion
in Bosnia and Herzegovina contributed to its overall negative image. Although it was
close to Asia or Africa. Bosnians were generally perceived as an inferior, backward and
primitive race even by a fervent liberal and supporter of the South Slav national
independence like Arthur J. Evans. Although Evans was fascinated by the cultural
syncretism and Oriental appeal of Bosnia and Herzegovina and although he fully
sympathized with the oppressed raya, he considered himself and his country as superior
in every respect to Bosnia and its population.
The travelogue also reflects the political importance Bosnia had for the British
parties, who used the 1875 Bosnian crisis and later the 1876 Bulgarian atrocities to their
own advantage, namely to win the elections and to establish their influence upon the
8
other Great Powers in international diplomacy, as it was struggling to find a solution to
the Bosnian crisis.
travelogue is an important historical document and one of the most
important testimonies of the 1875 Bosnian insurrection, but it is also important from the
cultural and political points of view, giving a comprehensive description of late
nineteenth-century Ottoman Bosnia, namely of the last period of the Ottoman
domination in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which began in1463 and finished four centuries
later, in 1878.
9
I. The historical overview of Bosnia and Herzegovina
1. Medieval Bosnia
Medieval Bosnia reflected the state of the Balkan regions in the Middle Ages:
small states constantly trying to expand under their kings or rulers (the so called bans)
at the expense of the neighboring small kingdoms. Bosnia was surrounded by two
powerful neighbors: Hungary and Serbia, which grew into a powerful military state in
the late XIII and early XIV century. However, due to the impenetrability of the Bosnian
mountainous terrain, it was a land hard to conquer for both Hungary and Serbia. Bosnia
1
thus differing from the European feudalism in which the land was returned to the crown
if the landowners did not perform with success their military duties. This feudal system
was also the cause of the constant instability of medieval Bosnian politics.
The Bosnian society was divided in nobles and landowners, serfs or kmets who
slaves, usually prisoners of war.
The mountainous terrain of Bosnia encouraged the division of the population,
which was divided into regions, each sharing their local traditions and following the
local aristocracy. Regional and local division was the main characteristic of Medieval
1 N. Malcolm, Bosnia, a Short History, London, Pan Books, 2002, p.13
10
Bosnia. This instable situation created great difficulties to the centralizing process that
would guarantee its unity2, both internal and against external conquerors.
was largely due to the exploitation
if its rich soil. M3: copper, lead, gold and, above all,
silver, which was the greatest source of wealth for the reign. It came primarily from the
western town of Srebrenica (from the Bosnian srebro its Latin
4 which became the most important mining town and
commercial centre in the whole region. Many towns developed on trading, including
Visoko, Jajce, Travnik and Vrhbo
a little more than a fortress and a village, and which was quickly developed into the city
5
In that period three important bans ruled Bosnia: Ban Kulin (from 1180 to
1204), Ban Stjepan (from 1322 to 1353) and Ban Stjepan Tvrtko, (from
1353 until 1391). They enlarged the territory of Bosnia, conquering lands in the South
known as Hum (Herzegovina), creating the political entity known as Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and making Bosnia the most powerful state in the region. Hungary was
particularly interested in the Bosnian territories and tried to exert its influence on Bosnia
through religion and Church politics: it wanted closer control over the Catholic Bosnian
2J. Fine, Le radici medievali-ottomane della società bosniaca moderna, in I Musulmani di Bosnia, a cura
di M. Pinson, Roma, Donzelli Editore 1995, p.7
3 N. Malcolm, op. cit., p.24
4 Srebrenica started to develop as a mining center and to exploit its mineral wealth in 1352. The mining
activity continued even after the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463 and began to decline only in the
second half of the sixteenth century, when the large influx of American precious metals led to the crisis
and eventually the closure of the mines. Sulla dimensione urbana in Serbia e Bosnia nei
secoli XIV-XV, Firenze, Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2010, p.353-5
5 N. Malcolm, op. cit., p.25
11
bishops (who were under the authority of the Archbishop of Ragusa) and was constantly
sending letters to Rome complaining about the heresy of the Bosnian Church and its
clergy, searching a religious justification to invade the reign. There had actually been
some attempts of invasion, but during the second half of the XIII century Hungary
loosened its pressure. Better relationships were established with the expanding Serbian
kingdom of Stefan (which was expanding southwards to Albania, Macedonia and
Greece), with Venice, Ragusa and the Pope, who sent the Franciscans to set up a
mission in Bosnia. The establishment of the Bosnian Franciscan Vicariate in 1340
Ages.6 They established themselves mostly in western Bosnia, especially in Srebrenica,
willing to regain souls from the expanding heresy of the Bosnian Church, but due to
their small number their mission had a minor effect. The importance of the Franciscans
was to become essential especially after the Ottoman conquest, when they played a
major role in defense of the Catholic population against the Turks. Their importance is
emphasized by
The Franciscans worked mainly in urban areas, which were developing at that
time in the form of trading and mining centers. But they were also active in the
more remote places. They played a part in ruling circles as diplomats, advisers,
intermediaries and spiritual advisers. Their influence went far beyond spiritual
concerns, it was all encompassing, there was no aspect of medieval Bosnian life
in which they were not involved, either directly or in an advisory capacity.7
6 , Bosnia, A Cultural History, London, Saqi Books, 2001, p. 40
7 Ibid., op. cit., p.48
12
Rome was willing to send Franciscan missions to Bosnia to reassert the authority
of the Pope, because Bosnia has had its own church since the XII century, the so called
schismatic Bosnian Church. Scholars agree that this is one of the most interesting and
complex aspects of medieval Bosnian history, most distinctive and puzzling feature
of [Bosnian] 8. Traditionally, the Bosnian Church is said to have been the result
of a Balkan Manichean sect, the Bogomils from Bulgaria, although modern research
strongly disagree with the claim made by previous scholars. The Bogomils were a
heretical Bulgarian movement, a Manichean dualist theology founded in the X century
. They saw the world as driven
by two main forces: the Good (all things invisible) and the Evil (the material world),
which had equal power, as equals were God and Satan. The good God created the
celestial world, towards which every human being was driven even if he was
imprisoned by the material, satanic world9. Furthermore:
the men could free themselves from the
taint of the material world only by following an ascetic way of life, renouncing meat,
far-reaching theological implications: Chris
kind of illusion, and his physical death on the Cross could not have happened; various
ceremonies involving material substances, such as baptism with water, had to be
rejected, and the Cross itself became a hated symbol of false belief. Also rejected were
the use of church buildings, and indeed the entire organizational structure of the
traditional Church, especially its wealthy monasteries. 10
8N. Malcolm, op. cit., p.14
9 F. Conte, Gli , Torino, Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1991,
p.508
10
N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 27-28
13
Thus, Bogomils rejected the relics, which they regarded as mere bones, the
images of the Virgin Mary and of the saints and they denied baptism, the Holy
Communion and all the sacraments of the Church. They refused and denied any form of
authority imposed by the Church, and it is easy to understand why the official Church
tried to extirpate the heresy at all costs: they were persecuted, imprisoned and
condemned to death.11
The question of the Bosnian Church is a complex subject for historians, because
entangled
in various theories, romantic ideas, controversy and mystification as the Bosnian
12 Despite the fact that many
scholars hold that the schismatic Church of Bosnia was heretical with dualistic and
Bogomil influence, its theology was essentially Catholic. In fact, recent researches show
that the Bosnian Church was a national church which was not in contrast with
Christianity, it only tried to gain jurisdictional independence from the Pope.
The theory of the Bosnian Church as an offshore of the Bogomil heresy was
very popular for a number of reasons: not only did it explain many mysterious
characteristics of the Bosnian Church, but also two great mysteries of Bosnian history.
The first is the presence of gravestones called , scattered throughout the entire
territory of Bosnia and especially of Hercegovina, coinciding with the area of activity of
the Bosnian Church. The are standing blocks of fine bright stone, huge stone
monoliths with or without a base, often richly decorated with carvings, representing
11
F. Conte, op. cit., p. 509
12
14
human figures and stylized floral designs.13
Since some of the gravestone carried the
(a member of the Bosnian Church, literally carved on
them, scholars linked them with the Bogomil tradition. The second fact that the
Bogomil theory helped to explain was the conversion to the Islamic religion of the
majority of the population of Bosnia following the Ottoman conquest of the region in
the mid XV century. The theory explained the mass conversion with the similarities of
the two religions, such as the negation of holy images. In addition the Bogomils, who
were in competition with both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, seemed to have
preferred the Islamic faith.
The Bosnian Church gained its independence from Hungary, which tried to
assert its influence by controlling Bosnia, previously under the jurisdiction of
Dubrovnik, with the Hungarian bishopric jurisdiction. The Bosnian clergy and nobility
rejected the Hungarian jurisdiction and proclaimed the independence of the Bosnian
Church from both Hungary and Rome, thus avoiding any international influence.14
The
head of the Church was known as djed
hierarchy by the gosti and the starci 15
Despite being labeled as
dualist and Bogomil, the Bosnian Church accepted the idea of an almighty God,
believed in the Holy Trinity, cared for its churches, adored the crosses and saints and
had overall good relationship with both the Catholic and Orthodox communities.16
The
Bosnian Church survived alongside with the Catholic Church in Bosnia because it was
13
A. Parmiggiani Dri, Scritti sulla pietra, Udine, Ed. Forum, 2005, p. 28
14
J. Fine, op. cit., p.8
15
E. Hösch, Storia dei paesi balcanici dalle origini ai giorni nostri, Torino, Giulio Einaudi editore, 2005,
p.67
16
J. Fine, op. cit., p.10
15
not hegemonic, it had ever been the state religion, and it rarely had any political
connotation. It survived under small organizational units throughout the Bosnian
territory until the 1450s, when King Stjepan to
Catholicism. The Bosnian Church was already weak at the time, and it had been further
weakened following the Ottoman invasion, until completely disappearing after the
Ottoman conquest, its members dispersed between Catholicism, Orthodox and Islamic
communities, whose clergy was trying to convert the greatest number of the population
to their creed and were in great competition. In fact, Medieval Bosnia was a feudal
17 The Bosnian state found itself between Rome, the Christianity
No other region was so completely overlapped by the two great contending
civilization blocs. It was inevitably affected by both and integrated by them into the
Europe of the Middle Ages. But lying as it did at the periphery of each, neither had a
Middle Ages the cultures of
Catholic and Orthodox churches the Bosnian Church. Side by side with the Cyrillic,
Greek, Latin and Glagolitic script
Serbian art, and the west European Romanesque and Gothic transmitted through the
Croatian coastal towns
fine craftsmanship. 18
Old and fortified towns, castles and churches should be added to the list of
Bosnia important cultural achievements. Its capacity to blend together traditional and
local elements and imported elements from the surrounding civilizations was the aspect
17
., p.46
18
Ibid., p.46
16
that characterizes Medieval Bosnian art and culture, and it is what renders it unique in
the context of the Balkan Peninsula.
After the death of the last of the great rulers of Bosnia, Stjepan Tvrtko, Bosnia
entered a period of confusion: it was poorly governed by the most important noble
families. Two great powers were strongly interfering with Bosnian internal politics:
Hungary and the Ottoman Turks, who proclaimed the illegitimate son of Stjepan
Tvrtko, Tvrtko II, righteous king of Bosnia. He reigned until 1443, when the
expeditions of the Ottomans in the Bosnian territory were becoming frequent, but had
only the form of plunder rather than war for the annexation of the territory. Those years
marked a turning point not only in the history of Bosnia but in the history of the entire
Balkan region: the Ottomans were advancing and their threat was already very strong.
The last king of Bosnia wrote to Rome and Venice in the 1460s begging for help,
feeling a large-scale conquest, but he got no reply. It was too late anyway since Bosnia
was occupied by the Ottoman army in 1463, and remained under the control of the
Ottoman Turks for over four hundred years, becoming part of the Ottoman Empire and
thus entering a new, different period of its history from the cultural and political point
of view.
17
2. Ottoman Bosnia
The conquest of the western Balkan territories by the Ottomans is a real turning
point for the history of the whole region. The long centuries of Ottoman domination left
a permanent mark on Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Balkans, giving the region not
only but also a specific aspect and
unique character.19
The presence of the Ottoman Turks was to have deep consequences
in all the aspects of life of the people, they influenced religion, language, costumes,
clothes, music, food, art and architecture of the cities and villages and political
institutions. O are still visible today especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
a country deeply influenced by over four hundred years of Ottoman and Islamic rule.
The country is home to a large Muslim population, its towns and villages are
characterized by mosques and minarets, Muslim cemeteries, bazaar-like squares and
markets and beautiful bridges built by Ottoman architects. We shall now examine the
period of the Ottoman conquest and the Ottoman domination, a crucial point for the
history of Bosnia and Herzegovina and for the development of its character up to the
present day.
2.1 The origins of the Ottoman Empire
The origins of the Ottomans lay in a nomadic tribe that entered Anatolia from
Iran in the early thirteenth century and that emerged from the small, independent
Anatolian Turkish principalities under their first historical ruler, Emir Osman I (1281-
19
It would not be exaggerated to think of the Balkans as Ottoman historical and cultural heredity. Cfr
M.Todorova, Immaginando i Balcani, Lecce, Ed. Argo, 2002, p. 269
18
1324).20
The Osman dynasty, known as Osmanli, was ruled by a succession of ten
powerful and talented sultans who were able to dominate the Anatolian Turkish tribes
and expand their state on three continents, in Africa, Asia and Europe.
The first stage of the Ottoman conquest began in the second half of the
fourteenth century: in 1354 the Ottomans seized the first urban city in Europe, Gallipoli.
The expansion of the empire was rapid: under the sultan Murad I Adrianople was
conquered in 1360, and soon afterwards Macedonian, Bulgarian, Serbian and Greek
lands fell under Ottoman control. At this early stage of conquest, the Ottoman army
was more interested in plunder than in the annexation of the territory, they rather left the
local rulers in power as vassals, obligating them to pay tributes to the sultan and to give
military support. After the decisive battles and overwhelming victories of the Maritza
River in 1371 and the famous Battle of Kosovo Polje (Field of the Blackbirds) in 1389,
the Turkish armies were able to advance in the Balkan Peninsula with virtually no
resistance. After a ineffective crusade aiming at halting the Ottoman conquests in
Europe made by King Sigismund of Hungary backed by the Pope, the sultan Bayezid
the Thunderbolt (1389-1402), after crushing the Christian army, strengthened the
control over the Balkans and conquered more lands, including Wallachia, and raided
Hungary, Albania and Bosnia.
The second stage spanned most of the fifteenth century, during which most of
the Balkan countries were again under direct Ottoman threat, following a period of
semi-
broke out wi the emergence of
20
D. Hupchick, The Balkans, From Constantinople to Communism, New York, Palgrave Macmillan,
2002, p.102
19
in Asia temporarily halted further Turkish expansion. However, the
Ottomans soon regained their position in both Europe and Asia: the sultans Mehmed I
and Murad II resumed the conquest of the Balkan lands. Christian forces, united for the
last time under the leadership of the King of Poland and Hungary, tried again to impede
further Ottoman expansion, but Hunyadi was crushed at Varna in 1444, leaving
little hope for Eastern Europe to drive the Ottomans out of their territory. Every hope
was actually abandoned with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, who conquered
the city in May 1453 after a two month siege, led by the powerful Mehmed II (1451-
1481). In this way the sultan strengthened and centralized the military and
administrative power of his empire .21
The conquest of
Constantinople strengthened the power of the Ottomans in the same measure as it
weakened the power and hopes of Europe:
The collapse of the Byzantine state and the taking of the great imperial city was an
event of tremendous significance. The chief citadel of Eastern Christianity and the
heir to Roman power and splendor was occupied by a Muslim Turkish conqueror.
It was now to become the capital of a new empire, which was based on quite
different principles 22
The city war renamed
multicultured, and bustling economic, political, and cultural center for the Ottoman
23 the ideal capital for a powerful and expanding empire.
21
Ibid., p.118
22
B. Jelavich, History of the Balkans Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1983, p.32
23
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p.119
20
Christian power, especially from Venice
and Hungary by creating a defense line that run throughout the Balkans. He thus
strengthened his power on Greece and Serbia, that were now under direct Ottoman
authority; Albania and Montenegro were nominally under Ottoman control, although
guerrilla warfare continued in those mountainous regions (Albania was particularly
troublesome under Skande resistance); the Bulgarian state also disappeared under
the Ottomans, who also conquered Bosnia in 1463 and Herzegovina in 1481. The
Ottoman Empire reached the peak of its extension during the reign of Suleiman the
0-1566). He captured Belgrade in 1521 and defeated
Hungary in the battle of Mohacs in 1526, with the result that most of Hungarian lands
passed under Ottoman rule. The powerful Ottoman expansion towards the West was
halted only in 1529, after the first siege of Vienna. The reign of Suleiman the
Magnificent marked the culmination of Ottoman power and prestige . 24
In about a
hundred and fifty years, the Ottomans established a powerful empire expanding in three
continents: Europe, Africa and Asia and emerged as an important player in European
politics. The key to their expansion and military success can be found both within and
outside of the empire. The situation in Europe from the fourteenth to sixteenth century
certainly created favorable conditions to the Ottomans and their conquest. At the time of
the Ottoman invasion, the Black Plague was decimating the population in Western
Europe. The political situation was one of intense political fragmentation: England and
-1453), the Holy Roman Empire
became a federation of independent German states, the important commercial cities of
Venice and Genoa were at war with each other, while the church was facing internal
24
B. Jelavich, op. cit., p.36
21
conflicts which were undermining papal authority. Christian Europe was not capable of
creating a united front to oppose the Muslim invaders in the East, being too weak and
fragmented. The political situation in the Balkans mirrored the same weakness and
division. Each ruler tried to expend his own feudal territory at the expense of other
noble families who were at war with each other for the control of the country. The
sultans were thus able to take advantage of the divided and fragmented situation of the
feudal Balkans, often inciting Christian rulers one against the other and shifting
alliances. They also understood the religious differences and general diffidence in which
Roman and Orthodox Christians held each other and used it at their own advantage.
Vassalage was often reinforced with political marriages with Christian women of the
ruling classes, so that the Ottomans could later claim the right to the throne.
Thanks to all this policies and devices the Ottomans were able to impose their
rule over the Balkan Peninsula. However, the key to their success was within the
empire, which was a highly centralized, formidable military machine, in its very
essence, a military enterprise. The Ottoman army was composed of highly motivated
warriors imbued in the Islamic concept of holy war. Muslim warri
their sacred duty
that those who died in the effort received the immediate reward of everlasting
25. This principle motivated the Ottoman army so much that they defeated
war and their Ottoman commanders consistently gave them the combat advantage in
26 Another factor that explains the Ottoman
25
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 102
26
Ibid., p.104
22
success is that the empire was ruled by ten gifted and successful sultans, each extended
its borders further in Europe. Unlike European rulers, they were united, the state they
administered was highly centralized and all the power was in their hands. They created
an efficient system that allowed great expansion through tax revenue, in fact revenues
and plunder from the wars were reinvested in the army that kept enlarging the borders
of the empire. The sultans could also count on the Janissaries, a highly specialized and
professional military unit of slaves belonging to the sultan and forming a formidable
weapon of the Ottoman military organization.
In conclusion, the centralized authority and great talent of the sultans, a highly
professional and motivated army whose warriors were committed to the principle of the
holy war, combined with the weakness and political fragmentation of feudal Europe and
of the Balkan states allowed the Ottomans to conquer most of the peninsula and
establish one of the largest and longest lasting empires in history.
Christian populations of the Balkans were submerged in a powerful, highly centralized,
theocratic imperial state grounded in the precepts of Islamic civilization and Turkish
27 We shall now analyze the organization of the Ottoman Empire, the
government and administration system that had profound and lasting consequences for
the conquered Balkan population and especially for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
2.2 The Ottoman system
By the mid-sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire reached its height during the
reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. It stretched into three continents: Asia, Africa and
27
Ibid., p.99
23
Europe, where it controlled the Balkan Peninsula, Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia,
most of Hungary and of Poland, and the north coast of the Black Sea. Its population
counted around fifty million people. The empire incorporated in
polyglot peoples, formidable armies, its advanced culture and exceptional religious
freedom, and, above all, its unique administrative system based exclusively upon slaves
28
strictly military form of government with a great cultural and administrative autonomy
of its subject people29
. Being the Ottoman Empire a military enterprise, with an army
devoted to the principle of the holy war, the two most important institutions upon which
the empire was based were religion and the military enterprise. We shall examine them
briefly to properly understand their importance.
Religion played a fundamental role, it was indeed the foundation of the whole
em Islamic, rather than Turkish state. Islamic
principles regarding the sta30
Since the Ottomans
established their conquests on the concept of holy war, its natural aim was the
over as wide a territory as 31
.
those where Islam was practiced, , which were
eriat, the Islamic
Sacred Law, governed the life of all the Muslims of the empire, who represented a
28
L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453, London, C. Hurst & Co, 2000, p. 82
29
E. Hosch, Storia dei Paesi Balcanici, dalle origini ai giorni nostri, Giulio Einaudi editore, Torino 2005,
p. 102
30
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 124
31
B. Jelavich, op. cit., p.39
24
Islam thus played a bonding role for the
emphasis on religious war the objective was
not the destruction of the darülharb [the domain of war] or its people, but their conquest
32
The other fundamental institution on which the empire was founded was the
army and the military enterprise, strictly connected to the Islamic religion. The Ottoman
Empire was based on war, plunder and tribute: it invested in military and the money
returned in form of new conquered land, new properties and therefore new taxes, that in
turn meant revenues for the state. The Ottoman administrative system supplied men to
fight wars and money to pay for their sustenance. Its structure resembled that of an army
compound: the members of the ruling class were all from the military cast, governed by
the sultan, the state ruler and the supreme military commander, who used the capital as
military headquarter and administrative centre. As Stavrianos
administrative officers were soldiers and all army officers had administrative duties.
The explanation of this merging of functions is that the Turks were warriors before they
33 This explains why the army and the administration were tightly
bound to each other. There were two categories of military forces: the feudal territorial
cavalry (spahis) and the regular soldiers paid directly by the Ottoman government.
The spahis comprised the majority of the Ottoman forces. They were Muslims
who were given an estate where they could collect taxes, in return of which they were
expected to performed military obligations and provide men and horses to fight in wars.
In a sense this system resembled feudal Europe, but it was much more centralized and
32
Ibid., p.39
33
L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p.86
25
strictly financial in nature: the spahis were under direct control of the sultan and were
controlled by the administrators of the provinces; in addition they were required to serve
only when needed, and the estates were not hereditary since the land was the
property.
The regular soldiers paid directly by the Ottoman government were divided into
the salaried cavalry known as Spahis of the Porte, who were an elite corps composed of
skilled horsemen and bowmen, and the regular infantry, the Janissaries. The most
effective Ottoman fighting force, famous and feared both outside and within the empire
by the enemy, sultans and administrators alike, the Janissaries represented the true force
of the Ottoman military enterprise. The sultan had full control of his army, consisted of
slaves, who were the sultan . Slaves were prisoners of war, but the vast
majority was constituted by Christian subjects recruited through the so called system of
the , or ion It was first conducted on a small scale during the late
fourteenth century and was institutionalized by the sultan Murad II in the fifteenth
34 The remained in use until the
late seventeenth century, the last child-levy recorded took place in 1637. As Jelavich
explains:
Every three to seven years Ottoman officials were sent into the countryside to
make their selections. Fathers were expected to present their unmarried male
children between the ages of eight to twenty. Muslim families were exempt, since
their children could not be enslaved. The children deemed best in both intelligence
and appearance were taken and then sent in groups to Constantinople. There they
were examined and separated. The most promising were kept in the capital, where
34
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 129
26
they were given an extent education that was designed to train them to be the future
others were sent to live with Turkish farmers in Anatolia, where they learned the
language and received religious instructions. Both groups, of course, were
converted to Islam. Most of the second became the Janissary corps, the most
efficient fighting force anywhere in the period. 35
They were forbidden to marry or to take up any form of trade, and usually lived
in barracks and had to be ready to go to war at any time. Once the training was
completed, the recruits were put at the lowest rank, but could easily scale the military
rank if they were
slave household theoretically depended on merit, although favoritism, political
36 Despite those faults in
the system, the Janissaries were the true force of the Ottoman army and the most loyal
and reliable standing military force within the empire: meticulously trained and highly
specialized, they were property of the sultan and therefore completely dependent by
their ruler for their sustenance, the sultan in fact
37
The had a vast and long-lasting effect on the Balkan Christian
population, with unique consequences throughout the territory of the peninsula and
especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The numbers vary greatly, but it is supposed that
35
B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 41
36
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 129
37
Ibid., p.127
27
38 While the seizing of the children was undoubtedly a brutal
procedure, the separation from their families cruel and painful and the process deprived
families of useful help for working in the fields, it had indeed certain advantages and
benefits for the children. They could have access to the most advanced education
available at that time and, thanks to the Ottoman system based on individual merit, raise
to acquire the most important positions in the empire. There were cases of Christian
parents who bribed their Muslim neighbors to substitute their children, but it is
interesting to note that numerous were the cases of both Christian and Muslim parents
bribing officials to take their own sons, especially in the poorer areas where parents
understood the potential benefits offered by the There could be benefits for
the families too since the children could later restore contact with their native families
and extend them preferential treatment. A famous example is that of Mehmed Pasha
native Bosnian
Serb family and protected the Serbian Orthodox Church, re-establishing the Serbian
in 1557. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries nine
grand viziers were of Bosnian origins. An important consequence of the was
that the Serbo-39
thus becoming the third language of the empire, because it was the language of the
Janissaries. The presence of Bosnians in the Ottoman Empire had an important social
descendants which came into conflict with the feudal-military spahis and gradually
encroached upon their land, hastening the movement away from the feudal tenure
towards private estates and tax-
38
N. Malcolm, op. cit., p.46
39
Ibid., p. 46
28
rulers were native inhabitants converted to Islam, as we shall examine in detail when
dealing with the Bosnian situation in the next paragraph.
The Ottoman military system and a large part of the administrative system were
based on slavery. It should be noted that the status of slaves in the Ottoman Empire was
not considered dishonorable or degrading, on the contrary it was often synonym of
power, wealth, social position and public honor if the slave was able to reach a high
position in the empire. The slave had the opportunity to rise in the military or
administrative system as far as his ability would permit, he could even become grand
vizier, thanks to the emphasis on the individual merit rather than the birth status or
social position.
The military structure of the Ottoman Empire was reflected also in the
organization of the land in the provinces.
own property (the so called miri). Through the ownership of the lands the sultan could
support the army because it was distributed among spahis and military commanders in
the form of military fiefs. This system was known as spahilik. Spahis were given either
a zijamet, a large estate, or a timar, a smaller estate, which was strictly military, feudal
and financial in its use, they were allowed to collect taxes pending provision of military
service in times of war and had no right to claim the land. The land of the provinces was
divided into territorial units, each hosting a number of spahis and each controlled by an
officer with military and civil authority. The primary provincial unit was called a
sancak, corresponding to an administrative county and a military unit and governed by a
sancakbey; lords called beys governed townships called kazas; sancaks could be
combined together to form an elayet governed by a governor called berlebey. The
Ottomans referred to the part of Europe under their control as the elayet of Rumeli.
29
religious and military principles were the basis for the
structure and organization of the Ottoman society. It was divided by religion between
Muslims and non-Muslims and by social function in the community, who saw the rulers
as opposed to the ruled. The head of the society was the sultan, followed by the askeri,
the military, a category that included the armed forces, the administration and the
ulema, the religious leadership. The raya ( all the subject
people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, who were required to pay taxes in order to
support the rulers economically.
The head of the Ottoman Empire was the sultan. He was
ruler and the supreme military commander, who was given authority directly by God.
He was considered the only source of power and demanded obedience and loyalty from
his subjects, whose lives and possessions were under his control too. He owned all the
slaves and lands of the empire. The supreme authority of the sultan was restrained only
by the force of tradition and by the precepts of Islam.
The Ottoman society was, in fact, governed by the religious precepts of the
Islamic sacred Law, the eriat:
First in importance was the eriat, the religious law of Islam, based on ecclesiastical
texts. The Koran, the basic source, was believed to record the word of God. The
faithful were convinced that it contained all that an individual needed to know for his
own life and his government. The eriat could apply only to Muslims. 40
40
B. Jelavich, op. cit, p. 40
30
41Because the religious law
could not cover all the aspects of the political life, the ulema, filled the gap for
situations not covered in the Koran. These principles were later approved by the sultan
and promulgated by him in form of kanuns. The ulema represented the religious,
educational, and legal authority of the empire. Its members, called muftis, were scholars
of and were responsible for Islamic administration in the empire and supervised the
moral and religious life of the Muslim community. In the provinces the muftis were
present through the figure of the kadis
administration, and was the supervisor of the provincial administrators.
In the Ottoman Empire, Muslims were not the dominant people. The majority of
the population that lived within the borders of the empire was Christian. The
overwhelming majority of the Balkan Christian population had the status of raya. They
were mainly peasants who lived and worked on military fiefs. In the early stage of the
Ottoman domination, the situation of the peasants was better than that of their
counterparts in feudal Europe. In Bosnia, for example:
The peasants had to pay a tithe in kind, varying between a tenth and a quarter of their
produce, and pay a few other smaller dues; they also did some obligatory labor for the
timariot [the sipahi who owned the timar estate] though this was much less onerous
than in most other European feudal systems. They also paid an annual tax (the haraç,
which later merged with a poll-tax called cizye) to the sultan. Their basic legal
position was that of leaseholders, having a right, which their children could inherit, not
in the land itself but in the use of it. They could sell this right, and were in theory free
to move elsewhere, even thought the timariots naturally tried to prevent this. In
general, a timariot had no further legal interest in his peasants beyond the requirement
that they pay their tithe and other dues and obey him when he acted as a functionary of
41
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 130
31
the state: he had no judicial powers of the sort practiced in manorial courts in western
Europe. 42
Thus, in many respects peasants were better off under the Ottomans than under
their former feudal rulers, and many peasants moved to the Ottoman Balkan territories
from neighboring feudal countries to enjoy more favorable conditions. The situation
deteriorated starting from the end of the sixteenth century, when the central government
lost its control over the provincial institutions, where local rulers turned their estates
into feuds and the peasants into serfs.
Despite living in an Islamic state, the Balkan Christians were able to retain a large
degree of autonomy in administration and in religion. The Muslims treated the non-
Muslim Balkan
Islam was the supreme faith in an Islamic state.
Under the eriat
(zimma) that is, continued existence as practicing Christians and Jews, on
condition that they acknowledged the domination of Islam and its temporal authorities
43 They were regarded as second-hand
citizens, they were subjugated to an inferior status and obligated to pay discriminatory
taxes, such as the cizye (poll tax) and the dev irme (the child-ley). They also suffered a
number of discriminatory restrictions such as the limited size of religious buildings and
the prohibition of owning weapons or horses. Legally, they were in a disadvantaged
position in proceedings when opposed to Muslims. The non-Muslim population far
outnumbered the Muslim population of the empire, and the taxes paid by the zimmis
42
N. Malcolm, op. cit., p.47-48
43
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 132
32
were a lucrative source of income for the government. It was in the
to preserve a high number of Christian subjects in the most favorable and advantageous
condition for both. So in 1454 the millet system of zimmi administration was instituted.
W subject Christian population
44 Thus, three millets were created: the Orthodox
millet, governed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Jewish millet and the Armenian
Christian millet, which include the Roman Christian subjects. It is important to note
that:
Each non-Muslim millet represented its membership before the Ottoman court and
was internally self-governing. They were all granted the rights to tax, judge, and order
the lives of their members insofar as those rights did not conflict with Islamic sacred
law and the sensibilities of the Muslim ruling establishment. The religious hierarchies
of the millets thus were endowed with civic responsibilities beyond their ecclesiastical
administration, functioning as a veritable department of the Ottoman central
government.45
The institution of the millet played a fundamental role in the lives of the
Christian subjects: they were given a considerable amount of autonomy that permitted
them to preserve their religious beliefs and traditions, local self-government and
autonomy and legal representation before Muslim authorities through their religious
representatives. Education, too, was provided within the millet. All the education
available was religious and was provided by the clergy of each millet, who taught their
44
Ibid., p. 133
45
Ibid., p. 134
33
students in confessional schools. (However, given the fact that the majority of the
peasants were illiterate, a sense of local and linguistic identity was preserved by the rich
oral folk tradition.) Since the millet system identified people only on the basis of
religion, it strengthened religious group
population. On the other hand, it also solidified differences among the various groups
on non-Muslim subjects, in order to prevent combined organized rebellions against the
state. The millet system represented the fundamental basis to control the Balkans and
its Christian subjects.
2.3 Bosnia and Herzegovina under Ottoman rule
The conquest of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Ottomans was a long and
gradual process, in fact, it took them nearly a century and a half to subjugate and
dominate the entire territory of the country.
In 1386 an Ottoman raid in the Neretva Valley marked the beginning of the
Turkish threat for Bosnia and Herzegovina and a series of battles for the conquest of the
country. Two years later, in 1338, the Christian forces were able to resist a stronger
attack at Bile , but the fateful battle of Kosovo in July 1389 weakened the Bosnian
resistance. By 1415, after they defeated the Hungarian army at Doboj, the Ottomans
were rivaling Hungary in Bosnian politics. The Ottomans used to their advantage the
growing disagreements and rivalries of a divided feudal society, thus weakening Bosnia
not only from the military, but also from the political point of view. By the middle of
34
political, econom46
In 1462 the King of
Rome and the West, writing an appeal to
the Pope. Faithful that they would help, he refused to pay tribute to the sultan. The
West, absorbed in internal political rivalries, did nothing to prevent the Turkish menace
and the reaction of the sultan Mehmed II was immediate. He refused to negotiate peace
1463. He marched throughout Bosnia from the north, capturing the strongest fortified
Bosnian town at the time, Bobovac, and soon the towns of Visoko, Travnik and Jajce
surrendered too. The king of Bosnia was captured and executed in Jajce. The Turks
conquered the lands but, as food was running out, soon withdrew from Bosnia.
Thinking that it was a favorable time for a counter-attack, King Matthias Corvinus of
Hungary, leading a Hungaro-Croatian army, soon overrun the Ottoman gains. King
Matthias established a territory under Hungarian control in northern Bosnia and
back by the Ottomans, the city of Jajce resisted until 1528.
Due to its position as a frontier territory, Bosnia was extremely important in
Ottoman military plans. So, in order to appease the Bosnian nobility and peasantry, and
in order to create a dividing territory from Hungary, the Ottomans re-established a
he Kotromani
following the Hungarian proclamation of the banate in their Bosnian-held territories.
However, when the Ottomans realized that the king they appointed was trying to win
diplomatic recognition from the King of Hungary, they suppressed the kingdom and
took direct control of the lands of Bosnia.
46
Bosnia, p.83
35
Some territories of Herzegovina also managed to resist the Ottoman offensive of
Herceg Novi in 1482, the whole territory was subjugated by the Turks.
In the early sixteenth century the Ottoman forces were advancing in the Balkans,
their expansion halted only at the gates of Vienna at the end of the seventeenth century.
At this new stage of Turkish conquest, Bosnia and Herzegovina was completely
subjugated by the Ottomans: the fall of Jajce in 1528 marked a new epoch for the
country, -
Herzegovina in the sixteenth century to all intents and purposes became a province of
47.
As in the rest of the empire, the Ottomans administered the country through their
military system. The land was assigned to spahis in form of zimajet or timar, where
peasants lived and worked under favorable conditions, at least during the first period of
the empire. Given the presence of feudal lords who had stayed after the conquest of the
country, the Ottomans decided to appease local traditions by reco
position. In this way local feudal lords developed a privileged relationship with their
Ottoman rulers and with Islam: they were more apt to accept the Islamic religion, yet
remaining aware of their origin.
This is just one example that shows how much Bosnia and Herzegovina changed
under the Ottoman domination, how the religious, social, political and economic life
were altered during the Ottoman domination and how much the country adopted typical
institutions and traditions that could not be found elsewhere in the Ottoman dominated
47
Ibid., p. 89
36
Balkan territories.
underwent deep and far reaching structural changes, the most obvious and lasting being
the influx of oriental civilization and Islamization.48
The phenomenon of large-scale
conversion to Islam was to have long-lasting effects and consequences for the country
up to the present day. Today Bosnia and Albania are the only countries that have a
predominant native Muslim population. In no other country did the spread of Islam lead
to such profound changes in the cultural makeup of a major section of the population.49
most
50, was a gradual process
that took almost a century and a half. Conversions to Islam never accompanied the
51, (the non-Muslims were spared forced
and given the voluntary nature of the majority of the conversions to Islam,
a large number of legends and myths tried to explain the phenomenon. In recent years,
however, historic research has been able to demonstrate the non validity of these
mythical explanations. For example, a myth to be rejected is that there had been a mass
, the registers held
by Ottomans to register taxes, properties, and people from religious affiliation, no dot
mention any Turks settling in Bosnia in large numbers. Confusion about this point may
have arisen from the fact that the Bosnian converts referred to themselves, and were
48
Ibid., p.93
49
A. Zhelyazkova, Islamization in the Balkans as an Historiographical Problem: the Southeast-European
Perspective, in Adanir F., Faroqhi S., The Ottomans and the Balkans, A Discussion of Historiography,
Leide, The Netherlands, Brill NV, 2002, p. 249
50
N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 51
51
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 151
37
As false as the mass settlement is the popular myth about mass conversion to
Islam: as mentioned above, it was a long process that took nearly a century and a half.
The Bosnian population did not embrace en masse the Islamic faith, the process took
many generations. Many people adopted the conquer taking
Islamic names, but retaining the Slavic patronymic and continuing to live with their
Christian family.
The most popular theory, however, is the mass conversion of members of the
Bosnian Church, supposed to be Bogomils, who voluntarily and gladly embraced Islam
because of the similarities between the dualistic tradition and Islam, such as the
negation of holy images and the presence of dervish orders52
. This theory was widely
accepted because, if true, it would explain why the Bosnian Church disappeared when
the Ottomans appeared on the scene and why so many Bosnians accepted Islam.
Disclaimers of the theory are the facts that the Bosnian Church was dying out even
before the Turkish conquest and that the conversion to Islam was not as rapid as this
theory claims, it was indeed a gradual and lengthy process.
When trying to understand the relatively untroubled shift from Christianity to
Islam, occurring in large numbers both among the nobility and peasants, it is important
to consider the situation of the Christian Churches in Ottoman Bosnia, in particular,
their weakness and fragmentation.
52
See Chapter 1 for the Bosnian Church and the Bogomils
38
In the first phase of the Turkish conquest, the Catholic Church, operating in
Bosnia through the Franciscan Vicariate founded in 1340, suffered increased
persecution and devastation. Later on, in 1463, the Catholic Church was granted legal
Catholics the right to their faith and, eo ipso, to civilization, political and ethnical
53. Despite the imperial decree, the Catholic Church was regarded with
deep suspicion. It was indeed the religion of its main enemy in that period, Austria, and
the priests were seen as potential spies. Moreover, the centre of Catholicism was in
Rome, outside the borders of the empire, whereas the patriarchate of the Orthodox
Church was within the Ottoman Empire, in Constantinople. As a result, during the first
stage of Ottoman conquest, nearly half of the Franciscan monasteries disappeared (they
were either destroyed or turned into mosques) and many Catholics left the country and
took refuge in neighboring Catholic countries, strongly diminishing the Catholic
population in Bosnia.54
Frequent obstruction and oppression by the Ottomans and the
continuous effort by the Orthodox Church to get Catholics under their influence, made
life very hard for both the clergy and the Catholic population. Due to migrations and
conversions to Islam and Orthodoxy, the Catholic population significantly decreased.
The situation of the Orthodox Church in this early period of Ottoman domination was
more favorable for a number of reasons. The Ottomans preferred the Orthodox Church
to the Catholic Church; there was a scarce presence of a native Orthodox population in
the early
53
54
F. Adanir, -Herzegovina: a Historiographical
Discussion, in Adanir F., Faroqhi S., The Ottomans and the Balkans, A Discussion of Historiography,
Leide, The Netherlands, Brill NV, 2002, p. 292
39
55), the Orthodox Church was
an institution incorporated and functioning within the Ottoman Empire, with its
patriarchate set in Constantinople. It was thus able to maintain its previous structure and
autonomy.
The ecclesiastical system in Bosnia, even before the Ottoman conquest, had a
weak and fractured structure. Two church organizations, the Catholic Church and the
Bosnian Church (and in some areas even the Orthodox Church) were operating at the
same time and were in competition. They had no systematic organization in the territory
comprised of churches, parishes or priests, and none of the Churches was supported by
the state, leaving a great number of peasant population out of their reach and activity. In
this way Bosnia, at the crucial point of the Ottoman conquest, lacked a centralized and
united church organization and a vast portion of its inhabitants did not have direct
contact with church institutions. As Malcolm concludes:
If we compare this state of affairs with conditions in Serbia or Bulgaria, where
there was a single, strong and properly organized national Church, we can see one
major reason for the greater success of Islam in Bosnia. The fractious competition
between Catholic and Orthodox continued throughout the period of Islamicization;
while members of both Churches were becoming Muslims, some Catholics were also
being converted to Orthodoxy, and vice-versa.56
Given the general weak support the Church gave its Christians followers, it is
easy to understand why so many converted to Islam. the
55
N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 55. In medieval Bosnia Orthodoxy was confined to Herzegovina, especially in
the territory around the Drina Valley. Orthodox population was later set in depopulated former Christian
lands of western and north-western Bosnia, which became predominantly Orthodox in religious faith. Cfr
56
Ibid., p. 57
40
frontier between Christian and Muslim was not distinct, as peasants retained or adopted
57. In remote and poor areas, Christianity lost its religious
strength and the shift to another religion did not pose big problems, especially if we
consider that even after conversion to Islam, peasants could continue with their previous
life and with their social and religious practices, which could differ only in name but not
in substance. Christian and Islamic religious recurrences were often celebrated on the
same day or in the same period and the population of both faiths shared superstitions
and beliefs. Not influenced by any church, religion in these areas became almost a series
of folk practices shared by the Christian and the Islamic population. The level of
religious syncretism was very high, and at least in the first period of Ottoman rule,
religion in Bosnia was comprised of a mixture of Christian and Islamic practices
blended together to form a unique religious phenomenon.
Alongside with religion, economic reasons, in order to maintain or improve
, are fundamental in explaining why there were so many
converts to Islam. This is especially true for the nobility, although it should be
remembered that local Christian nobility did not convert to Islam as a whole, because
many were the disadvantages: the land was converted to a timar estate and military
service was required from the nobleman. Some did not convert to Islam but became
sipahis, they were common figures especially in the early years of Ottoman Bosnia.
Certainly, the formation of a ruling class unified by its Islamic religion, contributed to
the stability of Ottoman rule.58
In the countryside, peasants who usually converted to
57
M. Hoare, The History of Bosnia, From the Middle Ages to the Present Day, London, Saqi Books,
2007, p.43
58
A. Zhelyazkova, op. cit., p. 227
41
Islam did so in order to avoid extra taxes that all non-Muslims were required to pay,
such as the cizye or haraç and the dev irme. Muslims paid taxes too and, unlike
Christians, were required to serve in the army and fight wars, but they ha d a very
important advantage: a privileged legal status. Christians suffered discriminatory laws
(such as the prohibition to carry weapons, ride horses, dress like Muslims and build or
repair churches) and were jurisdictionally discriminated because they could not bring
evidence against a Muslim and their testimony could not be used against a Muslim.
Slavery, too, contributed to the spread of Islam in Bosnia. When war prisoners
were seized from neighboring Christian countries and taken to Bosnia as slaves, they
could apply for freedom if they converted to Islam. This led to an increase in Islamic
population in Bosnia, especially in towns, where there were more opportunities to find
work.
The last important factor linked to the Islamization of Bosnia is urbanization.
Under the Ottoman rule, an intense process of urbanization started and most Bosnian
towns developed in this period. Urban life increased and, as a consequence, economic
life developed too, with special emphasis on trade and crafts. In this situation of
economic development, career possibilities increased for Bosnians who converted to
Islam. Although conversion to Islam was not considered paramount to get rich in the
Ottoman Empire (as the case of many rich and influential merchants, mainly Greek,
clearly shows) one necessarily had to be a Muslim if he wanted to have a career in the
Ottoman state or simply to improve his social and legal situation. In this respect, the
dev irme
42
effect was particularly strong in Bosnia.59
The majority of the towns and main cities in
Bosnia thus gained a Muslim population and acquired a typical Oriental aspect. The
population lived in various mahalas, a bigger agglomeration of houses, usually divided
by creed (thus we find the Christian, Muslim and later Jewish mahala, too). Many
Muslim buildings were built in towns and, alongside numerous mosques,
building, markets, Turkish baths, and bridges soon appeared too. The most beautiful
monuments of Ottoman Bosnia date back to this period, such as the covered market in
Sarajevo and the Old Bridge in Mostar.
villages into the two most economically and culturally important urban centers in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, respectively. Both became the administrative, cultural, and
social hubs for the converted Muslim .60
Sarajevo, previously known as Vrhbosna, developed into an important economic
and mercantile centre in the early years of Ottoman control, its importance increased
since 1463. The city was home to a large class of merchants and had an expanding
economy
inhabitants were predominantly Muslims, but there were also Christians and Jews. The
aspect of the city was entirely oriental, the Ottomans built the bridge over the river
Miljacka, mosques, a theological school (medresa), a library, a Turkish bath (hamam)
and two inns (musafirhan). The Ottomans even gave Sarajevo its name, which derives
from Sara
was good, by Balkan standards or indeed by any standards of the time. It is
59
N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 66
60
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 155
43
understandable that many Bosnians should happily have embraced Islam to take part in
61.
If Muslims outnumbered Christians in towns, the contrary was true for the
countryside. As in the rest of the Ottoman Balkans, Christians were organized in
millets. The most important was the Orthodox millet, it was favored by Ottoman
authorities because of the weight of its population, which was increasing thanks to the
influx of Orthodox peasants who settled from neighboring lands in Herzegovina. The
Catholic millet suffered heavy losses of its believers to Orthodoxy and Islam, so its
number had largely decreased. The Franciscans were the only institution representing
the Church and had a vital role in protecting their flock against the Ottomans, as well as
giving moral and religious support.
Another important millet in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the Jewish millet.
Large numbers of Jews settled in the territory of Bosnia and Hercegovina following
their expulsion from Catholic Spain in 1492,
62. These Sephardic, Ladino-speaking Jews
63 settled mainly in
towns, especially in the capital Sarajevo, where they were active merchants and traders.
As opposed to the situation in Europe, they suffered no discriminatory measures, on the
contrary they were initially assigned their own mahala in Sarajevo and allowed to build
a synagogue. Later on richer Jews moved in houses grouped around the central market,
whereas the others, especially the poorer ones, moved into a special, large building
by Bosnians. Both names mean
61
Ibid., p.68
62
N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 108
63
Ladino is a variety of Spanish spoken by Jews, also known as Judeo-Spanish
44
courtyard, due to the presence of an inner courtyard, consisting of nearly fifty rooms
shared by families. Jews were important merchants and renowned physicians and
pharmacists, but they also practiced a variety of professions: they were tailors,
shoemakers and butchers. Jews were part of the zimmi population and as a consequence
had an inferior legal status and were obligated to pay discriminatory taxes,
treatment of the Jews was much less discriminatory in the Ottoman Empire than in any
of the Christian lands to the north and west in the late medieval and early modern
64 In this respect, the Ottomans showed a higher level of tolerance than
anywhere in Europe at that time.
The Ottomans showed a tolerant attitude towards the Gypsies too, a group which
did not constitute a millet of their own but that was, nevertheless, quite numerous. They
were more populous than the Jews but, unlike them, they were not assigned a mahala,
they lived in the periphery of cities and towns, occupying a lower position in the
society. Their legal status, however, was exactly the same as that of other zimmies,
Christians or Jews. Many Gypsies underwent a process of Islamization and it seems that
65
The treatment that Jews and Gypsies received under the Ottoman domination
clearly shows the policy of tolerance that was in vogue at the time, especially in the
early stage of the empire. It is a tolerance, as mentioned above, found nowhere in the
Europe of the time and that shows how, despite the overwhelming importance of
religion and the precepts of Islam in the administration of the empire, or even thanks to
them, the Ottoman Empire started as, and continued to be, a large multiethnic and multi-
64
Ibid., p. 110
65
Ibid., p. 116
45
confessional empire, where its non-Muslim subjects could enjoy vast degrees of
autonomy.
The picture of Ottoman Bosnian society was thus very variegated, it was a
composite and multiethnic society divided in four millets based exclusively on religious
affiliation: Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish. The millet system, together with the
common language and, above all, the church, was the only source of group identity
among Ottoman subjects. Therefore:
In the context of an all-embracing confessionalism, three cultural identities emerged:
Muslim-Bosniak, in which Turkish-Islamic culture dominated; Serbian Orthodox,
linked to the Byzantine religious tradition; and Catholic Croatian, shaped by western
Christian traditions. After the expulsion of the Arabs and the Jews from Spain and
Portugal in the sixteenth century, these three components were joined by another, that
of the Sephardic Jews. The result was an exceptionally complicated and ambivalent
society, characterized on the one hand by cultural and spiritual isolationism, on the
other by tolerance for difference as a normal aspect of life.66
The isolationism was manifested especially among the elites of the millets, who
usually did not have any, or very little, contact with each other. They lived separate
lives, frequented their own confessional schools and churches, mosques or synagogues,
and spent their lives among the members of their own community. The situation
changed for the lower strata of the society, and especially for the peasants. It was among
them that a higher level of tolerance was generally found. Although they did not mix
one with the other all religious organizations forbade intermarriage67
, the peasants
belonging to various millets shared the same hard agricultural life, and were usually
66
67
B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 52
46
good neighbors, at least in the first phase of the empire (things would be quite different
from the end of the seventeenth century, as we shall see in the following chapter). In
fact,
societies lived side by side in relative peace and understanding, although with
68 The typical oriental style that was shaping the
continued at a minimum level, in primitive houses that had scarcely changed over the
69. In such an environment, the collective memory could rely only on folklore,
with its traditional music, songs, dances and, most importantly, oral literature.
Particularly important and valuable in the heritage of the folk oral tradition are epic
poems and the popular love poems called sevdalinke. These were popular among
Muslims and Christians alike, just like the epic ballads, which often changed the name
of the characters and their environment, but referred to the same themes (heroes, battles,
fights against oppressors, bandits and war)70
. Every group had their own variations, but
they all shared a common ground, rooted in the same life conditions.
It is misleading to consider the centuries of Ottoman domination as a period in
which there was no form of cultural life and cultural expression. The oral folk tradition
alone would prove it wrong. But Bosnian and Balkan historiography usually tend to
emph
come away with the impression that these centuries form a cultural wasteland, with
intellectual and spiritual life surviving only in the most rudimentary and stultified
68
Ibid., p. 45
69
70
A. Parmiggiani Dri, op. cit., p. 74
47
71. Bosnia was home to a unique Ottoman and Islamic oriental culture, enriched
with a native Bosnian character that made this country special within the
empire. Bosnia and Herzegovina was a border country set between two empires (the
Ottoman and the rising Habsburg Empire) that was able to blend together different,
sometimes even opposite elements, and to produce her own distinctive aspect and
culture. Towns, where oriental culture and architecture were best expressed, maintained
their original medieval structure but added the typical oriental architecture, thus
developing an aspect of their own, different from proper Turkish towns. Another
foreign elements is the so called
alhamijado literature. Alhamijado works are written in the vernacular Bosnian
language, but using the Arabic script. Although many Bosnian literary works were
written in Turkish, Persian or Arabic, Bosnian Muslims felt the need to use their
vernacular in their country, but adapting it to Ottoman culture.
The alhamijado literature only enriched an already variegated linguistic written
panorama. The pre-Turkish script (the Bosnian adaptation of the Cyrillic
alphabet) was still used by beys and Franciscans, who also used Latin, whereas
Orthodox adopted the Cyrillic alphabet. Decorative arts flourished too, decorative
calligraphy was used to embellish manuscripts and inscriptions, and miniature painting
reached a high level.
As for the Christian millets, the Orthodox-Serb tradition was kept alive by the
Church and especially by the folk tradition, embodied in the figure of the guslar
(fiddler). Orthodox art was best expressed in the frescos of the monasteries, real source
for the continuation of the Serbian-Byzantine artistic tradition.
71
N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 100
48
As for the Catholic-Croats, they relied on the Franciscans for the preservation of
both their creed and their art. An important, specific literature of the Bosnians
Franciscans developed during the centuries of Ottoman rule. At first their works were
mainly religious and didactic, but chronicles soon appeared too, in which the friars
recorded their history but also described their real life. Some, especially in the
Romantic, Illyrian period, were politically motivated, showing a deep secular influence
and intrinsic literary value. Most Catholic Croats traditions and sense of belonging, as is
the case with their Orthodox and Muslims counterparts, were embedded in the oral folk
tradition, despite .
Jews too were influenced by the Bosnian specific situation. They were a closed
group that preserved their cultural identity, but at the same time they were an active part
of the Bosnian society, taking part in it as merchants and craftsmen. The language of
their education was classical Hebrew, but they used Ladino in everyday life and
Bosnian for business. In Sarajevo they had their own synagogue, confessional schools, a
rabbinic school and a Jewish cemetery. Their true cultural treasure is the precious
a fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript brought over from
Spain all the way to Bosnia, and now preserved in its capital.
In conclusion, the Ottoman domination had deep and far-reaching consequences
for Bosnia-Herzegovina in many aspects. In the religious sphere it witnessed large scale
conversion to Islam and the change in the composition of Catholics and Orthodox
population throughout the territory; in the social and political sphere there was the
establishment of a native class of Muslim landholders, conscious of their Bosnian origin
but active citizens of the Ottoman Empire; in the economical field there was a growth of
trade and the development of craftsmanship which, as a consequence, influenced the
49
process of urbanization. Bosnian towns were increasingly acquiring an oriental aspect
and were greatly influenced by Ottoman architecture. The population of Bosnia and
Herzegovina was organized in separate millets corresponding to religious affiliation,
although each group shared everyday experience with other millets, especially at a
popular level. Each millet produced its own cultural traditions, although they all shared
common folk literature. Ottoman Bosnia was a mix of ethnic groups, different religions,
blend in all the various elements thanks to the Ottoman administrative system that
allowed a large degree of cultural autonomy for its subjects, despite being a highly
centralized, absolutist and military empire.
50
3. Ottoman decline
The Ottoman Empire reached its height during the reign of Suleiman the
Magnificent, who brought the empire at its highest in terms of extension, power and
prestige. His death in 1566 marked the beginning of a period, of Ottoman decline,
which stretched throughout the eighteenth century. Internal and external forces were the
the result of consistent
external, Western European economic and military-72
. The
Ottoman Empire suffered from growing anti-Turkish policies in Western politics, which
aimed at substituting the occupied European Ottoman territories with their direct
The said policy had negative
effects on the Balkans and especially on
73. We shall now analyze the causes and the consequences of the long
Ottoman decline, considering the effects on Bosnia Herzegovina in particular.
3.1 The destabilization of the Ottoman Empire
A number of factors combined caused the irreversible decline of the Ottoman
Empire. Some were inherent and let to the gradual and
continuous deterioration in the internal administration.
The Ottoman Empire was a military machine. It could continue to exist and be
powerful only through a continuous state of warfare. Wars meant the conquest of new
territories, new lands to give to the military to divide into fiefs, new taxes and new
72
D. Hupchick, The Balkans, p. 164
73
Bosnia, p. 100
51
influx of slaves. The money was reinvested in the army to support new conquests. At
the end of the sixteenth century, however, all the internal institutions that governed the
empire deteriorated, influencing one another and leading the empire to an irreversible
decline which influenced the ruling and ruled class alike.
A big internal problem was represented by the succession of sultans to the
throne. Ottoman law never legalized the way in which sultans ascended the throne. In
the first period it was customary for candidate sultans to exterminate their siblings in
order to be the only eligible member of the family. At the end of the sixteenth century
the fratricide system was abolished and substituted by another system that proved
disastrous for the empire. All the royal princes, except the sons of the reigning sultan,
were confined to a special palace and were denied all means of communication with the
outside world, living a secluded existence in company of only the women of the harem
74 and once they ascended the
throne they were unable to govern or choose worthy advisers. The figure of the sultan
was of critical importance to the empire since he was the head of the empire itself and
the supreme ruler of the military forces. Since its origin, the Ottoman Empire was ruled
by a succession of ten talented sultans, who led the military into successful campaigns,
each increasing the size of the empire and thus enriching it with lands, slaves and, above
all, money. The end of the sixteenth century, however, witnessed a succession of weak
and incapable sultans, who left the empire without a skilled leader.
The administration accompanied the decline of their rulers. The efficient slave
system, which provided well trained administrators for the empire who could advance
through a meritocratic system, began to fall apart. There was no more influx of slaves as
74
L.S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453, p. 118
52
a consequence of unsuccessful wars. Without military victories, the administration was
left without the necessary slave resources and money revenue. In addition, the Muslim
population was increasingly challenging the system which excluded them since all the
administrators -Muslims. Increasingly, candidates could bribe
the sultan and their ministers (who were in desperate need of money) and soon
advancement in the system was possible only through corruption. This practice
replaced the old administration system and had deeply negative effects on the empire. It
had a particularly devastating effect on the tax collection system:
Government officials originally collected the taxes directly. But so many of those
officials proved dishonest that Mohammed II substituted a tax-farming arrangement.
Henceforth all taxes were farmed out to the highest bidders, usually courtiers of high
officials. These individuals in turn sold their concessions piecemeal. The process
frequently was repeated several times, each vendor making a substantial profit. The
crushing burden of this oppressive structure rested finally upon the helpless peasant
population, Moslem as well as Christian.75
Corruption also extended to the military, already deeply affected by the decline
in warfare. The Janissaries, who were always prone to rebellion, became impossible to
govern under weak sultans. They were no longer a celibate cast and were allowed to
have a family of their own. Since the military pay they received was not enough to
maintain a family, Janissaries became engaged in trade and industry, putting deep roots
in the Muslim society. The post of Janissary became hereditary, but the sons continued
the fathers trade activities
75
Ibid., p.120
53
76 The was
no longer necessary nor was it sustainable for the government. The last child-levy took
place in 1637. The majority of the Janissaries were now Muslims by birth, their army
was huge but useless as a fighting force. The position of these corps was so well-
established in the society that the sultans themselves were unable to reform or suppress
them. They formed a closed social class with a high level of self-interest and little
concern for their duties. The timar-holding cavalry, the spahis, deteriorated too. Abuse
in the granting of fiefs became commonplace; illegitimate holders won the entitlement
of the land, kept the money for themselves leaving the spahis with little or no source of
income. In addition, to get hold of as many revenues as possible from the lands, the
central government started to confiscate fiefs and rent them to rich administrators, who
then sublet their rental to the tenants. The consequence for the empire was negative, as
-military landholders viewed their holdings purely as sources of personal
enrichment and bent every rule at every opportunity to convert their leases into
77 Thus, former fiefs belonging to
the sultan were transformed into çifliks, private lands oriented to the market and worked
by peasants. The empire was thus losing control of both the military lands and revenues
that derived from them and was witnessing the expansion of the abusive tax-farming
system. The central authorities lost any control over the provincial administration.
Taxes kept rising dramatically, as well as the pressure on the raya, who were
supposed to sustain the military, administration, landholders and tax farmers. Owing to
inflation and heavy taxes, the once good situation of the peasants changed utterly; soon
76
Ibid., p.121
77
D. Hupchick, op. cit, p. 166
54
it was worse than in the rest of Europe, reversing a picture that saw the Ottoman raya as
living in better conditions with respect to feudal European peasants. The raya was
overwhelmed by a growing number of taxes and found themselves as a serf tied to the
land of the lord they were working for. As a consequence of this unbearable situation,
there was a large migration of peasants from villages to towns where, after a long
process of urban integration, they became merchants or artisans, thus forming the base
for the Balkan regional middle classes.
The situation of the empire was getting worse because there was no easy way to
halt and prevent further deterioration:
The deterioration of the dynasty, the corruption of the administration, the
weakening of the armed forces combined to transform the once formidable Ottoman
Empire into a flaccid and rickety structure ruthlessly exploited by a small clique
entrenched in Constantinople. This clique constituted of courtiers and high officials
who used the puppet sultans as a screen for their operations. At rare intervals a sultan
showed up who attempted to exercise his prerogative and to follow an independent
policy. On such occasions the oligarchy usually aroused the janissaries and used them
to depose the sultan and to put a more tractable person in his place.78
It was thus nearly impossible to renew the empire from above and change it in a
modern state since the dominating cast preserved their privileges with all means. The
disparity between the West and the Ottoman Empire grew bigger with time. The
Ottomans were soon surpassed by Europe that was in full technological expansion,
which was a significant external factor that speeded up the decline of the empire and
made it economically dependent.
78
Ibid., p.122
55
The economy of the Ottoman Empire had been self-sufficient, until the late
sixteenth century. In its vast territories it possessed enough food and raw materials to
satisfy its internal needs: the production and consumption in the Empire were local. The
economic problem, however, was the lack of growth because of its
traditional emphasis on economic stability and the low prices of exported goods. They
showed little interest in economic development and adopted a lassie-faire attitude in
economy following the Ottoman Islamic tradition which did not see fit to significantly
intervene in the economy of the state. They showed little or no interest in the
development of the economy during the centuries in which Europe was starting
changing from a feudal to a mercantilistic and capitalist society. Ottoman economy did
not show any commercial or capitalist progress either, it continued to stress traditional
production for traditional consumption levels. Industry did not move from the
traditional handicraft stage and guild system, while the market suffered from inflation
due to the influx of Spanish silver from South America. Taxes were dramatically raised
while the economy stagnated. The Age of Discovery in Western Europe caused the shift
of the trade routes and the decrease in importance of the Asian-European commerce.
Besides, European merchants set up their Levant companies and began to exploit the
Ottomans resources. This move proved disadvantageous for the empire because
European countries soon dominated the foreign trade of the Ottomans and turned the
empire dependent on the west for both raw materials and cheap, manufactured industrial
goods. -
sufficient economy:
56
Machine technology in the empire was rudimentary and, because of local self-
sufficiency, remained unchanged for centuries. Most labor was performed manually.
Never having experienced the Renaissance and its by-products of Humanism and the
Scientific Revolution, which opened the door in the West to capitalist thinking and,
subsequently, to mercantilism and industrialization, the Ottoman government and
population did not viewed as outmode the traditional production methods within the
empire. Gradually, the we -made import goods progressively
displaced native handicraft items, causing unemployment, economic dependency, and
commercial deterioration.79
In this situation of stagnation and inflation, the only figures that benefitted from
the economic crises were the Muslim çiflik owners and the Christian zimmi merchants,
who got rich by trading with the West
only increased financial and labor hardship compounded by rising official bribery,
80
The economic decline was accompanied by a general military decline. The real
force of the Ottoman Empire was its superior artillery and the Janissary infantry, but
both lost their power by the mid-sixteenth century.
technological revolution, the use of gunpowder and the formation and development of a
professional army were all elements that made the Western Powers h more
powerful than the traditional Ottoman army that felt no urge to change their traditional
military weapons and tactics. As a consequence, well-studied battlefield tactics, a
rigorously trained professional army and disciplined troops, gunpowder and firearms,
lighter and smaller artillery, combined infantry and cavalry soon showed the superiority
of western armies. Similarly, the Ottoman navy was not able to keep up with Western
improvements. After the defeat in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Ottoman forces no
79
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 169
80
Ibid, p. 170
57
longer dominated the Mediterranean: the military and sea routes were now controlled by
western forces.
The total military defeat of the Ottomans before Vienna in 1683 marked the
The 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz ended
the war with Vienna and confined the Ottomans south of the Danube, while the
Habsburgs regained most of Hungary and Transylvania. Austria advanced further in the
Ottoman territories and, by the terms of the Treaty of Passarowitz signed in 1718 it
gained control over the Banat and Wallachia. Venice and Russia were also expanding in
Ottoman territories, in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, respectively. The eighteenth
century was characterized by frequent wars between the Ottoman Empire and the
increasingly powerful Austrian and Russian empires, which were slowly but steadily
acquiring Ottoman territories, especially in border areas.
The Ottoman Empire was shrinking in size and power. No longer able to keep up
with the increasingly technological and scientific Western European emerging powers,
transformed by geographical discoveries and the commercial revolution and politically
strengthened by the advent of the absolutist monarchy, in
and intellectual
81.
3.2 Effects of Ottoman decline in Bosnia and Herzegovina
The destabilization of the Ottoman Empire had a vast negative effect on the
81
L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 131
58
and
Herzegovina was even worse. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
provincial Ottoman society was undergoing a period of important socioeconomic
As in the rest of the empire
timar estates in çiftliks, privately owned lands where taxes were collected through the
tax-farming system.82
Frequent wars with Austria, Venice and Russia during the
seventeenth and eighteenth century augmented the burden of the taxes for the raya and
caused the migration to Bosnia of a large number of Muslim refugees from the
neighboring regions, increasing the Islamic population in Bosnia. Taxes were raised,
corruption spread in the military, administrative and religious system, law and order
deteriorated, and poverty, resentment and social unrest were increasing.
Bosnia and Herzegovina now became the frontier of the Ottoman Empire, since
after the wars with Austria it had lost large parts of the territory in the north and north-
west. Beyond the frontier there was an increasingly powerful and aggressive Austria,
s expense
83, where the religious and political tensions
between European Christianity and Ottoman Islam were quickly deteriorating. Bosnia
82
This system operated through the sale of state sources, such as those coming from the timar lands, to
private persons at ever high prices. The state contracted to turn over such collection to the tax farmers,
who each time promised to deliver more; it thus was able to increase indefinitely the tax revenues to be
collected. Tax farmers got out of the raya as much as they could, and were often assisted by the military
forces. With the decline of the Empire, the tax farming system spread to all state positions. All
instruments exercising state-delegated authority came to be for personal gains. The government began to
sell posts and delegate authority to the highest bidders regardless of qualifications. See H. Inalcik, The
Ottoman Decline and its Effects upon the Reaya, in Birnbaum H., Vrynois S., Aspects of the Balkans:
Continuity and Change, The Hague, Mouton, 1972, p. 341-2
83
59
backward and provincial in its
social, economic and cultural structure. The tendency of the population was to withdraw
84.
The shift from timar estates to private, hereditary estates held by the local
aristocracy (agas and beys) deeply affected Bosnian society. The lords were now
exclusively Bosnian Muslims, whereas the vast majority of the peasants working on
their lands in increasingly harsh conditions were Christians. This change is of crucial
importance for the development
In this way a long process of social and religious polarization took place: from the
fifteenth century, when the feudal estate-holders could be Christians as well as
Muslims, and their estates were worked by peasants of both kinds, to the nineteenth,
when all the big landowners were Muslims and the great majority of the non-land-
owning peasants were Christians. 85
The taxes were so high that peasants had nothing to sell in the market: they were
reduced to mere subsistence, and as a consequence many left the land and went to towns
in search of work. The peasants had to pay taxes not only to the central government,
lords and tax farmers, but also to their religious authorities. The Catholic Church,
represented by the Franciscans, needed tithes in order to guarantee its sustenance and
maintain its monasteries. Although abuses were reported among friars, it was within the
Orthodox Church that corruption weighted down heavily on its believers. The
Phanariots, Greek-speaking families set in Istanbul, controlled the Orthodox Church at
its highest level. Since they gained their offices through corruption, they sold the lower
84
Ibid., p.100-101
85
N. Malcolm, Bosnia, p. 94
60
offices to regain money. riarchal throne
represented a lucrative source of income patriarchs were appointed and removed in
86.All church
seats were thus accessible only through payment and were open to the highest bidder,
and the ultimate burden of the corrupted system laid upon the Orthodox lower clergy
and the peasant population. The competition and rivalry between the Catholic and
Orthodox Churches persisted throughout all the period, embittering the relationship
between the peasants too.
An increasing state of anarchy and absence of law was taking hold of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The local nobility and the Janissaries were becoming extremely powerful
on their estates and were escaping th , whereas wars or
fear of wars were always worrying the peasant population, especially because after
Bosnia became a frontier territory it frequently suffered enemy raids and attacks.
Peasants had to pay exorbitantly high taxes to lords, the unruly military, religion
institutions, which were
.87
Rebellions broke out frequently, especially among the Christians in
the countryside and the Muslims in towns, who demanded better conditions of life and a
more centralized government control against the corrupted administration and greedy
local nobility. Social revolt was also expressed through banditry: peasants who wanted
to oppose the authority and its institutions escaped from unbearable conditions in the
villages and fled to the mountains. The bandits, known as hajduks, raided villages and
86
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 176
87
Ibid., p. 101
61
markets to survive, often adding more suffering to the local population. This constant
state of insecurity
allowed nothing to develop in Bosnia and Herzegovina other than a slow and
anachronistic economic life by which intolerance and distrust were constantly
reinforced and intensified. This became worse at the end of the eighteenth century,
when Austria and Russia began to camouflage their interests in the Balkans with a
religious veneer of being the protectors of Catholics and Orthodox. In Bosnia, where
three religious groups were so inextricably mixed, and largely territorially mixed as
well, this was an added element of divergence. It remained isolated from the world,
sunk in anachronistic feudalism and racked by social and religious discord.88
The economy was stagnating too. The lack of proper means of transport and
communication, together with the burden of taxation, meant that Bosnian peasants were
completely cut off from all outside sources of knowledge and continued to use the
agricultural methods of his ancestors. With no means of marketing his surplus produce
and fearing the tax collector and the greedy official, he farmed his land to support his
family and to pay the dues demanded by the church and the state. His house and
implements remained basic and his living conditions low. No incentive existed to spur
him to greater efforts and larger production.89
The picture of eighteenth century Bosnia and Herzegovina is thus far from being
positive. Bosnia was a frontier territory suffering from enemy raids from the outside and
from banditry within its borders. The population was burdened with heavy taxes and
tithes, the peasants lost their freedom and became serfs, and the land-holding Muslim
88
Ibid., p. 103-104
89
B. Jelavich, The British Travellers in the Balkans: The Abuses of Ottoman Administration in the
Slavonic Provinces
62
nobility was ruling Bosnia to their own advantage, escaping control from Istanbul. In
addition, the population was becoming increasingly polarized according to religion: on
the one hand there were the Muslim lords and on the other the Christian peasants. The
Christians were further divided between the antagonistic Catholic and Orthodox
Churches. Conditions improved significantly in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the so
called Tanzimat, a period of important reforms throughout the Ottoman Empire, from
which Bosnia benefitted most, as we shall see.
3.3 Ottoman reforms and the Tanzimat period
During the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire
underwent a period of internal transformation, as a result of centuries of competitive
interaction with Western Europe. The empire could not keep up with Western scientific,
technological, commercial and cultural developments, but instead of being assimilated
by the West, it maintained its own cultural independence and underwent a series of
adaptations in response to the imperialist and nationalist pressure on its native
institutions. Thanks to these reforms, the empire preserved itself until the early
twentieth century.
The first adaptive reforms began with the sultan Selim III in 1789. Being the
military the most urgent problem in the empire, he tried to modernize the army,
introducing a western-style regiment. His reforms proved ineffective because the
conservative military, administrative and religious leaders feared to lose their privileges
and, together with the Janissaries, they rebelled against the sultan. The succeeding
sultans were more cautious in showing openly their reform efforts, especially their pro-
63
western reforming ideas. In this manner Mahmud II managed to restore its authority
over the military and especially upon the Janissaries. When the sultan announced the
formation of a western-style army, the Janissaries rebelled again, but this time they were
new, reformed army played a major role in
the reforming efforts, while the conservative opposition was left without its main
corruption. The sultan also founded new schools, the first newspaper, a postal service
and a new modern method to collect taxes. He attempted to open the Ottoman society to
the outer world, dressing like a European, establishing a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
permanent embassies in European capitals.
t centralizing his authority through
Western-style institutions, and in this effort he was aided by young military officials
and administrators who were increasingly studying for long periods in Europe and
learning Western languages. He was, however, hampered by older conservative
90.
and his f -like
political, military, economic, and educational adaptations while retaining Ottoman
91.
The period of Ottoman history between the years 1839 and 1889 is known as Tanzimat,
a period of great reorganization and reforms in the empire. What was worrying the
90
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 238
91
Ibid., p. 238
64
Tanzimat reformers most was the imperialist policy of European Great Powers. Britain,
Austria and Russia were expanding their influence on the Balkan peninsula with the
excuse of protecting Christian subjects, who were beginning to rebel under the influx of
Western-inspired nationalist ideas.
The first great document of the reform period was the 1839 imperial decree of
Gülhane,92
93 aiming at
bringing efficiency to the central government and stability to the provinces. The sultan
proclaimed
that all of his subjects possessed government-guaranteed rights to life, honor and wealth
(and thus were not merely tax-
new judicial council charged with framing laws protecting those rights. Tax farming was
abolished and replaced by a regular system for assessing an levying taxes. Personal
property was declared inviolable. Codes of conduct for government officials and
bureaucrats were enacted. A military council was created to head the army, and equitable
conscription (restricted to Muslim subjects) was mandated94
.
The Tanzimat reforms were changing the traditional Ottoman Islamic state:
influenced by western interventionist governments, the empire wanted to stimulate the
economy, build infrastructures and areas formerly left to millet and religious
administration, such as education and civil law. It wanted to intervene directly in the
life of the empire, without intermediaries. Progress was made in government
92
This literally means the noble signed decree of the rose-garden courtyard, so called after the courtyard
at the Topkapi palace where it was proclaimed. Cfr N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 122-123
93
B. Jelavich, History of the Balkans, p. 282
94
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 239
65
administration, with the creation of ministries; in infrastructure, where new roads,
markets, telegraphs and a postal service were established; and in education, with the
establishment of new technical schools along with the traditional religious medreses. In
the economic and juridical fields, however, the reforms proved ineffective. The system
of taxation was never fully adapted and the lack of experience in modern industrial
economy halted any significant economic and financial development. The equality of
the subjects remained a mere proclamation, ignored throughout the empire, and much of
95.
It was very difficult to bring to an end the breakdown of central authority and the
inefficiency of the government. The situation of chaos in the provinces led to the rise of
local authorities, whom the population throughout the empire turned to for security and
protection. It was difficult to find a way out of a situation in which strong provincial
authorities deprived the government of its income, keeping the taxes to themselves: no
or little money flowed to the central government, therefore no strong army could be
established and defeat in war was frequent. Unsuccessful wars, as a consequence,
reinforced the prestige of local authorities. Those in turn were becoming stronger and
richer and were depriving the capital of money for the army and public needs. So the
government failed to control its subject directly, which was the initial aim of the
Tanzimat. It showed that the 1839 decree surely opened the way for reforms but alone it
was not enough to reform the empire.
The real change came with the 1856 proclamation of the reform edict known as
Hatti Humayun, which opened up a period of sweep reforms in the Ottoman Empire.
95
L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 317
66
territorial integrity would be respected and would not be subject to foreign intervention.
The Hatti Humayun marked he direct impact of the Tanzimat reforms on the subjects of
the empire, especially on the Balkan subjects. As in 1839, the Tanzimat reformers tried
to improve administration, which, despite previous attempts at reform, was still
functioning through corruption. The Ottoman administrative system still oppressed
Christian and Muslim subjects alike, peasants were maltreated and expected to pay
exorbitant high taxes. The Christian subjects not only suffered from the misgovernment
of the Ottomans, but also from the rapacity of their ecclesiastical leaders. The Porte
recognized that a strong administrative reform was needed, not only in Constantinople
but throughout the empire, especially among its Christian subjects. In fact, the first part
of the edict regarded the Ottoman non-Muslim subjects. The proclamation promised
office, and social 96
. It aimed at the reform of administration, the protection of
the rights of the Christians and the reorganization of the millets. Ottoman statesman
enforced the existing legislation, added new decrees and sent their emissaries on
inspection tours throughout the Balkan Peninsula97
. A fundamental reform for the
survival of the empire regarded the system of taxation. The new reforms, started with
the 1831 and 1838 censuses, attempted to simplify and reduce the taxes collected by the
government. In addition, new regulations were introduced to control the abuses of the
tax farming system. Unfortunately, however, corruption was still widespread and taxes
very high. To improve the Balkan non-Muslim situation, a new penal code was issued
96
L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 381
97
Periodic tours of inspection were given great importance and were made by important representatives
of the government, for example the grand vizier Mehmet Kibrisli Pasha toured Macedonia and Bulgaria
in 1860. Inspection tours to Bosnia were made in 1861 and 1863. Cfr L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 386
67
in 1858, based on the French Napoleonic model. Other regulatory commercial codes
were instituted soon afterwards, all intended to eradicate inequities by non-Muslims. As
part of the administration reform and Christian protection program, the Ottoman
statesmen aimed at the and
98. Lay elements could now participate in the election of the
patriarchate and in religious matters, making the administration of the church open to
secular elements. The reform aimed at eliminating the extreme corruption of the
Orthodox Church, at minimizing clerical control over its followers and, by lowering
religious differences, at uniting the various subjects of the empire, who were now
supposed to think of themselves as citizens of the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately for
The Porte, it was too late to such a unifying attempt: the rise of nationalism among the
Balkan subjects was working in the opposite direction, separating each religious and
ethnic group, rather than bringing it together. The Ottomans reformed provincial
administration too, and proclaimed the Vilayet Law in 1864. Following the principle of
greater participation for the subjects and greater decentralization, the empire was
divided into vilayets (or provinces), which in turn were further divided into sanjaks and
other smaller administrative units. However, again, it was too late for the Ottoman
Empire to try to bring its subjects closer to the government: neither the millet reform
nor the vilayet reform succeeded in bringing loyalty of the Balkan Christians towards
The Porte, because they were being increasingly influenced by nationalism.
The Tanzimat reforms left the majority of the population unsatisfied. Those who
had lost their previous privileges were angry, while the progressive elements in Muslim
98
Ibid., p. 386
68
99: the religious and nationalistic principles were stronger
unifying elements than the sense of belonging to an ageing Ottoman Empire. As
Jelavich says:
The Ottoman Empire was no longer a great conquering power. It had suffered from
repeated foreign intervention, humiliating defeat in war, and financial bankruptcy.
Moreover, the new measures themselves had not been very popular. The centralizing
institutions were difficult to apply to a population that had for centuries been governed
on another basis and that was divided by religion, national background, and provincial
loyalties. The Tanzimat officials were no substitute for the former religious and
communal leaders. The parting of the ways between Christian and Muslim was clear at
the beginning of the century, and the reform era made the divisions even more apparent.
If communal and church authority was reduced, the Balkan people wanted their own
national governments, not continued control from a centralized administration in
Constantinople. 100
3.4 Tanzimat effects in Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Tanzimat reforms had important consequences in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Muslim element dominated the region, as it comprised over one third of the
population, but The Porte considered the border region of Bosnia far from being a
reliable ally. The region caused the government problems since the early reforms of
Mahmut II: the attempt of modernizing the army caused continuous resistance in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. The formation of a modern army endangered the privileges of the
Bosnian military men and of local lords, both were demanding greater independence
from the Constantinople:
99
B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 287
100
Ibid., p.287
69
with the Ottoman government. The centralizing reforms cut directly into their
privileges and seemed to offer no compensating benefits. Influential Muslims
throughout the empire objected to the increasing influence of the Christian great
powers in Constantinople. Strong resentment remained directed against the changes
that had been made in the administration and military system. Similarly, the continued
efforts made to reform the tax system and to aid the peasant struck at the interests of
Muslim leadership.101
In 1831 they joined together under the leader Husejn and formally demanded
the autonomy of Bosnia and Herzegovina with an elected native ruler, who would
recognize the suzerainty of the sultan and even pay tribute. The Ottoman government
crushed the revolt, led by the Herzegovinian Ali-
elayet of Herzegovina as a reward. The situation of the peasants was still critical,
especially after the abolition of the timar estate in 1831, with the conversion of the land
in agaliks or begliks, where the peasants had even less rights, and uprisings were
common among Christian and Muslim peasants.
In outlying areas of the Empire like Bosnia and Herzegovina, the 1839 and 1856
proclamations were ignored at the beginning. The peasants were still exploited and local
authority was striving for greater autonomy. Unrests and fighting were weakening the
economy and the powerful, conservative Muslim landholding nobility was
opposing the centralizing measures of the government. To regain control over the
region, in 1850 the sultan sent e and intelligent
102 He
101
B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 350
102
N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 124
70
successfully crushed the uprising led by Ali-
ruling independently) thus taking full military control over the region, and lessened the
political power of the Muslim landowning nobility and opened the road to the
introduction of the Tanzimat reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His successor, Topal
Osman Pasha103
, continued with the reforms in the 1860s, years in which Bosnia was
experiencing 104
105. Under Topal Osman Pasha, sensitive to the intellectual life of Bosnia,
education was expanded, new Muslim and Christian schools were built, a library was
founded, the first public hospital opened, new courts were created, and a printing press
established, which released a newspaper called Bosna written in both Bosnian and
Turkish. He also built roads and started to establish a railway system. Topal introduced
the new system of military conscription in 1865. He also put into effect the 1864
Vilayet Law in Bosnia and Herzegovina, reorganizing the whole structure of the former
elayet dividing the territory into seven sanjak and setting up new courts which included
a joint Christian-Muslim Court of Appeal. A small executive council made of Muslims,
Christians and Jewish representatives met regularly to discuss matters of ordinary
administration. New codes were enforced to regulate peasant dues to landlords, but
despite these codes, peasants were left without sufficient sustainment and with high
taxes, which were still collected in a
worst problem: the relationship between the mostly Christian peasants and their Muslim
landowners, and the growing tension between them.
103
A former admiral and civic governor of Belgrade, Topal was learned in Turkish, Arabic and Persian
literature, wrote good Turkish poetry, and spoke French and Greek. Cfr N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 127-128
104
Ibid., p. 127
105
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 246
71
was an Ottoman Balkan
vilayet
106 After his death, however, discontent and dissatisfaction among peasants
grew, as well as tensions between Christian peasants and Muslim landowners. Muslims
too were becoming suspicious towards Christians, and it is actually in the last years of
the 1860s that religion, and not only economy, became a cause of anger and unrest.
The Tanzimat reforms, despite all the modernization they brought, could not
bolster the old order in Bosnia and Herzegovina because they did not touch the most
important problem at the time, agrarian reform.
106
Idib., p. 264
72
The Balkan Crisis of 1875-1876
(Taken from D. Hupchick, H. E. Cox, The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the
Balkans, New York, Palgrave, 2001, map 26
73
II. The 1875 revolt
In 1875 a revolt broke out in Herzegovina and soon spread to Bosnia. It
was a signal for revolt in other parts of
107 The mass uprising brought an end to the centuries-long
Ottoman rule on Bosnia and Herzegovina, but instead of an independent state the
insurrection ended with the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary
following the 1878 Congress of Berlin. The insurrection shook the equilibrium not only
of the Balkan Peninsula, starting insurrections in other parts dominated by the
Ottomans, but imperiled the balance of European Great Powers because of their
conflicting interests in the area. British foreign policy, which tended to favor the unity
of the Ottoman Empire to safeguard its interests in the area, did not change even after
the victory of the Liberals in 1880. 108
The situation of conflict, the failure of mediation
and of finding a diplomatic solution to the crisis led to a Russo-Turkish war and
eventually to the Congress in Berlin, which redefined the balance among the Great
Powers, but dissatisfied the newborn Balkan nations, especially Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
The immediate cause of the 1875 insurrection was the crop failure of the
previous year and the unrelenting pressure of the tax farmers.109
These conditions alone,
however, do not explain the rapid and large extension of the uprising. The influence of
Pan-Serbism and Pan-Slavism convinced the neighboring Serbian and Montenegrin
107
Bosnia, A Cultural History, p. 147
108
The sufferings of the Christian population under the Turks were used in Britain by the Liberal leader
Gladstone in his election campaign, which led him to power in 1880 and helped the shift of opinion
among the British towards the Turks, previously admired but now seen as cruel tyrants.
109
L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453, p. 397
74
Russian Pan-Slavism and Habsburg expansionism were also responsible for the spread
of the revolt, because once it started it was sustained by Russian officials, who sought to
exploit it for their own purposes.110
During the 1875 revolt the social uprising was
intertwined with diplomatic events and national ideology.111
We shall now examine the
situation that led to the uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the critical
international situation that enabled the insurrection to expand on a large scale and that
ended only with the Congress of Berlin in 1878.
1. The situation of the peasants in Bosnia and Herzegovina
The situation of peasants, especially of the Christian peasants, was critical. The
Tanzimat reform
the burning problem of the relationship between peasants and their landowners. The
peasants objected principally to the conditions of landholding on the agaliks and the
labor obligations on the begliks. The Porte, as part of the reform program, registered and
classified the land in 1858. In 1859 it introduced the Safer Decree. After the abolition of
the timar estate, private land was divided into agaliks (estates where there was a legal
basis in the relationship between landowners and peasants and where peasants had
certain rights to use the land) and begliks (which were full property of the landlord). The
against the interests of the greater part of the population of Bosnia the peasants, both
110
Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 399
111
Ustanak u Bosni 1875.-1878.
75
112 It recognized the agaliks as the property of their holders, but
the state guaranteed certain rights on them for the peasants. The decree was an attempt
to codify the customary law on the duties of peasants who worked on the agalik estates
and grant the right to use the land by law. It codified the amount of taxes to be
collected, which were very high, comprising about forty per cent of the total crop:
It fixed the tithe paid to the landlord at one-
-third of the
on the remainder, this meant
and there were other state taxes of various kinds
which were still collected in the old unjust way through tax farming113
. The begliks, on
the contrary, escaped the rules of the regulations, for example the rule that landlords
should provide housing for the peasants and help in its maintenance and repair, and the
rule that peasants were free to leave the landlord and the right of the landlord to evict
the peasants on the ground of not satisfying work. As a result, since these rules were not
applied on begliks, landlords converted their agaliks to begliks to escape control and
where they could set the contractual relation at their own advantage.
The unbearable situation of the peasants of Bosnia and Herzegovina culminated
a revolt that broke out in Herzegovina in the summer of 1875, triggered by the relentless
112
113
These tax farmers were a grievous burden because they paid a cash sum for the privilege of collecting
the taxes and then proceeded to fleece the peasants mercilessly in order to secure a large return on their
investment. Concerned primarily with regaining his original investment and with making as much as
possible in addition, the tax farmer was not worried about protecting the interests either of the state or the
tax payer. Against these practices the tax payer had little protection. The police and the central
administration stood with the fax farmer in the attempt to collect the maximum. Cfr L.S. Stavrianos, p.
396 and B. Jelavich, The British Travellers in the Balkans: The Abuses of Ottoman Administration in the
Slavonic Provinces, art. cit., p. 404
76
pressure of tax farmers who demanded exorbitantly high taxes despite the poor harvest
that followed a particularly harsh winter. The revolt also originated from the tense
relationship between peasants and landlords114
. Although the movement was primarily
social and economic in nature, other forces, which played a major role and helped
spreading the revolt on a large scale, were involved too. Peasant dissatisfaction alone
did not, and could not, lead to the great 1875 revolt. One important factor of
destabilization in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the influx of nationalism from across its
borders.
2. Influence of Croatian and Serbian nationalism in Bosnia
The geographical position of Bosnia and Herzegovina, lying at the frontier of the
Empire, helped its inhabitants to have frequent connections with the population of
Croatia and Serbia from across the border and be influenced by the new ideas that were
circulating at the time. The political atmosphere in Bosnia and Herzegovina was
permeated by Croatian Illyrism, Serbian nationalism, Russian Pan-Slavism and
.115
Both in Croatia and in Serbia nationalist ideas developed into programs for
cultural and national unification and freedom116
. Despite centuries of foreign
domination in Croatia and Serbia by the Habsburgs and the Ottomans respectively, the
population did preserve a sense of broader South Slav unity so strong that
114
B. Jelavich, History of the Balkans, p. 352
115
D. Hupchick, The Balkans, p. 255
116
Bosnia, p. 106
77
Habsburg nor Ottoman rule had completely destroyed a feeling of unity among the
individual nationalities or brought about a total loss of the memory of a more glorious
117. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Ottoman institution of the millet guaranteed
that the different ethnic groups had a high degree of autonomy and, under the leadership
of their religious authorities, were free to preserve their own religion, language, and
culture. The Catholic Church, and especially the Orthodox Church of Bosnia and
Herzegovina represented the main vehicle for the transmission and preservation of past
traditions, and
although the Patriarchate often collaborated closely with the Ottoman government, the
church as a whole kept alive the idea that its members were distinct and superior and
that the Muslims were transgressors on Christian territory. Providing the only
available education, the Orthodox institutions could make certain that the Ottoman
state authorities were never in a position to control Christian thought.118
Popular religious literature and religious art recounted tales of heroes, saints and
martyrs who had died at the expense of Islam, and kept alive the memory of an
independent and glorious Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian medieval empire. Village
communities were also a powerful tool to preserve the past. Illiterate peasants learned
about the past from the rich oral folk tradition, constituted of epic and popular poetry
and usually performed by the local guslar. As we have seen in Chapter 2, folk poetry
was very similar among the Bosnian Croatian, Serbian and Muslim population,
sometimes only the name of the characters changed. History was thus learned and
preserve in the villages, whereas among the Croatian, Serbian and later Bosnian
117
B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 174
118
Ibid., p. 174
78
intellectuals the study of history was accompanied by the study of language, which
represented the most important aspect of national identity. The main determinants of
South Slav nationality language, history and religion would determine the unity but
also the conflict between Croatian and Serbian nationalists.
The unification of the South Slav regions was the program of both Croatian and
Serbian young intellectuals, who had been influenced by the revolutionary ideas and by
romantic nationalism. Their perspective, however, changed substantially. In Croatia
Ljudevit Gaj, the leading intellectual and founder of the Illyrian movement, claimed that
the South Slavs were descendants of the ancient Illyrians, the original inhabitants of the
Balkan Peninsula. Since they had the same history and spoke the same language
(though with regional variations), Gaj advocated for a broader political
unity.119
-
that is, it embraced all of the South Slav peoples 120
The Serbs too came in contact with the ideas of romantic nationalism and
intellectual Western movements, especially the Serbs inhabiting the Vojvodina region, a
border territory under
East-West European intellectual alloy that eventually spawned modern Serbian
121
especially under the influence of the Orthodox Church, which still played a leading role
in the cultural and intellectual life of the people. Due to its growing imperialist interests
in the Balkan area, Russia proclaimed herself protector of the Orthodox Serbian people
119
The aim of uncovering a common Slavic past and culture was to oppose the presence of Germans and
Hungarians in Croatia.
120
B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 307
121
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 200
79
and sent money, books and teachers to Serbia. Serbian Pan-Slavism was deeply
and main protector. In Serbian monasteries much emphasis was put on the study of pre-
Ottoman history and on the study of language and folklore, which were considered as
the basis of the national consciousness. , who was one of the
most important intellectual figures at that time, collected, wrote down and published the
Serbian epic poetry, which enjoyed great popularity throughout Europe. He regarded
language as s fundamental tool to unite the Serbian people and South Slavs, and for this
reason he reformed the language, making the written literary language as close as
write as you speak and read how it is
written122
The language reform was to have a deep and lasting influence on Serbian
nationalism. Moving in the same direction, Ljudevit Gaj reformed the Croatian
language too. Like
chose to write using the vernacular. To unite the South Slavs and to establish a common
literary language, he gave up his native dialect (called kajkavski and spoken mainly in
the Zagreb region), and elected the dialect as the language of the future Illyrian
nation. The was spoken by the majority of Croatian people inhabiting Dalmatia
and Slavonia, by Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Serbs and Montenegrins. , along
with other important Serb and Croatian intellectuals, signed a key document in Vienna
in 1850 that acknowledged the similarities of the language spoken by Croatians and
Serbs, which was defined as Serbo-Croatian123
. It was an important political move that
expressed the desire to elect a common language to build a united Yugoslav nation. The
122
123
The intellectuals chose the dialect in its iekava variery as the common language of Croatian
and Serbian people.
80
differences between Croats and Serbs, however, soon arose and nullified the common
unifying program. With an article published in
1849, Kara whoever spoke the dialect was to be considered an
ethnic Serb, regardless of their religious creed. Thus he claimed all of Serbia, the
Vojvodina region, the Croatian regions of Dalmatia and Slavonia, and all of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The political world was proceeding in the same direction. In 1844 the
andum known as
regarding the foreign policy of Serbia, where the political union of all the
Serbs (as conceived
cians and Serbian people
alike and the end of political collaboration with Croatia: from that moment the two
countries would follow different historical paths. Their programs, however, did not
differ in one thing: they regarded Bosnia and Herzegovina as their historical property,
the Orthodox and Catholic neighbors were keen to
124 Nationalists and intellectuals in both Croatia and Serbia were campaigning
for the annexation of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the assumption that the
Bosnians were considered as ethnic Croats or Serbs respectively, only of a different
faith. -
specific historical
traditions, cultural identity, national structure or political needs.125
With the annexation
in mind, agitators were sent to Bosnia to steer the population towards the revolt,
especially to unite the Bosnian Serbs with their brothers in Serbia proper. The main
124
N. Malcolm, Bosnia, a Short History, p. 127
125
81
obstacle for the annexation of Bosnia with Serbia was represented by the Habsburg
Empire. Austria would never allow the creation of a strong and powerful Serbian state
that could play the role Piedmont had played in the unification of Italy and lead the
Balkans to independence, and was ready to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina first if it
meant preventing
3. The international situation and Bosnia and Herzegovina
The uprising in Herzegovina had a vast echo in all European governments and
its actions were followed with apprehension in all the political circles of the Great
Powers. The Bosnian revolt was soon raised from a peasant jacquerie to an event of
international importance because of the Gre
rivalry and differing attitudes and political aims towards the Balkans.126
The geographical location of the Balkan Peninsula, with its access to the eastern
Mediterranean and the strategically important Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits, made
in the region became a matter of their concern127
, since the rise of nationalism among
-Muslim subjects and the Ottoman destabilization made the collapse
of the Empire not such a remote possibility, and in that case the Great Powers were
ready to carve their own sphere of influence. The Balkans reflected the fragile
international balance among the Great Powers at the time. Their attention towards the
South Slavs had grown in the last decades of the nineteenth century and each European
126
M. Anderson, The Eastern Question 1774-1923 (A Study in International Relations), New York,
Macmillan, 1966, p. 179-180
127
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 247
82
country had its interest in the area and its own political program. The progressive
disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the rivalry of the Great Powers to establish
their control and influence in the Balkans and the costal countries of southern and
eastern Mediterranean is known as the Eastern Question. Great Britain was the last
European Great Power to become involved in the Eastern Question, when Russia and
Austria had already begun to expand in the Ottoman territories.
Great Britain was the main supporter for the integrity of the Ottoman Empire,
because it wanted to preserve the maritime routes that linked Great Britain with its most
Ottoman Empire as a strategic buffer in the eastern Mediterranean was the only
practical way to protect its vital Indian sea route against a growing potential Russian
threat. Britain therefore needed to ensure that the Ottomans were strong enough to
accomplish their assigned mission while remaining too weak to close the trade route
128 The Ottoman Empire became of crucial importance for Britain from a
political and economic point of view. Having lost its most important North American
colonies at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the most important resource and
colony now became India. Both the land and sea routes that led to India passed through
the Ottoman Empire, and so Britain had to preserve its integrity to have a safe way to
India. As the situation within the Ottoman Empire deteriorated and it became weaker,
Britain became actively involved in the Eastern Question following the Crimean War
(1854-1856) and the 1856 Treaty of Paris, with the purpose of maintaining its economic
privileges in the area and containing Russian influence in the Balkans. Therefore,
128
Ibid., p. 249
83
British foreign policy tended to favor Turkey and its interests for most of the nineteenth
century.
The British did not have any territorial claims in the Balkans, but they decided to
become involved in the Eastern Question after the Russian successes against the Turks
and because Russia, taking the protection of the Orthodox in South Eastern Europe was
emerging on the Balkan stage.129
Russia, Great was
carrying out a politic of imperialistic expansion towards the South East because it hoped
to gain direct access the Mediterranean Sea by breaking through the Dardanelles and
Bosphorus straits. Great Britain feared that the creation of new national states in the
Balkans under the influence of Russia, in place of the Ottoman Empire, would lead to
the loss of control of the Balkan territories and of the maritime route as a consequence.
Great Britain supported every effort the Ottoman reformers did during the Tanzimat
period to preserve the Empire130
, in the hope that it would eliminate the growing Balkan
nationalist movements, fearing
In fact, Russia used precisely the shared Orthodox religion and the cultural ties with the
Serbs and acted as their protector as an excuse in order to expand into the eastern
Mediterranean. Furthermore, Russia started a mission of preserving Orthodoxy since it
was the only independent Orthodox country in Europe from the late fifteenth century.
foreign policy and claimed that the Orthodox Muscovite Empire was the inheritor of the
129
N. Berber, Unveiling Bosnia-Hercegovina in British Travel Literature (1844-1912), Pisa, Edizioni
Plus Pisa University Press, 2010, p. 110
130
Istanbul Stratford Canning pressed Abdulmecid to issue the 1839 Tanzimat decree. Thereafter, Canning
and other British officials and merchants in the empire continuously acted as advisors to the Tanzimat
-
Muslims, and, as national concepts spread and grew among them, most Orthodox Slavic Balkan
nationalists v
84
Byzantine Empire and therefore should be the leader within the Orthodox world. The
sacred mission aimed at reconstructing an Orthodox empire that should include the
131 To gain access to the Black Sea
132,
direct route to Byzantium and the strategically important Bosphorus and Dardanelles
straits that would open new maritime routes, Russia began expanding towards the south
and thus collided with the Ottoman Empire possessions. For these reasons, Russia soon
became an official enemy of the Ottoman Empire, and Russo-Turkish wars were
frequent during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Russia soon started to exploit
the Orthodox solidarity and shared culture with the Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman
Empire, sending money, intellectuals, teachers and books to the Serbs, especially in the
Vojvodina region, and Russian diplomatic agents were fostering the national aspirations
the 1870s.
The Habsburg Empire -Ottoman stance and waged several
wars against it throughout the eighteenth century. However, Austria feared any
expansion or interference of Russia in the Balkans, which she considered its own sphere
of interest. After the 1867, when the Dual Monarchy was created between Austria and
Hungary, the Habsburgs intensified their expansion eastwards. Its policy soon collided
with that of Russia over the control of the Balkans, and Austria-Hungary did all it could
to prevent the spread of the nationalist movements inspired by Russia among the Balkan
131
D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 250
132
year, that is why it needed access to warm-water ports on the Black Sea, that could be open all the year,
and needed also control over the strategically important straits.
85
subjects, and from then on it joined Great Britain in the attempt to preserve and
maintain the Ottoman Empire, while at the same time trying to extend its influence on
the Western Balkan states. Austria had great economic interests in the Balkans,
especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina because of the country large quantity of raw
material. In addition, its acquisition would be an effective counterweight to Russian
Another important n Bosnia and Herzegovina was the fact
that a direct presence in the region would put an end to the Austrian political fear of the
formation of a large South Slav state lead by Serbia that could substitute its influence in
the Balkans and include all the Austrian Slavs. 133
The Balkans represented the playground where the Great Powers confronted
each other and where the balance of the European States was maintained, although with
difficulty. The stability in the Western Balkans was of great importance for the stability
of the Great Powers themselves. Every action that was taken in the region had inevitable
repercussions on the whole system of balance between the European States, and that is
why the Great Powers were interfering so much in the Balkan affairs. A great concern
for the Great Powers was the agrarian condition within the Ottoman Empire, especially
in the 1870s. The Great
concerning their grievances not only to the Porte, but to the foreign representatives. Any
major rebellion would nec134
The Great
Powers had also declared themselves protectors of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman
133
134
B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 351
86
Empire, and that gave them certain rights of intervention in favor of the Balkan
135. This very situation
soon arose when, in the summer of 1875, a revolt broke out in Herzegovina.
4. The 1875 revolt and the relations between Britain and Bosnia and
Herzegovina
After the first outbreak in July and August 1875, the insurrection rapidly
expanded in the neighboring territories of Herzegovina and later of Bosnia. Bosnian
peasants, mainly Serbian Orthodox, took up arms, left the villages and fled to the
mountains, where they organized themselves in small independent units, called .
Each unit was under the direction of a leader, or , and conducted mainly a guerrilla
warfare, because a frontal attack with the more numerous and better equipped Turkish
army would prove disastrous136
. The insurgents counted on external support for the
success of the insurrection. In fact, the inhabitants of the province, especially
Hercegovina, were encircled by the territories inhabited by Serbs and Montenegrins,
who sympathized for their struggle for freedom, and, with Serbian, Montenegrin and
Croatian volunteers crossing the border in big numbers, it is easy to understand the
reasons of its rapid expansion. 137
. At the beginning England did not pay much attention
to the revolt as they were used to hearing about revolts of Christians subjects in the
135
Ibid., p. 352
136
, Ustanak u Bosni, p. 91
137
While Serbia and Montenegro sent volunteers and arms, the insurgents received considerable
assistance by Austria and Russia too. The Slav Committees in those countries supported the cause of the
Christians and collected money and material for their help. Cfr W. G. Wirthwein, Britain and the Balkan
Crisis 1875-1878 The Great Powers and the
Balkans 1875-1878, Northampton, Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 26
87
Ottoman Empire during the previous two centuries. The news of the insurrection first
appeared on 8th
July, but it was not until mid-August that the Times dedicated an article
to the topic. The tone was anti-Turk and showed sympathies toward the insurgents, who
were seen as victims. However, peace in the east of Europe was still of great importance
and the attitude to preserve the integrity of the empire and the Pax Britannica through
peace in the Ottoman Empire prevailed.
During the first months of the insurrection the various European governments
were apparently unconcerned. Accounts on the progress of the revolt were received by
the foreign offices from their consular representatives but no diplomatic action was still
felt necessary.138
The Porte, on the other hand, had sent commissionaires in mid-July to
investigate the cause and development of the uprising. The Ottoman government
concluded that the insurgents had no real grievances and advocated more energetic
measures to be taken to suppress the revolt. In the meantime, a feeling of uneasiness
was becoming manifest in diplomatic circles as press accounts had become graver and
as the interest and awareness regarding the South Slav populations in agitation was
growing: subscriptions were being raised in Dalmatia and Croatia, while agitators and
volunteers from neighboring Serbia and Montenegro were crossing the borders to join
the Bosnian insurgents. As the agitation increased the revolt grew in proportions and the
Powers could no longer remain entirely inactive139
. The Porte was now worried and no
longer saw the insurrection as a local uprising, but as a matter of both internal and
international concern. The British government wanted the suppression of the revolt as
rapidly as possible and advised the Porte to suppress it on its own, without the aid of
138
W. G. Wirthwein, op. cit., p. 15
139
Ibid., p. 16
88
foreign powers. Britain hoped none of the Powers would intervene, so as not to provoke
a difficult dispute among the Great Powers, as the British government wanted to
maintain its neutrality but at the same time safeguard its interests in the region. Among
all the Great Power, Austria was most interested in restoring peace in Herzegovina
because of its huge Slav population disorders at its frontier. However, the events took a
different course. The Ottomans did not intervene immediately, also because of the bad
financial situation and because no new reinforcements could be sent to the scene of the
insurrection. As a consequence, the insurrection grew in numbers and strength. Ottoman
procrastination and financial difficulties had permitted the revolt to assume serious
proportions. By the end of August the insurrection spread all over Bosnia. Meanwhile, a
between the Porte and the insurrects. In Mostar, however, the insurgents refused to talk
to the consuls and lay down the weapons. They did not trust the Turkish government
and, since they had abandoned their homes and risked their lives, they would not stop
fighting until the Ottomans granted reforms to improve their position, which would be
guaranteed by the Great Powers.140
The attempt failed and consular mediation proved a
failure. The real result of that mission was to encourage the insurgents to pursue the
struggle, as it gave them proof that the Powers were not indifferent to their cause.141
Nevertheless, European diplomacy wanted to bring the insurrection to a rapid end. The
Powers, it seemed, desired the speediest possible restoration of peace lest their serenity
be disturbed .142
However, as events evolved, the Powers soon dropped their attitude of
140
141
W. G. Wirthwein, p. 18-19
142
Ibid., p. 24
89
were planning a new scheme of
intervention. The state of the insurrection and of Turkish finances was constantly
watched on. The greatest interest seemed focused on the attitudes of the various Powers
towards each other and what their moves would be in the case of the reopening of the
Eastern Question. There was a subdued air of anxiety and fear that any disturbance of
the state of affairs in the east of Europe would lead to international complications and
troubles.143
Five months after the outbreak of the insurrection the Turkish government
was still very weak and consular mediation useless, while the insurgents grew in
strength and hope. It was clear that the prolongation of the struggle would involve the
Ottomans in constantly new diplomatic embarrassments. Protracted negotiations among
the insurgents, the Porte and the Great Powers resulted in the mid-December agreement,
proposed by Count Julius Andrassy, Foreign Minister of the Habsburg Empire, and by
the Russian ambassador in Vienna. The Andrassy Note, which circulated in the
European capitals on 30 December 1875, represented the first serious attempt by the
Great Powers to restore peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.144
The Andrassy Note
stressed five points of reform which were to be submitted to the Porte: the granting of
full religious liberty; the abolition of tax farming; a law which would guarantee that the
product of the direct contributions of Bosnia and Herzegovina would be employed in
the interests of the province itself; the institution of a special commission composed of
an equal number of Muslims and Christians to supervise the execution of the reforms;
and improvement of the position of the rural population. Gladstone, leader of the
Liberals, openly supported the Andrassy note in a speech given in Parliament in
February:
143
Ibid., p. 28
144
M. Anderson, op. cit., p. 182
90
It is not possible to go on with a mere repetition of promises. Europe, the Christian
conscience, and the conscience of mankind will expect some other sort of security for
the redress of great and dreadful grievances than mere words can afford; and however
desirous we may be to maintain the integrity and independence of the Turkish Empire,
that integrity and independence never can be effectually maintained unless it can be
proved to the world and proved not by words, but by acts that the Government of
Turkey has the power to administer a fair measure of justice to all its subjects alike,
whether Christian or Mahomedan.145
The proposals, with some minor modifications, were agreed to by the Ottoman
government on 13 February 1876 and proclaimed a few days later in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. 146
-147
because the Porte was too
weak, above all financially, to secure the reforms in the rebellious province and the
rebels distrusted the Ottoman government and their promises of reform. Although the
Porte granted a general amnesty to the insurgents and refugees who would return to
their homes within four weeks, the insurgents refused and kept fighting. The scheme of
pacification was failing before the obstinacy of the insurgents, who demanded the
complete withdrawal of the Ottoman troops from Bosnia and Herzegovina. They were
hostile and suspicions of the Ottoman government and of the Great Powers.
to insurgents and was assuming a
warlike attitude. Montenegro too was giving more support to the Bosnian insurgents.
The spring of 1876 saw more serious and widespread fighting going on and during
145
The speech appeared on the Times on 9 February 1876. Cfr W. G. Wirthwein, op. cit., p. 38-39.
146
W. G. Wirthwein, op. cit., p. 37 and M. Anderson, op. cit., p. 182
147
M. Anderson, op. cit., p. 182
91
autumn and spring of the same year the guerrilla warfare and frequent raids continued
throughout the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was estimated that by March
1876 the number of refugees that crossed the borders from Bosnia and Herzegovina into
Serbia, Montenegro and Austria-Hungary was approximately 156,000.148
In the
meantime the Ottoman finances faced complete bankruptcy and the government
announced the default for the payments in coupons which due to 1 April. The financial
crisis and the acknowledgement that the Andrassy note failed to produce the slightest
effect of pacification and reform149
brought preoccupation in among the Great Powers,
especially because with Turkey seemingly unable to suppress even a minor outbreak
and her financial difficulties increasing, the Serbs and Montenegrins were beginning to
feel the an opportune one to come to the aid of their kinsmen.150
While the Great
Powers discussed measures for pacification Serbia and Montenegro were preparing for
war, since the incapacity of the Turks to overcome the revolt and the political disorders
in Constantinople convinced them that the Ottoman Empire was breaking up and that it
could not offer serious resistance to an attack from the outside.151
The Porte, as
counseled by the Powers, tried to avoid war but it was growing impatient. In addition,
the danger of an Austro-Russian conflict became evident and in May the Austrian and
Russian ministers, Andrassy and Gorchakov, met in Berlin. From this meeting emerged
the Berlin Memorandum of 13 May. It prospected a more energetic policy with a view
of rapid pacification and the protection of foreign and Christian subjects against Muslim
148
L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 400
149
The failure of the Andrassy note was due mainly to its delay and to the fact that it did not contain
means for the Powers to force their will on either the Porte or the insurgents. Cfr W G. Wirthwein, p. 44
150
Ibid., p. 40
151
3
92
fanaticism, as well as a program of reform for Bosnia and Herzegovina152
. It also
contained an agreement that, should the Ottoman Empire collapse, Austria was to
occupy part of Bosnia and Russia part of Bessarabia. Also, it contained an implicit
threat of action by the Powers if it failed to produce pacification. The fact that the Porte
would be forced to make concessions to the rebels and the fact that the Memorandum
contained a threat of future intervention ensured its rejection by the British government
led by the Conservative Disraeli. Britain did not like the fact to be asked to assent on
schemes drawn up by the other Powers and the effect of rejection of the memorandum
in Constantinople was regarded as a diplomatic triumph for England and a check to the
ambitions of the other Powers.153
Instead, on the counsel of the British ambassador the
Porte had once more proclaimed an amnesty and proposed an armistice of six weeks to
permit negotiations, but the Bosnian insurgents continued to deny any possibility of talk
coming from Istanbul. owers to appease the
rising was the recognition of their own inability to agree upon any program of reform
which would reconcile their divergent interests and improve the position of the
Christians.154
The echo of the insurrection in Bosnia was slowly fading from the major
had not news of a massacre of insurgents in Bulgaria rose
indignation in Europe. This fact changed completely British foreign policy attitudes. In
early May an uprising occurred in Bulgaria which was suppressed with frightful
brutality by the troops of the Porte. The Porte, having learned a lesson as to the dangers
of delay from the events of the previous summer in Herzegovina, decided to
152
W. G. Wirthwein, op.cit., p. 44
153
Disraeli sarcastically observed that Britain was being treated as though she were Bosnia or
Montenegro. Cfr Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 401
154
93
immediately suppress the revolt. The violence with which it was suppressed (about 60
villages were destroyed and 12-15,000 people massacred, particularly by the irregular
troops of the sultan, the Bashi-Bazouks 155
) produced a violent anti-Turkish reaction in
Britain. Late August and early September 1876 saw the atrocity agitation rapidly
expanding in Europe and especially in Britain. With the attention of publicity turned on
the horrible events in May, the Turks were condemned to the very depths of D
inferno .156
The atrocity agitation was thus in full swing when Gladstone, leader of the
Liberals, pla
157 He attacked the Conservative government and its support of the Ottoman
Empire and held it responsible to accomplice the massacre, saying that England should
no longer support the Turks, and defend the Christians instead. However, Gladstone was
not really interested in a fundamental change in British foreign policy, he was more
intereste
campaign. Public outrage, if not that of Gladstone, did not lead Britain to the
involvement in Bosnian and Bulgarian affairs, but brought the Liberal Party to power in
1880158
. Gladston -Ottoman foreign policy
established by Disraeli, in fact Gladstone opted for a policy of collaboration with
Turkey and abandoned the emancipatory projects of the South Slavs and Bulgarians
which he had supported during his election campaign and which had helped him come
to power.159
The topic of Christian suffering under the Ottomans was very popular
155
M. Anderson, op. cit., p. 184
156
W. G. Wirthwein, op. cit., p. 78
157
Ibid., p. 84
158
M. Todorova, Immaginando I Balcani, p. 171
159
N. Berber, Unveiling Bosnia-Herzegovina, p. 120
94
The
Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East sold 200,000 copies in a month and
-Turkish feeling in
160 Much practical sympathy was given by the English public as shown by the
great number of relief funds organized and heavily contributed to.161
had the same effect in Serbia and Montenegro, who proclaimed war against
Turkey, while the Russian ambassador to Constantinople, Count Ignatieff, imbued in
Pan-Slav feelings, secretly advised the Serbian Prince to go to war.162
War had been going on in the Balkans since the early days of July. Bosnian
Turkish army in a guerrilla warfare that made the roads unsafe and caused thousands of
peasants to flee the conflict. The situation in Bosnia was critical, entire villages
remained desert; there was hunger and disorder, insecurity, danger of assaults and of
looting. The declaration of war of Serbia against Turkey changed the nature of the
insurrection, which now became a war for national independence and marked the
political character of the insurrection, imbued in Serbian nationalism and supported by
Montenegrin and Russian Panslavism. The English government had strongly deprecated
the action of Serbia and Montenegro entering the war. Many Russian volunteers had
joined the Serbian in revolt. Russian society had become more outspoken in its
expressions of sympathy towards the cause of the subject nationalities as anti-Turkish
sentiment grew in England. They advocate the freedom for the Balkan subjects from the
160
M. Anderson, op. cit., p. 184
161
W. G. Wirthwein, op. cit., p. 93
162
L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p.402
95
oppressive rule of the Ottomans. Panslav feelings were growing in importance and
Turkish domination. The language of Russian journalists and statesmen became
decisively warlike.163
As a consequence, a new wave of anti-Russian feelings appeared
in England.164
The fact that Serbia and Montenegro were at war with Turkey forced
Austria and Russia in July 1876 to come to a more specific agreement regarding their
aims in the Balkans. Andrassy and Gorchakov agreed at Reichstadt in Bohemia a rigid
and absolute non-intervention plan: neither government wished to start a war in the
Balkans. They also agreed that the prewar status quo should be restored if Serbia and
Montenegro were defeated, but if they proved victorious, Austria and Russia were to
cooperate to regulate the territorial changes. They agreed that no large Slavic state
should be set up in the Balkans, but misunderstandings arose regarding the details of the
frontiers that later caused difficulties between the two powers before the crisis was
resolved.165
Br
growing Austrian and Russian antagonism. As the tension between Russia and Turkey
grew, a conference of Great Powers was planned in November 1876 in Constantinople
to elaborate another scheme of reform, which opened on 12 December. The main
provisions were that Bulgaria should be divided into an eastern and western province,
163
W. G. Wirthwein, op. cit., p. 99
164
Ibid., p. 101
165
Gorchakov understood that in case of victory Serbia and Montenegro would annex the larger part of
Bosnia and Herzegovina and that Austria would receive only a small part of it. Andrassy, on the other
hand, thought that the larger part of Bosnia and Herzegovina would go to the Hapsburg Empire. Cfr L.S.
Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 405
96
Bosnia and Herzegovina united into one province with a considerable degree of
autonomy. Serbia was to lose no territory while Montenegro was to be allowed to keep
the areas it had overrun in Herzegovina and Albania.166
When the first session of the
conference was opened, the Sultan announced the promulgation of a new
constitution.167
Along with the creation of an elected parliament and nominated senate,
an independent judiciary system and decentralization of provincial government, it
by the Powers unnecessary. The Powers showed disunity and the result was a drastic
reduction of their demands. On 20 January the Constantinople conference broke up in
defeat and Serbia signed a peace treaty with Turkey after suffering a heavy defeat by
Turkey in April 1877,
after several attempts to reach peaceful negotiations (the Budapest Convention in
January and the London Convention in March).168
The latter suffered a heavy defeat,
with the Russians almost at the gates of Constantinople, and had to sign an armistice on
30 January 1878, whose terms were particularly severe. On 3 March the Treaty of San
est practical expression ever given in
169 As far as the Balkans were concerned,
under its peace conditions a large autonomous Bulgaria, a Russian satellite, was
established. It was not formally independent (it was a tributary state to the Sultan) but it
166
Ibid., p. 405
167
The Ottoman Constitution of 1876 was not simply a matter of expedient Ottoman duplicity. Although
the Istanbul Conference did force the issue of the timing of its promulgation, the constitution was the
creation of forces within Ottoman society that sincerely sought to broaden the Tanzimat reforms along
highly westernized political lines. Cfr D. Hupchick, op. cit, p. 260
168
L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 406
169
M. Anderson, op. cit., p. 203
97
was the largest and most powerful state in the Balkans at the moment. Serbia and
Montenegro received territorial gains and became independent, as did Romania. The
reforms proposed at the Constantinople conference were to be applied in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The Treaty left all the Great Powers dissatisfied. Austria could not accept
the huge influence of Russia in her sphere of interest in the western Balkans, and neither
could Britain, which feared Russian expansion towards Asia and the Russian threat to
British power in India. The preservation of the Ottoman Empire was necessary in 1877
and 1878 above all because the empire was an indirect support of British power in Asia.
Thus, the representatives of the Great Powers and of the Balkan states met on 13 June in
Berlin to discuss the terms set at the Treaty of San Stefano. The leaders of the small
Balkan nations were either largely ignored or even not admitted to the conference, as
was the case with Serbia, Montenegro and Romania. The Bulgarians were
unrepresen
170 received no better treatment. The
Turkish delegates were ignored and insulted, a sign that the Ottoman Empire was of
minor importance for the solutions of the congress. Apart from the reduction in size of
the Bulgarian state, resized to one third of the territory established at San Stefano, and
the formal independence given to Serbia, Montenegro and Romania, another important
consequence of the decisions taken in Berlin was the Austrian occupation, though not
annexation, of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was agreed to on 28 June 1878.171
By
transferring the Bosnian province to Habsburg rule it sowed the seeds of future rivalry
between Austrian and Serbia. The Congress of Berlin did not meet the demands of the
170
Ibid., p. 210
171
Austria-Hungary also occupied the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, an Ottoman territory separating Serbia from
Montenegro. Cfr D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 266
98
of the 1878 settlement in the Balkans arose from the fact that it had been designed to
suit 172
It
was a triumph for the diplomacy of the Great Powers (Russia excluded), and in
particular for Britain.
with Honor
Turkey was preserved.173
From the viewpoint of the Balkans the Congress was a failure.
the Balkan peoples was left thoroughly dissatisfied or them, the Berlin Treaty
meant not peace with honor but rather frustration of national aspirations and future
wars.174
The Congress of Berlin ended the crisis that started with the insurrection in
Herzegovina in the summer of 1875. The insurrection marked the end of Ottoman rule
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but it did not bring independence. The Ottoman domination
was substituted by that of another foreign country, Austria-Hungary, towards which the
Bosnians were equally hostile.
172
M. Anderson, op. cit., p. 218
173
L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 412
174
Ibid., p. 412
99
III. Arthur J. Evans in Bosnia and Herzegovina
1. Arthur J. Evans
Sir Arthur John Evans (born July 8, 1851, Nash Mills, Hertfordshire, England
died July 11, 1941, Youlbury, Oxfordshire) was a British archeologist, famous for
unearthing the ruins of the ancient city of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete and
discovering its Bronze Age civilization, which he named Minoan. He was also the first
to postulate the picture-writing theory of the Cretan scripts known as Linear A and
Linear B.175
The son of John Evans, a distinguished archeologist and antiquary from
whom he acquired an early interest in archeology,176
Arthur was educated at Harrow
and Oxford, where he took a first-class honors degree in modern history.177
He became
keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,178
a post he held from 1884 to 1908,
during which time he effectively refunded the museum and enlarged its collection.
Evans travelled extensively throughout Europe during his life. He chose to travel
179 He went
to Herzegovina as early as 1871, when he was still a student at Brasenose College,
Oxford. During his first travel in the Balkans he discovered certain regions of Slovenia
and Croatia, but also a town at the frontier with the Ottoman Empire called Kostajnica,
175
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/196901/Sir-Arthur-Evans
176
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40960814
177
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/s/sir_arthur_john_evans.aspx
178
useum. Cfr S. Hood,
The Early Life of Sir Arthur Evans http://www.jstor.org/stable/40960814
179
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4203726
100
where he bought a complete Turkish dress and other Turkish items. Already in 1871
.180
He returned to the Balkans in 1872 with his brother Norman, but later decided to
explore other parts of the continent, so he went to Scandinavia and Finland in 1873 and
1874. However, he was not satisfied with the archeological sites of Northern Europe, so
he shifted his route again to the Balkans. Evans became interested in the Eastern
Question and soon became an expert in Balkan affairs. He was influenced by liberal
ideas and by the Gladstonian campaign for freedom in the Balkans and the liberation of
the Christian subjects of the decaying Ottoman Empire. His next trip to the Balkans in
1875 with his brother Lewis was certainly prompted by archeological interest and spirit
one of the most important periods of social upheaval 181
.
The insurrection made Evans sensitive to the problems in the Balkans and especially in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, so he decided to write a travel account that would bring the
region and its problems to the attention of English public opinion. He published his
travelogue Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection, August
and September 1875, with an Historical Review of Bosnia and a Glimpse at the Croats,
Slavonians and the Ancient Republic of Ragusa in 1876,
book, both about the historical and contemporary state of that unhappy part of
182 just weeks before the Bulgarian Horrors echoed among the English public
opinion and the British liberal politicians began to campaign for the freedom of the
Christian raya under the cruel Ottomans. The public interest for the South Slavs
180
N. Berber, Unveiling Bosnia-Herzegovina, p. 15
181
Ibid., p. 15
182
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40960814
101
increased during the Gladstonian election campaign between 1876 and, and for this
reason Evans returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina as a correspondent of the Manchester
Guardian. He worked as in the Balkans as a journalist between March 1877 and October
1878, and was active in humanitarian activities in support of Bosnian refugees.
articles focused on the suffering Christian raya g both affection
183 but only in 1878 did he outline a
clear political project regarding the South Slavs, when he begun to support the
emancipation of the Balkan states under the direction of Serbia. Following the
occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary, Evans settled in Dubrovnik
with his wife and lived there for three years. He worked more as a historian and
archeologist because, due to Austrian censorship, it became very difficult to send
articles to England. In addition, Gladstone, elected prime minister in 1880, favored a
foreign policy of collaboration with Austria and abandoned the project of South Slav
emancipation. As a consequence there was a decline in British attention towards the
Balkans and a fall of demand for articles by the Manchester Guardian.184
Evans
interest in the area did not follow the public loss of interest in the Balkans. He continued
to travel in the region and became even more convinced of its archeological merits. He
wrote a history of the Balkans and of Ragusa and continued to support the national
-Austrian
position led to his arrest in 1882, he spent six weeks in prison and was subsequently
banned from the territories under Austrian administration. He went back to England
after five years of living in the Balkans, where he returned only in 1932. Evans was
already regarded as an important archeologist in Victorian England. His fame was not
183
N. Berber, op. cit., p 18
184
Ibid., p. 18
102
only due to the discovery of the ancient Minoan civilization at Knossos in the spring of
1900, but also to the archeological work he carried out in the Balkans from 1872 and
1882. The Balkans were not regarded as archeologically interesting, or safe or civilized
place, so the Victorian archeologists preferred to excavate in safer countries like France,
Ireland, England, Italy and Greece. However, curiosity and passion for archeology and
adventure led twenty-year-old Evans to the Balkans for the first time, where he became
convinced of the archeological importance of the region, which the English people
considered wild and uncivilized. Evans was probably attracted by the disappeared
Illyrian population in the Balkans so he set out on a long journey in Eastern Europe,
which did not arise much interest in Western Europe at the time. The Balkans and
travelling were the two most fascinating things for Evans throughout his life.185
2. Arthur J. Evans and British travel writing on Bosnia and
Herzegovina
In the summer of 1875 the twenty four year-old Arthur Evans set out for Bosnia
and Herzegovina with his brother Lewis, driven by his archeological interest in the
region, by his passion for adventure and youthful curiosity. After the journey, Evans
wrote the detailed account of his experience and published it in 1877, in the travelogue
Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and
September 1875. His travelogue is an important historical document as it gives the first-
hand account of the events that took place in the summer in 1875, but it is also
important from cultural and political point of view. It was not only about Bosnia itself,
185
A. Evans, A piedi per la Bosnia durante la rivolta, ed. Berber N., Santa Maria Capua Vettere, Edizioni
Spartaco, 2005, p. 181
103
but also about how it was seen by the British and about the political importance it had
for the British political parties.
As we have seen in the previous chapter, the interest of the British for the
Balkan area and in particular for Bosnia and Herzegovina grew in the 1870s and
intensified during the years of the peasant revolt from 1875 to 1878, as a consequence
of the political campaign led by the liberal William Gladstone. Many articles and texts
dealing with the Balkan area were published and Evans himself became a correspondent
for the Manchester Guardian. The renewed British interest for the Balkan Peninsula was
preceded by almost two centuries of no record of Bosnia and Herzegovina in British
travel writing. A brief overview of the British travelogues dealing with Bosnia and
Herzegovina will show the historical development of the British interest towards the
area and the nature and perspective of the British travel writings.
Historically, the British became first interested in Turkey at the end of the
sixteenth century and, as a consequence, in the Balkan area occupied by Ottoman
Empire:
Turkey was for the English the embodiment of another and different civilization
distant, exotic and fascinating. At the same time, as a powerful administrative and
military organization, Turkey was in the eyes of the British (who were also bent on
creating a mighty empire) an admirable model of rapid expansion but also a threat to
the Christian civilization of Europe.186
186
At the Gates of the East: British travel writers on Bosnia and Herzegovina from
the 16th to the 20th centuries, New York, Columbia University Press, 2001, p. xxi
104
However, for early travelers Bosnia and Herzegovina was just one stage in a
much longer journey with Constantinople as their final destination.187
To reach
Turkey and Constantinople, the British travelers had to pass through the Balkans
Peninsula whichever way they took either from Venice by sea down the Adriatic
coast and then towards Turkey, or by land from Split or Dubrovnik, or via
Belgrade. The travelers often passed through Bosnia and Herzegovina too, but as
the Balkans did not represent the final destination of the early British travelers, their
accounts are brief and rather imprecise. The region is first mentioned in Captain
He
mentioned again in the travelogue written by Fox, who travelled through the area
and arrived in Turkey as a servant of Henry Cavendish, a nobleman who traveled to
Turkey for business and pleasure. In the seventeenth century Bosnia and
Herzegovina was recorded by two travelers: Peter Mundy, who accompanied the
English ambassador back to London by land in 1620, and Henry Blount, who
traveled the same way as Mundy, but in the opposite direction, in 1634. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the need to travel through Bosnia came to an
abrupt end188
because the British shifted their itinerary towards the northern route to
reach Istanbul, via Vienna and Budapest and then southwards across the Pannonian
Plain, Serbia and Bulgaria. The northern route was safer and easier than going from
Venice to the Dalmatian coast and reach Istanbul crossing the mountainous
Balkans. For this purely practical reason, until 1844 no British travelers went to
187
N. Berber, op. cit., p. xiii
188
Ibid., p. xiii
105
Bosnia and Herzegovina189
.
for the British almost a terra incognita190
After two centuries of nearly complete
absence of interest in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1844 the British again turned
their attention to Southeastern Europe and marked the revival of the interest in
Bosnia and Herzegovina191
. It is closely connected with the increase of interest of
the British in foreign policy and
its growing interest in the region since the 1830s: an increasing number of British
travelers began to explore Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1844, perceived as the
,
geographically close but culturally far from England.192
Archeologist John Gardner
Wilkinson in 1844 passed through Herzegovina and described the beauties of the
Mostar Bridge. In 1846/47 diplomat Andrew Archibald Paton was sent to Bosnia
and Herzegovina by the British ambassador to Vienna to explore the region. These
authors were the first to trace the contours of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the
English geographical imaginary.193
Captain Edmund Spencer traveled through
Bosnia in 1850 and described the geographical as well as political and social
situation of the region. Ten years later, the British army officer George Arbuthnot
visited Bosnia in 1861 for military reasons, leaving a detailed account of Omer
189
Ibid., p xiii
190
, op. cit., p. xx
191
The Balkans appeared with greater frequency on the pages of travel texts when, with colonial
expansion almost completed, it was necessary to organize strategies to defend imperial hegemony. This
political attitude became even more urgent with the emergence of Russia on the Balkans. The main
British defensive strategy was elaborated in the1830s and foresaw the continuity of the Ottoman Empire,
to which most of the region still belonged. Cfr N. Berber, op. cit., p. 1
192
Ibid., p. xvi
193
Ibid., p. 3
106
ing description of the social and
political situation in the country. James Creagh, a professional soldier of Irish
origins, traveled the Balkans on horseback in the summer of 1875, at the same time
as Evans. Travelling to Bosnia and Herzegovina was not easy: except for few
kilometers covered by railways, the travelers had to ride or walk along muddy and
unsafe roads 194
. The only accommodations available were hans, similar to inns,
which were often uncomfortable and dirty. Despite all the difficulties, the British
which everything was different and strange, sometimes even extraordinary.
Travelling in the Balkans was like going back to a time that in Britain and
elsewhere in Europe had long passed. 195
Bosnia was not corrupted by economic
traveling allowed the travelers to have a true, physical contact with its population.
Most travelers described their own experiences, but they inevitably spoke in the
name of their country and their government as well so the travelogues reflected
their national and cultural identity too. The nature of the travelogues and the
orientations in foreign policy are clearly interrelated. In this respect, the 1830s
represented a watershed for both the foreign policy towards the Ottoman Empire
and the Middle East and the characteristics of travel writing. Until the middle of the
eighteenth century, the relations between England and the Ottoman Empire were
mainly commercial, and only at the end of the century the diplomatic relations
194
The condition of the roads was for many travelers a fundamental criterion to establish the level of
civilization of the country they visited. Hence barbaric remarks and considerations about Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Cfr B. Jezernik, Europa selvaggia: i Balcani nello sguardo dei viaggiatori occidentali,
Torino, Edt, 2010, p. 16
195
107
began to acquire priority. By the end of the eighteenth century, England had
become the leading nation in global industry and international commerce, as well as
the most powerful colonial power. Its foreign policy therefore aimed at the
preservation of the balance between the states, including the Ottoman Empire, in
order to safeguard its dominions and consolidate the so-called Pax Britannica. Until
the 1830s, England had no specific foreign policy towards the Ottoman Empire. It
was only with the appearance of Russia and its territorial
expense that Britain assumed a clear political goal: to maintain the integrity and
inviolability of the Ottoman Empire. During that period the majority of the
travelogues were influenced by politics and reflected views, which
often coincided with the official line of British foreign policy,196
with the result that
.197
The majority of the writers
agreed with British foreign policy regarding both the Ottoman Empire and the
Balkans, and thus advocated the unity of the Empire and saw the Turks as more
civilized than their Balkan subjects. However some writers disagreed with the
British pro-Turkish policy and criticized the Turkish dominion in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. One of them was Arthur J. Evans. He criticized the Ottoman
domination and supported the Bosnians in their struggle for independence from the
Turks. He embraced the liberationist cause of the South Slavs and regarded Serbia
as the leading country in the struggle for independence from both Turkey and
Austria. His view was shared also by two women who traveled extensively through
the Balkans from 1861 and 1863 and who later lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina:
196
M. Todorova, Immaginando i Balcani, p. 162-163
197
B. Jelavich, The British Traveller in the Balkans: The Abuses of the Ottoman Administration in the
Slavonic Provinces, art. cit., p. 412
108
Adelina Paulina Irby and Georgina Muir Mackenzie. They were not influenced by
official British foreign policy, from which they actually dissociated themselves, but
by the growing British interest towards the East. In 1867 they published Travels in
the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey-in-Europe198
, which introduced the English public
opinion to a new, largely unknown topic: the situation of the subject Christian
population in the Ottoman Empire. Their contribution consisted in revealing the
South Slavs to the British public opinion,199
and they were convinced supporters of
the South Slav cause. They organized educational and humanitarian missions in the
l their
life.200
However, both Miss Irby and Miss Mackenzie were of aristocratic origins
and their Victorian education made them feel superior with regard to the Bosnian
population whom they were trying to civilize. The travelers who toured Bosnia
after 1878, when it was ruled by Austria-Hungary, appreciated Austria for its
201. European civilization in general was considered as an
example for the development of the Balkan civilization.202
The British travelers,
who were mainly influenced by Victorian middle-class values of the period, were
convinced of their superiority and regarded the South Slav populations as barbaric
and backward203
and were unable to understand them. All Victorian writers, imbued
198
In the 1870s the travelogue they published acquired great popularity, and it was even quoted by
Gladstone during his election campaign of 1876.
199
M. Todorova, op. cit., p. 167
200
Ibid., p. 168
201
A. Hammond, The Uses of Balkanism: Representation and Power in British Travel Writing, 1850-
1914 22
202
M. Todorova, op. cit., p. 222
203
A. Hammond, art. cit., pp. 601-624
109
in the evolutionist theory and in the racial discourse204
were certain of their moral
superiority, but two different and opposing discourses developed with respect to the
South Slavs and the way in which their racial capacity was evaluated. These
orientations originated in conservative and liberal circles, and defended the political
position of their respective parties. Both groups regarded the Slavs as backward and
morally inferior. The conservative Tories classified them as primitive and
barbarous people, unable to organize themselves in self-governing states and
defended the Ottoman rule upon them, offering to British public opinion support for
the continued dominion of the Balkans by the Ottomans. The liberal Whigs, on the
other hand, regarded the South Slavs as capable of advancing in civilization terms,
to the point of organizing themselves in independent states, hence the justification
for the support in the national cause of the Balkan states and their struggle against
the Ottoman dominator. Evans located the South Slavs among the civilized
populations of Europe, as he wrote in his 1878 essay The Slavs and European
Civilization. Evans evaluated their civilization through art and music. He was
convinced that once liberated from the Ottoman yoke, the South Slavs would soon
be able to advance in the civilization scale. However, not all South Slavs were seen
and treated in the same way by the English conservative or liberal travelers. It was
only in the 1870s that British public opinion became aware of the Islamic religion
in the Balkans thanks to the British travel writing, which reserved the most negative
image for the Bosnian Muslims, depicting as violent fanatics. Evans often stressed
the fanaticism of the Bosnian Muslims, who were more conservative and orthodox
than the Turks themselves, as demonstrated by the clothes they were wearing, the
110
veiling of women and by the hatred and violence during the revolt towards the
Christian population of Bosnia. Conservative and liberal views again diverged as to
the identification of violence. Conservatives saw it as a hereditary trait, closely
connected with the concept of Slavic race, whereas the liberals explained it as
developing from the environment and historical background. In Evans, for example,
against the local Muslim authority, is presented using an image that dramatically
shows the Orthodox population as a victim on the extreme fringes of Muslim
205 Evans traced the cause of the violent character of the local Muslim
population to their religious fanaticism: his liberalism and his strong anti-Turk
sentiments led him to look for the cause of Muslim violence in the religion of the
new adversary, that is the Turks, to whom the Bosnian Muslim population
submitted, also in terms of religion.206
According to him, in different circumstances
the Bosnians would not have developed such an attitude to violence. Again, it is
because the deeply rooted Islam of Bosnia and Herzegovina, recognized by Evans
and other English travelers as the essential feature of its culture and society, that the
country is perceived as more eastern that other countries of Eastern Europe, an
oriental country more similar to Asia or even Africa.207
Bosnia was geographically
close, but it was not perceived as part of Europe. Crossing the border brought the
traveler into a different world and a different civilizatio
that marked the point at which Eastern barbarism came to replace Western
205
Berber, op. cit., p. 41
206
Ibid., p. 42
207
Ibid., p. 45
111
208 Yet, despite highlighting the opposition between the superior West and
the backward East, Evans did not describe Bosnia in negative terms only. Bosnia
was perceived with exotic fascination and the overall picture he gave of the country
was full of picturesque images and Oriental charm. It was because of the strong
Islamic character that Bosnia was perceived as both geographically and culturally
Oriental, a country that still kept traditional Islamic and Ottoman customs, the end
veiled women and idle turbaned men and peppered by Muslim mosques adorned
with Oriental minarets209
Bosnia was a country that persisted in preserving its
Islamic faiths and practices, hence the perception Evans had of Muslims as fanatics.
Given their fanaticism, Evans often depicted Bosnia as a decadent Orient. You can
find Bosnian Muslims being referred to as idle, untidy and dirty people, inclined to
idleness, to the dolce far niente, to drinking coffee in Turkish cafes and smoking. It
can be said that
Islam, an old source of anxiety for European societies and which was discovered in
its Balkan version in the 1870s, seems to have played the principal role in
l
and less East European or Balkanic space210
.
The nineteenth century travelers were more interested in the classical, Roman
past of the Balkans, which they referred to as Illyria, and less in the beauties that
208
Ibid., p. 48
209
Ibid., p. 55
210
Ibid., p. 63
112
the Ottoman art and architecture produced. During the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, when the Ottoman Empire was at its highest, the Turks were both feared
and seen as barbaric tyrants, but nevertheless they were admired for the huge
empire they created, for their military campaigns and for their political success. The
English recognized in the Ottomans a dominant race, a nation that would become
dominant itself admired an already powerful and successful empire, and later
England, the nation that was dominating the world, recognized the Ottoman as an
empire that had begun its decline.211
Direct contacts with the Balkans increased
during the nineteenth century because of commerce in the area and because of the
political, educational and religious activities promoted by England. The travelogues
became more detailed and showed a deeper and more direct knowledge of both the
geography and the various populations of the Balkans. 212
All British travel
writings, from the first ones in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are
important documents containing information from a distant or more recent past
about the travel conditions, towns, economy, insurrections and the populations and
their customs and tradition. The second wave of travelers consisted of two types of
the travelers: the ones who traveled between the 1840s and 1860s and who
the country geographically, and the 1870s writers, who were also
interested in the socio-cultural, ethno-confessional, racial, and racial past and
contemporary history and the political aspect of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their
travel accounts often aimed at documenting the Bosnian way of life for their fellow
countrymen at home, constructing an image in Bosnia from political, religious,
211
M. Todorova, op. cit., p. 154-156
212
Ibid., p. 161
113
social, cultural, racial, national, and military points of view.213
They also identified
the different elements in Bosnian society and thus distinguished the Orthodox,
Catholic and Muslim elements, population, and bringing their common Slavic racial
identity to the attention of the British public. The notion of a Slav race became
much more visible and interesting both in England and Europe after the 1840s
-
In the eighteenth century the main interpretation of the Ottoman domination
was the one which saw the empire as a religious, social and institutional imposition,
unrelated to the pre-existent medieval Christian populations of the Balkans. It is
based on the incompatibility between Islam and Christianity and on the state of
segregation in which the subject population were living. The Ottoman Empire was
an Islamic state in the first place, with a strong religious hierarchy, in which the
non-Muslims occupied the last posts.214
Despite this common vision of the Ottoman
Empire, the British travelers were divided with respect to their political position,
especially in the travelogues written in the 1870s. The conservatives, led by
Disraeli, were usually Turkophile and were in favor of the integrity of the Ottoman
Empire, while liberals, under the influence of Gladstonian ideas, assumed a
Slavophile stance and advocated the national emancipation of the Christian Slavs.
They usually emphasized the national identity of the Bosnian Christian population
and sought to identity any unifying cultural and racial elements among the
population, cultural as well as racial that would justify and support the national
213
N. Berber, op. cit., p. xv
214
M. Todorova, op. cit., p. 269-270
114
aspirations of the South Slavs. Whichever the position of their authors, British
travelogues
echo the values of a culturally and economically advanced and dynamic nation
when compared with an undeveloped, half-colonial country with petrified social
relations and static values. For the English collective imagination, the Balkans in
general and Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular had been until the beginning of
the twentieth century a geographical and cultural part of Turkey, or the East
part of the exotic world of Asia rather than of Europe.215
Arthur J. Evans, more than any other author, supported the idea of the freedom and
national emancipation of the South Slavs under the direction of Serbia. He was strongly
influenced by Gladstone, who from 1877 openly supported the emancipation of
Bulgaria and Montenegro. However, as his political thought was slowly shaping in time,
he came to support the idea of national independence after he wrote his travelogue in
1876. When he visited Bosnia in 1875 he did not have any definite political position
with respect to the national question of the South Slavs. He saw the oppression of the
Bosnian raya and attributed it to a corrupt system, led by corrupt authorities. He
believed that the main cause of raya misery was in agrarian reforms, i.e. in the lack of
reforms. Only in 1878 Evans came to support the idea of a free state of all South Slavs:
What, most likely, led Evans to develop his position on the national cause of the South
215
115
articles supportive of a single state of South Slavs under the leadership of Serbia.216
In The Slavs and European Civilization Evans located the Slavs within the context
of all the other civilized European populations, to justify to the public his own, and
The Austrians in Bosnia Evans for the first time set
forth the idea of an independent state of South Slavs under the direction of Serbia,
which was preferred to Austrian domination. Serbia was chosen as the leading state of
the South Slavs because it was the first Balkan state to start a campaign for
independence and emancipation from the Ottoman Empire, conquering large
administrative and political autonomy and prestige in Europe. The cultural promotion of
Serbia abroad strengthened its international diplomatic support. It must be remembered,
however, that Evans was the son of an imperialist mentality and his political views were
shaped according to the interests of the British Empire. 217
216
N. Berber, op. cit., p. 117
217
Ibid., p. 116
116
in Bosnia and Herzegovina in August and September 1875
(Taken from N. Berber, Unveiling Bosnia-Hercegovina in British Travel Literature
(1844-1912), Pisa, Edizioni Plus Pisa University Press, 2010, p. 16
117
3. Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection,
August and September 1875
probably the best English testimony from Bosnia and
Herzegovina during the 1875 insurrection. He was an involuntary witness of the largest
uprising in the region and one of the most important social upheavals in the Bosnian
modern history. His account describes the natural beauties of the Bosnian landscape, it
is rich in anthropological and ethnographical observations, contains annotations about
y
and contemporary events, as well as being an enquiry into the origins of the revolt.218
It
is interesting to note that the conclusions to which Evans arrived as for the causes of the
revolt coincide with those of the contemporary historians:
the main cause of the Bosnian revolt was social unrest; the members of the raya who
rose to power were mostly Orthodox and even occasionally Catholics, occasionally
even the non-land owning Muslim population played an active role in the revolt.
Indeed, people of all ranks were victims of a corrupt feudal system and they revolted
in order to improve their work and daily conditions, which had deteriorated due to the
continuous and enormous increase in taxation. Only subsequently, when Evans was no
longer in the country, did the revolt assume the features of a rebellion with national
connotations, after the Serb notables of Bosnia turned it in favor of unification of the
region with the adjoining Principality of Serbia.219
The preface to the second edition, published in 1877, is of particular importance
because the most significant and recurrent themes in the travelogue are already present
in the first pages of the travelogue. ous
218
Ibid., p. 15
219
Ibid., p. 16-17
118
spirit, as well as his political orientation can immediately be identified by the readers.
As a liberal influenced by Gladstonian ideas and supporter of the national cause of the
South Slavs, he defined the O highlighting its negative
influence and informing the English public about its consequences in Bosnia and
Herzegovina:
If this book should do anything to interest Englishmen in a land and people among the
evils of the government
under which the Bosnians suffer, its object will have been fully attained.220
The author wrote how he and his brother traveled through the country on foot, their
only luggage their knapsacks and sleeping gears on their backs, how they crossed
221 Evans warned
that those who wish to travel to Bosnia will find many difficulties and hardships:
They must be prepared to sleep out in the open air, in the forest, or on the mountain-
side. They will have now and then to put up with indifferent food, or supply their own
commissariat. They will nowhere meet with mountains so fine as the Alps of
Switzerland or Tyrol, and they will be disappointed if they search for aesthetic
embellishments in the towns. But those who are curious as to some of the most
absorbing political problem of modern Europe; those who delight in out-of-the-way
revelations or antiquity, and who perceive the high historic and ethnologic interest
which attaches to the Southern Slaves; and lastly those who take pleasure in
220
A. Evans, Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and September
1875 with an Historical Review of Bosnia and a Glimpse at the Croats, Slavonians and the Ancient
Republic of Ragusa, London, Longmans Green and Co., 1877
221
A. Evans , op. cit., p. x
119
picturesque costumes and stupendous forest scenery; will be amply rewarded by a visit
to Bosnia.222
The routes Evans took were full of beautiful mountain scenery and natural
attractions, but it is not only Bosnian nature that fascinates him. He observed, recorded
and sketched 223
highlighting the cultural aspects, since he believed, and wanted
224
Evans arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 9th
August 1875. He had left by train
from Vienna two days before, passed through Slovenia and arrived in Zagreb, the
capital of Croatia, which Evans called by his classical name Agram. The fist pages of
but
225 except for the Cathedral and St.
was however more interested in the population of the city and
ventured in the market place where he observed Croatian peasants, their faces, behavior
and, according to him, their beautiful costumes.
inheritance of the Italian element, which probably came
226. The young Evans was very interested in ethnography and
222
Ibid., p .xi
223
Ibid., p. xi
224
Ibid., p. xi
225
Ibid., p. 3
226
English travelers of the Victorian period were so busy in exploring the ancient civilizations of the
Mediterranean, that they did not consider worth of attention the monuments built during the period of
Ottoman rule, especially in remote regions as Bosnia and Herzegovina. For them, the Ottoman Empire
was first of all a land of classicism, and whatever reference to the present situation was degrading. Cfr B.
120
anthropological research and closely observed Croatian costumes and visited the Agram
Museum where national costumes were exposed. Evans already observed the oriental
influence on clothes and decorations, which he attributed to the Turks. During the whole
trip, he would look for unifying elements among the South Slavs: he mentioned that
costumes, pots and pans and musical instruments he observed in Croatia resembled the
ones in any other part of the Balkans, including distant regions as Transylvania and
Walachia. The first chapter is filled with anthropological, ethnographical and
archeological annotations, which often refer to the ancient Greco-Roman inheritance,
the Illyrian past of the country and the Italian and German influence. It is full of
interesting descriptions about the various peoples who live in Croatia, the peasants, their
customs, clothes, music and their life in the villages. Evans observed them from an
ethnological perspective and described the history of the region. However, it already
showed with respect to all the South
Slav populations. In fact as he said that the Croats speak Italian and German in addition
to their native tongue, he also added tween two
more civilized nationalities, should be well practiced in fore
added
.227
After spending
a day in Karlovac in a large market among Croatian peasants, and after acknowledging
none of the
Jezernik, Europa selvaggia: i Balcani nello sguardo dei viaggiatori occidentali, p. xxv and 262-263, and
M. Todorova, Immaginando i Balcani, p. 46
227
Ibid., p. 25. While walking in the Maksimir Park in Zagreb, Evans came across a group of Bulgarians
who lived there in a small settlement. When he describes their national guitar, he says that he cannot
superiority is directed not only to the South Slavs, but to the Celtic races as well. For a comparative study
between the Irish and Bosnian situation, cfr The Irish Paradigm, by N. Berber, in Unveiling Bosnia-
Hercegovina, op. cit.
121
228 Evans continued his journey
towards the town of Sisak, where he saw what he called
first time. The town, in fact, was populated with merchants from Sarajevo and other
Bosnian towns, and offered Evans the first contact with Bosnian Muslims. From Sisak,
travelling by steamer along the river Sava, they reached Brod (Slavonski Brod, divided
) from where they started their journey on
foot through Bosnia. The river Sava was the true frontier between Croatia and Bosnia,
-line between Christendom and Islam, and the
contrast between the two shores is one of the most striking that can be imagined [..] the
one side was cold and dull, if comparatively clean, the other dirty but magnificent.229
On the one side Croats in white tunics and bare-legged women in short skirts, white
ooden streets, gorgeous Turkish officials, brilliant
230. Evans was
leaving Europe and entering a new world, a new continent, for
Although geographically
located in Europe, Bosnia was perceived as culturally distant and thus associated with
Asia and Africa, resembling the Turkish provinces of Syria, Armenia or Egypt231
.
228
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 40
229
Ibid., p. 76-77
230
Ibid., p. 77
231
Despite the great number of travelers that ventured in the Balkan Peninsula in the second half of the
nineteenth century and the great number of travelogues they published, the region was still regarded as a
faraway, mysterious country, as unknown as Africa or Asia. Cfr B. Jezernik, Europa selvaggia, op. cit., p
6-7
122
Because of the strong Islamic character of the country, Bosnia was perceived as more
oriental than the Orient itself ,232
and
Thrace, Macedonia, the shores of the Aegean, Stamboul itself, have lost or never
displayed many Oriental customs and costumes; but Bosnia remains the chosen land
renegade population, and reflects itself even in the dress. In no other province of
Turkey is the veiling of women strictly attained to.233
To reinforce the point that crossing the border brought the traveler into another
continent, Evans reminded that also the inhabitants of the other side of the river shared
the same feeling, regarding themselves as separate from Europe, and Europe itself as a
.234
It was not only a journey in another continent, but also in the
235 His Western European
and aristocratic Victorian mentality made him notice a high degree of backwardness and
incivility.236
Once Evans entered the Ottoman land, he was asked to show to the Mudir, a
Turkish official, the pass that the Vali Pasha had provided him and that would enable
232
N. Berber, op. cit., p. 53
233
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 89-90
234
Ibid., p. 89. Cfr also B. Jezernik, op. cit., p. 11 and M. Todorova, op. cit., p. 78
235
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 236. During the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, the
travelers who ventured themselves in the Ottoman Empire were leaving civilization and liberty to
experience backwardness and tyranny, they were crossing the border between West and East, between
barbarism and civilization. Cfr B. Jezernik, op. cit., p. 9
236
N. Berber, op. cit., p. 50
123
him to circulate in Bosnia and Herzegovina with no obstacles. Once the official was
informed about
could not understand his reasons. The same reaction of surprise he encountered
elsewhere in the country by British consuls, Austrian or Turk officials and Franciscan
monks alike. Apparently, nobody in Bosnia and Herzegovina believed in was possible
people different from them, could harm them. In addition, the uprising was taking hold
in many parts of Bosnia and even Evans understood that in the eyes of the Turk officials
he and his brother looked suspicious237
: they were often thought to be spies or
collaborators of the insurgents, so they were not surprised to find that, in addition to the
local zaptieh (a policeman who also served as guide) they were appointed to by the
officials, their movements were being observed by guards.
In addition to Islam in Bosnia, Evans found the Catholic and Orthodox religions
too, which despite being Christian religions, showed great diversity:
The
Greek Bosnians use Cyrillian characters, and call themselves distinctively Serbs or
snare of the devil, and, far from trying to claim fellowship with the people of Free
Serbia, style themselves as Latins - for it always seems to be a tendency of
Romanists to thrust patriotic interests into the background.238
237
design of leaving the road and plunging into the mountains was, on any other hypothesis, sheer insanity
Evans, op. cit., p. 125
238
Ibid., p. 96
124
Evans continued his journey walking through the Possavina region, bordering with
the Save, and described the beautiful nature, the housing, the villages, the
clothes
bank of the river. The similarities between the Catholic and Orthodox population were
more than the different groups wanted to admit even when Evans continued to march
southwards, and Evans recalled that although
the Roman Catholic priesthood in Bosnia leans towards Croatia, and shrinks from
perhaps unconsciously, their sisterhood with the heretics beyond the Drina. They were
not coiffed Croat fashion, in a kerchief, like the peasants we had seen in the Bosnian
Possavina, but their hair was plaited round a fez, à la belle Serbe239
and also the male Christian and Muslim clothes differed only slightly, sometimes the
only visible difference was represented by the turban.
nj Evans visited the Old Castle, observed that it did not contain any
interesting archeological material and that it was is a rather decadent state so he visited
the remains of an ancient Roman road. After the immersion into the distant past he was
offered by a courteous mudir coffee and cigarettes, that Evans commented with
surprise:
Paper cigarettes! twenty years ago they would have been narghiles, ambery,
Oriental, ablaze with gold and jewels, enchantingly barbaric; but their date is fled; the
239
Ibid., p. 119
125
West advances and the East recedes; and now, even in Conservative old Bosnia, the
pipe is degenerating into the symbol of a fogy! Sic transit gloria mundi.240
The introduction of paper cigarettes in Bosnia was a sign of the western penetration
in the country and a sense of hybrid nature was perceived by Evans through the
introduction of typically Western elements in an Oriental country like Bosnia:
Cigarettes were a symbol, although a negative one, of the western penetration of
dence
of Oriental traditions and the acquisition of degrading Western practices that Evans
refused to accept.241
but also on the traits and characteristics that made them similar to Europeans, or
different from the Turks and other Muslims. While Bosnia was described in certain
passages as a bulwark of Islamic traditions and customs, Evans also noted that
polygamy in Bosnia was never practiced and that the wearing of the veil was not strictly
observed by all Muslim women.
Evans witnessed a great Christian gathering of Catholic pilgrims who gathered at a
shrine to honor the Virgin Mary on the day of the Assumption. Evans observed and
highlighted the cultural syncretism of Bosnia and the common culture the population
shared, for those Christians while performing their devote prayers resembled Muslim
religious rituals, and they also looked like Muslims
240
Ibid., p. 116
241
N. Berber, op. cit., p. 64
126
thoroughly Mahometan appearance of so many of these Christian devotees. The
influence of Islam seemed to have infected even their ritual; for many grovelled on the
ground and kissed the earth, as in a mosque
sight of so many Christians, dressed indeed in the garb of Mahometans, but still
clinging to the faith of their fathers242
Evans also recorded their food, their singing
and dancing the kolo and the music of the gusla, double pipes and flutes, which often
accompanied with lyric songs and long epic ballads. Evans acknowledged the intrinsic
value and the role of bards who recited by heart the traditional epic poems. He stressed
that epic poetry united the South Slavs, it is thanks to poetry and the heroes it celebrated
that the Catholics and Orthodox, althoug
and the caprice of man, it is this national poetry that has kept them from forgetting that
to the union of the past243
It is thanks to the poetry, praised by many Romantics across
Europe, that Evans stated that
pinnacles of civilization.244
As a liberal, Evans thought that the South Slavs had a big
potential that could emerge if they freed themselves from the Ottoman domain. The
liberals, who supported the national cause of the South Slavs, believed they could
advance in civilization and progress, to the point of organizing self-governed states.
While describing their impassible expression, Evans remarked that the negative traits in
removable by a few
242
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 133
243
Ibid., p. 139
244
Ibid., p. 140
127
245, and cited -liberated
246
Evans came across one of the most interesting monuments of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the ,247
extensively only later, when he was on his way towards the Franciscan monastery of
ed them to the Roman past of
the country, or in any case to the pre-Ottoman period, and excluded any Ottoman
influence. As many historians and archeologists, Evans too was puzzled by those
absolutely original tombstones
248 He linked them to the presence of the Bogomils
249 in Medieval
Bosnia, because there was no symbol of the cross on them (the Bogomils strongly
opposed the material world, including the cross); the approximate date of their
construction and the locality coincide with the area that was supposedly inhabited by the
. Evans made another interesting hypothesis when he observed that these
monuments were well preserved, while all the other monuments of Medieval Bosnia
were destroyed after the Ottoman invasion. Could it be that they were not destroyed
245
Ibid., p. 150
246
Ibid., p. 151
247
The are standing blocks of fine bright stone, huge stone monoliths with or without a base, often
richly decorated with carvings, representing human figures and stylized floral designs, Cfr Chapter 1
248
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 173
249
The Bogomils were a heretical movement, a Manichean dualist theology founded in the X century by a
priest called Bogumil. They saw the world as driven by two main forces: the Good (all things invisible)
and the Evil (the material world), which had equal power, as equals were God and Satan. Cfr Chapter 1
128
because the Bogomils converted to Islam after the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia? The
theme of the Islamization of Bosnia, together with the , is one of the most
interesting yet debated topics of Bosnian history. Evans linked the conversions to the
widespread presence of Bogomils
Mahometan in place of Romish rulers, and favoured that process of renegation which
has given us a Slavonic race of believers in the Prophet.250
received with hospitality by its fourteen Franciscan monks. They had the same reaction
as everybody who heard that the two brothers had safely travelled on foot alone. In fact
the monks
madness; that the state of the country was becoming more critical every moment; and
that the insurrection in the Herzegovina had roused Mahometan fanaticism to such a
pitch that all of the Christians of the neighborhood were seriously dreading a
251. Evans had a deep knowledge of the different religions within Bosnia and
of their divisions, and understood (even if he found them a little exaggerated) the
preoccupations of the Franciscans, who feared the Bosnian Muslims rather than the
Turkish authorities and army. Evans was surprised by the culture, by their
knowledge of foreign languages and of the contemporary political situation: they were
willing to accept Austrian occupation, but preferred the Ottoman dominion to annexing
Bosnia to Serbia and see the Orthodox rule the country. However, Evans observed,
these views were not shared by all Catholic men of church: many Catholic priests in
250
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 177. The process of Islamization of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina
can no longer be linked with the mass conversion of the Bogomils, supposed members of the Bosnian
Church. Cfr Chapter 2, pp 27-32
251
Ibid., p. 179
129
Herzegovina had participated in the revolt, and the leading Croatian Pan-Slav figure,
Bishop Strossmayer, advocated union with Serbia.
After the Franciscan monastery
monastery at Fojnica of his way to Sarajevo, where the conversations with the monks
were equally interesting. He praised the Franciscans for preserving the medieval cultural
tradition of Bosnia ceives how it is among these Franciscan brotherhoods that
252 Evans also noted that they
,253
in fact the area abounded
with gold, silver and copper mines. The mines had been exploited since the Roman
times, but now they were largely disused because of Ottoman lethargy, lack of
enterprise in the economy and corruption. Evans thought that those precious mines
could never follow the path of the English Midlands, but would keep stagnating,
unused. In addition to some physical obstacles (there were no infrastructures in the
country, no proper roads, bridges and means of transport to support industrial
development), and political obstacles that halted enterprise (it was impossible to receive
a concession from the government to start exploiting the mines without corruption and
bribery), was able to start the
industrialization and economic development. 254
252
p. 221
253
Ibid., p. 227
254
Evans and other Western travelers blamed the passive nature of the Turks and the corruption of the
government to the decaying state of Ottoman economy. Western observers judged the Ottoman Empire
also through its political and military situation, and not only through the state of its economy. Thus,
when the empire was at its height, both politically and following its great conquests, Western countries
admired it. The decline of the Ottoman prestige began after the 1683 defeat before Vienna, and reached
the status of a decaying empire in the twentieth century. To Western eyes, it became synonym with
backwardness, especially the Balkan area. Europa selvaggia, p.28-33
130
Evans reached the city of Travnik, where he saw a woma
the limits of conservative old Bosnia, her disguise would be laughed at by the Turks
255 and he once again talked about the strange nature of Islam in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. He added
the Ottoman dominions, but who had not visited Bosnia, could hardly be induced to
believe that [such a veiled figure] repre256
But
Evans also pointed out that unmarried girls were allowed to show their charm with
greater liberty with respect to any other Muslim country; that polygamy was almost
never practiced; that Bosnian Muslims retained their patronymic; and that they more
than willfully drank wine or rakija, all facts that showed the strange practices of
was
blue-eyed and fair-haired.
Evans reached 257
258
259on 21 August.
In Sarajevo
among the comforts of an English home, and surrounded by the quiet of an English
this Eastern sky we saw for the first time in Bosnia our familiar flowers [..] scenting the
255
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 195
256
Ibid., p. 195
257
Ibid., p. 240
258
Ibid., p. 246
259
Ibid., p. 249
131
air, and making us realize what a paradise this land might become in civilized hands.260
The message conveyed by Evans was that the Bosnians themselves were not capable of
producing beautiful gardens or obtaining sweet and juicy fruits by themselves, but under
the guide of the superior knowledge of Englishmen! Evans also met two women who
traveled the Balkan Peninsula and who were running an Orthodox girls school in
Sarajevo: Adelina Paulina Irby and Georgina Muir Mackenzie. Like many Christians of
Sarajevo, they were preparing to leave the town, fearing the Muslim uprisings.
Evans harshly criticized and condemned the exploitation of the raya by the
Ottomans, but he also condemned the abuses and the corruption of the Phanatiotes in
which the Bosnian raya
those, to whom he looks for spiritual comfort, wring from him the last scrap of worldly
261 They had been placed at
the head of Orthodox Churches and given high ecclesiastical offices, and recruited to
collect the taxes through the tax farming system. The consequences
Pravoslaves or orthodox Christians of Bosnia, who form the majority of the population,
are subjected to ecclesiastics, alien in blood, in language, in sympathies, who oppress
260
Ibid., p. 250. Evans remarked the same concept when, on his way from the monastery of Fojnica
towards Sarajevo, he saw the mines that the rich Bosnian soil offered. The problem lied in the fact that,
able to exploit this important
natural resource, which was successfully done not surprisingly -
of comparison of Britain and the Balkans was an
intrinsic part of Victorian denigration of the region, indicating the full distance between these poles of
Hammond, The uses of Balkanism, art. cit., pp. 611
261
Ibid., p. 267
132
them hand in hand with the Turkish officials, and set them, often, as even worse
example of moral depravity262
a
market with shops and traditional products an
including Muslims, Jews Catholics
noted that Muslim women were less veiled than anywhere in Bosnia and that they
followed Istanbul fashion; the Jews were rich merchants who formed a closed group
within the society; and Serbs were good merchants who held commerce in their hands
263
On 24th
August Evans and his brother left Sarajevo and continued their journey
south towards Herzegovina. They crossed mountains and forests and were fascinated by
the beauty of the landscape, which was slowly changing and assuming a more southern
character and climate, the thick forests were replaced by barer and rockier mountains
and the beauty of the valley of the river Neretva. In a village where they found a han for
the night, they were
the 264
who stared at the two
travelers, touched their belongings, drank their water, spat on the floor and refused to
leave the room. Although Evans had already referred to the Bosnians as uncivilized
people and emphasized the superiority of the Western world, he had never explicitly
declared that:
262
Ibid., p. 268
263
Ibid., p. 279
264
Ibid., p. 310
133
Bosniacs show themselves grossly familiar
when not cowed into bearish reserve; they have not even sufficient tact to perceive
when their impertinence or obtrusive curiosity is annoying. They show no delicacy
about prying into our effects, and in this respect they are far behind the Wallacks and
other uncivilized European populations with whom I have come in contact. They
never display gratitude for any small largess that we bestowed on them, though they
grabbed at it with avidity; and their general ingratitude was confirmed by those who
have had more experience of the country. Amongst the Mahometans burghers there
certainly is a very considerable amount of politeness and natural dignity, due to the
grand oriental traditions with which their conversion to Islam has imbued them, to
which I willingly pay homage. But among the Christians, even of the highest social
strata, the want of politeness and that ungenerous vice of mean spirits ingratitude
are simply astounding. 265
He continued describing what he ca that were
common to the whole South Slav populations:
, or brother, and the
- neighbor. I, who write this, happen
egalitaire
barbarian I meet that he is a man and a brother. I believe in the existence of inferior
races, and would like to see them exterminated. 266
On 28th
August, four days after they left Sarajevo, Evans and his brother
arrived in Mostar on 28th
August. They were received by the English consul, Mr.
Holmes, who informed them about the current situation of the insurrection in
265
Ibid., p. 310-311
266
Ibid., p. 312
134
Herzegovina, which was by then raging in the whole region, and who obtained an
- for them. The
conversation took a personal, rather than political character, and Evans recorded the
his praising the scenery of Herzegovina and of the Neretva
267 It seemed, only Englishmen were able to appreciate the
beauties of nature! Evans, however, showed respect for the Turkish official and his
Among the governing race of Turkey public honesty is as dead as private morality,
that corruption has closed the doors to progress, and that patriotism has almost
evils, and that nothing is to be hoped from the secluded youth and corrupt morals
of him who the Sultan would impose as his successor. The Vali, in spite of the
characteristic indifference of an Osmanli to the suffering of the rayah, has not been
without ambition in improving the material conditions of his Vilayet; but he has
seen himself thwarted from the above by the corruption of Stamboul and below by
the impenetrable ignorance of his officials.268
After the conversation with the Vali, Evans visited the city and said that he
liked it more than any other city or town he had seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It
was more elegant than the other cities, which in his opinion was due to the Roman
267
Ibid., p. 344-345. Evans, as other western travelers of the period, was so imbued in the Romantic
fascination with nature that he was convinced that only a western eye could catch and appreciate the
beauty of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian landscape. Cfr B. Jezernik, op. cit., p. 22-23
268
Ibid., p. 345-346
135
legacy:
269 Evans
recognized Italian-style houses and architecture, as well as more Mediterranean
features in the inhabitants. The ,270
i.e. its
Roman past, is the beautiful Mostar Bridge. I
view,271
Evans assumed that the bridge had been built in Roman times and later
restored by the Ottomans, who actually claimed the construction of the bridge:
According to tradition, this was the work of the Emperor Trajan, whose engineering
triumphs in Eastern Europe have taken a strong hold on the South-Sclavonic
imagination. Others refer its erection to Hadrian, and the Turks, not wishing to leave
the credit of such an architectural masterpiece to Infidel Emperors, claim the whole
for their Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent. He and other Turkish rulers have
certainly greatly restored and altered the work, insomuch that Sir Gardner Wilkinson
declares than none of the original Roman masonry has been left on the exterior, but
he was none the less convinced of its Roman origins; and anyone who has seen it
will agree with Sir Gardner that the grandeur of the work, and the form of the arch,
as well as the tradition, attests its Roman origins.272
Despite some Turkish inscriptions on the bridge that clearly demonstrate its
Ottoman origins, Evans rejected the idea that such a beautiful monument could have
been erected by the decaying Ottoman Empire, and believed that the inscriptions
269
Ibid., p. 346
270
Ibid., p. 347
271
The famous archeologist John Gardner Wilkinson (1797- 1875) can be considered the first modern
traveler to Bosnia and Herzegovina, traveled across the Balkans and later published in 1848 his
travelogue Dalmatia and Montenegro: with a Journey to Mostar in Herzegovina. He also attributed the
origins of the Mostar Bridge to Roman times, while the bridge was erected in 1566 by the Ottoman
architect Sinan.
272
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 348-349
136
referred to the subsequent restoration works. The barbaric Ottoman Empire was no
longer perceived as an example of civilization and culture, as it was before the 1683
defeat before Vienna. Now the Westerners even doubted that they were able to
construct bridges at all 273
. Thus the Mostar Bridge was seen as the monument of an
ancient, superior civilization among the Turkish lack of civilization. As a further proof
of the Roman origin of the bridge Evans explained the meaning of Mostar: the old
bridge (Most = bridge, and Star = old). According to Evans, it was the proof that when
the Ottomans occupied the town, the bridge was already looked at as an antiquity274
.
After Mostar, together with a numerous caravan, Evans and his brother descended
south through the desolated and barren landscape of Herzegovina. On his journey Evans
c -
275 i.e.
Christians and Muslims buried their dead:
Christian inhabitants of the hamlet had
found their last resting-place, and the crosses of the departed rayahs were only
separated by a narrow, and in places almost indistinguishable pathway from the
turbaned columns of the Moslem. It was a striking proof that even in the land of
bigotry and persecution both sectaries can live together in peace; and it afforded a
melancholy contrast to the burnt villages whose ruins we described a few miles further
on the road. The fact is, the animosity of the rayah of the Herzegovina has not been
directed so much against their Moslem fellow-276
273
-268
274
composed of the word most (bridge) and the suffix ar which indicates in Bosnian the profession or a
category of people.
275
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 361
276
Ibid., p. 362
137
Evans stressed the cultural syncretism of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the
tolerance of the villagers, Christians and Muslims alike, who often lived very
similar lives and suffered the same oppression and abuses. He also highlighted the
popular character of the insurrection, which was caused by the local oppression and
advocated the end of abuse and better conditions of life, which the peasant
population of Herzegovina, regardless of the religious creed, hoped and fought for.
On 30th
of August, after a fifteen-hour ride on horseback, Evans reached the
. Within the limits of Christendom, Evans
immediately recognized a more Italian feature and character in the boatman he
a marked contrast to the rudeness and asperity of the ordinary Bosniac or
277 Evans and his brother foun
limits of Christendom with whole skins.278
They safely reached Ragusa
(
streams and runnels of the medieval civilization of Bosnia, we take our seat beside
the fountain-279
and where, once again, they found
themselves immersed in ancient civilization. Among the natural and man-made
beauties of Ragusa, we find again the echo of the insurrection: Evans visited the
refugees from Herzegovina, who in great numbers found refuge in the city of
Ragusa. Among the refugees he also found the local peasants and immediately
noticed the influence of Turkish fashion in their national costumes. However, it was
277
Ibid., p. 369
278
Ibid., p. 364
279
Ibid., p. 383
138
the only similarity between the inhabitants of Ragusa and those of Herzegovina.
According to Evans, the contrast between the refined peasants of the ancient
Republic of Ragusa and the rude peasants of the Herzegovinian mountains derived
hing of her former civilization, a
peculiar refinement, both in her peasants and citizens, not to be met anywhere else
280
After crossing the uncivilized and barbaric lands of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Evans finished his adventurous journey in the ancient, civilized Republic of
Ragusa, with its Roman origin and glorious past, where art, commerce and liberal
politics were flourishing. In Ragusa nature was truly beautiful,
beautiful garden and hothouse flowers grow wherever there is a chink in an old
281, not like in Bosnia, where beautiful flowers could flourish only in the
, under civilized hands.
4. Arthur J. Evans and the 1875 revolt
ravelogue are closely connected. Evans wrote
extensively about the topic because he wanted to give a detailed description of both the
causes that were at the heart of the revolt and its developments. He was on a ferry that
was taking him to the Turkish side of Brod when he mentioned the insurrection for the
first time, defining it as a ately been forcing
[itself] on The attitude of Evans reflected the attitude of England towards
280
Ibid., p. 442
281
Ibid., p. 437
139
Bosnia and Herzegovina: the insurrection was given attention to only when it started to
. In the meantime, in late July and at the
beginning of August, the insurrection was rapidly expanding, and Evans reported that
there was agitation in the neighboring countries of Serbia and Montenegro too.
Revolutionary committees were assembling in the major towns and a lot of volunteers
were constantly joining the rebels. Evans was convinced that that the raya of Bosnia
would join the insurrection too. Many Bosnians already feared for the safety of the
Christians . Evans himself was warned
of the fanaticism of the Bosnian Muslims by the Franciscan monks at the monastery of
happening in Herzegovina, far from Bosnia. Evans found the first signs of insurrection
in Travnik where he was followed by a guard or zaptieh, no longer as a possible spy for
Austria or Russia or foreign agitators like before, but as a protection from Muslim
fanaticism against the Christians. The gathering of irregular troops of the Turkish army,
formed by Muslim volunteers called Bashi-Bazouks, was a clear sign that the situation
was getting worse. In fact, the central government in Constantinople decided to send
reinforcements in the country.
282. On his way to Sarajevo Evans was informed that
and that the raya had insurrected in Banjaluka
too. It was the first direct news of the breaking out of the revolt in Bosnia and
Herzegovina so far. It was confirmed by the English consul in Sarajevo, who also
informed Evans of the panic that followed an accidental fire in the city centre, which
was mistaken for the beginning of the revolt of Bosnian Muslims against Christian
282
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 206
140
citizens. From the German consul in Sarajevo Evans learned
course of the insurrection in Bosnia [that] reveal such frantic oppression and gross
misgovernme283
He understood that, except
for Sarajevo and few larger towns, Christians feared for their lives, safety and property:
Gross outrage against the person murder itself can be committed in the rural
districts with impunity. The authorities are blind; and it is quite a common thing for
the gendarmes to let the perpetrator of the grossest outrage, if a Mussulman, escape
bef
In fact, the evidence of the Christian raya was either not admitted, or it could easily
be outweighed by Muslim evidence. The Christian population did not appeal to foreign
consuls for protection due to the lack of the means of communication in a mountainous
country such as Bosnia, and because they feared being treated even more cruelly than
before. Evans also wrote extensively about the taxation,
describing the high number of taxes the raya had to pay, the tax-farming system, the
role of the Phanariotes and of the Turkish police, and the cruelties inflicted on the raya
during the collection of the taxes. Evans recognized in this wretched system and fiscal
pressure .284
283
Ibid., p. 255
284
Ibid. p. 256. Bosnian subjects had to pay three principal taxes, a tithe on their produce, a property tax
on their personal possessions and the products of home industry, and the , which was levied on all
male Christians in place of the military service required of the Muslim. In addition, the Christian was
subject to numerous other minor payments and to special contributions in time of war or in other unusual
circumstances. Cfr B. Jelavich, The British Travellers in the Balkans: The Abuses of Ottoman
Administration in the Slavonic Provinces
(Jun., 1955), pp. 402
141
It was in Mostar, where he arrived on 28th
August, that Evans was given fresh
information regarding the revolt by the English consul, Mr. Holmes. Evans explained
and showed a deep understanding of the peasant situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He looked for the real causes of the revolt and dedicated many pages of his travelogue
to explain them. Evans wrote:
As in Bosnia, the main cause of the insurrection was the oppression of the tithe
farmers. The case of the Herzegovinian rayah differs, however, in many respects from
that of their Bosnian brothers. This is due to the difference in the physical conditions
of the two countries. In Bosnia there are many tracts, like the Possavina, of marvelous
fertility, where the most extortionate government cannot so entirely consume the
fatness of the land as not to leave to the rayah considerable gleanings. Far otherwise
is the case of the Herzegovina. The greater part of this country may be briefly
described as a limestone desert, and it is the terrible poverty of the soil which makes
the position of its Christian tiller so unendurable. 285
Thus the raya were left with nearly no means of sustenance by the tax famers
because of the poor fertility of the land. There was another reason for the critical
situation in Herzegovina which had to do with the geographical conformation of the
land. Since the mountains in Herzegovina were higher than in Bosnia and the
strongholds of agas and beys more impenetrable, the central government was unable to
control them and they still had a great power over the raya. Christian peasants were thus
at the mercy of aristocratic lords, who viewed them not only as serfs, but also with a
repugnance of a Muslim for an unbeliever uffering from this double disability,
, or tiller of the soil, is worse off than many a
serf in our darkest ages, and lies as completely at the mercy of the Mahometan owner of
285
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 331
142
286 In addition the raya were required to pay a third of the
product of the crop and provide food, animals and forced labor for the agas and beys
when asked to. Given the situation, Evans correctly concluded that
the insurrection in the Herzegovina has been directed more against the Mahometan
landowners and the tax-farmers than against the immediate representatives of the
Sultan. It is mainly an agrarian war. Add to the extortion of the tax-farmers and
landlords, the forced labor which the government officials exact as well as the agas,
us conduct of the brigand-police
or zaptiehs, and, of course, the wolfish propensities of the shepherd of the herd the
Fanariote bishop of Mostar and we have more than enough to account for the
outbreak of the insurrection without going in quest of foreign agitators.287
The last sentence clearly contradicts the Turkish version of the outbreak of the
insurrection that the Turkish Governor-General gave to the English consul, according to
which foreign agitators from Montenegro and Dalmatia entered the country and forced
the Christian peasants to take up arms against their Muslim neighbors. Evans did not
deny that Slavs from across the Bosnian-Herzegovinian border helped their oppressed
brothers in their struggle for freedom from Ottoman oppression, but he did not believe
that the insurrection was brought about by foreign agitators alone. Evans stated it
clearly: the only reason lying at the core of the re
of the agents of the Turkish government and the Mahometan landlords288
and excluded
any influence of Panslavic ideas in connection with the revolt. The Herzegovinian raya
took up arms only for the purpose of obtaining a fair share of what they deserved and
286
Ibid., p. 333
287
Ibid., p. 334
288
Ibid., p. 336
143
securing a better life for themselves and their families
origin agrarian rather than political. It was largely an affair of tenant-289
Evans then described the outbreak of the revolt. I in 1874
the harvest completely failed due to a particularly harsh winter. In April everything was
still covered in deep snow and hunger was widespread among the peasants.290
Despite
these difficult conditions, the tax-farmers, local agas, beys, and the Phanariotes
demanded their share of the crop from the starving peasants. Those who refused to pay
were beaten and imprisoned, the village elders fled to neighboring Montenegro and the
rest of the village fled to the mountains with their cattle. Meanwhile the news of these
events reached foreign consuls and the Emperor of Austria, at the time engaged in his
journey in Dalmatia. The Vali, or Governor of Bosnia, who sensed that a prolonged
non-intervention on his part might spread the revolt and cause agitation among the
Great Powers, appointed a Commission to judge the wrongs the raya suffered and
provided the refugees a safe-conduct to return to their villages. Despite the safe-
conduct, the raya were killed as soon as they returned from Montenegro, but the
Commission denied the massacre.
demands to the Commission, that provided Turkish
rule in the Herzegovina, and savour neither of Panslavism nor of disloyalty to the
291 The demands included the respect of Christian women and churches, equality
before the law, protection against the violence of Turkish officials, a just taxation
system and the end to forced labor. The Dervish Pashà went to
289
Ibid., p. 366
290
, op. cit., p. 31
291
A. Evans, op. cit., p. 340
144
that their demands would be satisfied if they laid down the arms, which they did. But as
soon as the Pashà left the village, the Christian population had to take refuge in the
the village were killed by the Muslimsst July the civil war in the
292 aided by the
government in their acts. The majority of the Christian population of the neighboring
district, having suffered the same abuses for a long time, took up arms to help the
villagers of
together, which greatly
features of the present insurrection has been the way in which the two Christian sects
293 The young Franciscans were particularly involved and
supported the revolt against the Ottoman abuses.294
Evans did not doubt that the worst
atrocities were committed as the guerrilla warfare enflamed in the mountains of
Herzegovina, but nevertheless he took the side of the oppressed raya and defended their
violent acts, the cause lying in the Ottoman tyrannical domination which had brutalized
the Bosnian population; and if it was true that some Christian villagers had forced
others to join their cause by burning crops and estates, it is because they were desperate
men, whose spirit had been enslaved by the Turkish tyranny. Evans whole-heartedly
took the side of the insurgents.
The insurrection that Evans witnessed was a popular armed protest, a revolt against
the Ottoman system that heavily exploited the peasants. It was a spontaneous
292
Ibid., p. 341
293
Ibid., p. 337
294
M. 115
145
insurrection against hard life conditions of the Bosnian peasants, against the beglik
landowning system, and the heavy taxes they had to pay. It was an agrarian and social
revolt where peasants asked for better conditions of life and claimed the right to the
redistribution of the lands. They just asked for a small piece of land to own and
cultivate, to be able to sustain themselves and their families. These were the reasons for
the revolt in July and August 1875, when Evans was still in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Only later, in September 1875, did the influence of Serbian nationalism and the Greater
Serbian idea change the nature of the insurrection, giving it a political dimension. It
became a protest against the Ottoman domination and the Ottoman political system, an
attempt to unify Bosnia and Herzegovina with Serbia, a war for national independence
inspired by , whose aim was to unify a population that was
divided in three religions and speaking the same language in the same country. The
Bosnian uprising became linked with Serbian national policy. The national ideology
was mainly brought to Bosnia by Bosnian Serb merchants, who came in contact with
Serbian nationalism while travelling in Austria-Hungary and Serbia. Serbian volunteers,
who were joining the insurrection in great numbers, provided the political leadership for
the revolt. The army of the insurgents was organized in small units that carried on a
guerrilla warfare against Ottoman troops, lived in forests and mountains and avoided
frontal attacks, because the Turks outnumbered them. The insurgents failed to create a
compact front against the Turks. Despite invitations by the leaders of the revolt, the
Muslim population did not join the revolt while Catholic Croats abandoned it after some
collaboration at an early stage. The religious differences were too big and prevented the
three ethnic groups of Bosnia from being united in the fight against the Ottomans.
Croats were more drawn toward Catholic Austria-Hungary while Bosnian Muslims,
146
although they wanted more freedom from the central government in Constantinople,
was to be united with Serbia. Fighting mainly occurred along the borders, while the
majority of the population fled the country. The fighting did not cease since its first
outbreak in the summer of 1875, and continued until the occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina in 1878 by Austria-Hungary. The attacks were rare during the winter and
started again in spring, when weather conditions allowed the insurgents to continue their
guerrilla warfare. Bosnia was in chaos, with no rule or government. The peasants were
fleeing the country, crossing the border of Serbia or Croatia, leaving abandoned villages
behind. Hunger and misery were widespread. Peasants feared both the Turkish irregular
troops and the insurgents who were in desperate need of men for fighting, and were
recruiting the refugees. Since there was no central organization of the army, there were
cases of insurgents confiscating goods and animals from the peasants and selling them
across the border. There were frequent cases of attacks and looting too.
Although the insur weak, suffered many defeats and was in
desperate need of men and material, and despite the indifference of the majority of the
peasant population who did not feel involved because of too much nationalism and too
little importance paid to the agrarian question, the fighting never ceased. It continued
after the Treaty of San Stefano and during the Berlin Conference too. The insurgents
wanted their voices to be heard and to that purpose they sent a Memorandum to the
Congress. They demanded political unity with Serbia, or if unity could not be granted,
at least an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. They also demanded the redistribution
of the land and an equal system of taxation. It was clear to the insurgents that all their
requests and the end of the revolt depended on international mediation and diplomatic
147
relations. During the course of the insurrection both the Ottoman army and the Great
Powers tried to solve the problem of the uprising, but neither the Ottoman government
nor the program of the Great Powers or of the Bosnians insurgents solved the problem
that lay at the heart of the insurrection: the agrarian question. The insurgents were
bitterly disappointed: their requests went unnoticed in the Congress of Berlin, which
officially ended the insurrection by authorizing Austria-Hungary to occupy Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The insurrection, which started as a spontaneous peasant protest to solve
the agrarian question and was later enriched with social and political elements, ended
with another foreign domination which re-established the old social order, thus
nullifying all the hopes the Bosnians had when they started their armed revolt three year
before. The Austrians in Bosnia and Herzegovina brought the country back to the social
situation existing before the 1875 revolt.
148
Conclusion
The revolt that broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1875 marked
the end of the Ottoman domination, which had started four centuries earlier and had
given to Bosnia its unique features such as a native Muslim population and typically
Oriental traits that permeated nearly all aspects of Bosnian life. When the Ottoman
Empire started to decline in the second half of the sixteenth century, the central
government in Constantinople was no longer able to control Bosnia and Herzegovina
and the landowning Muslim nobility became strong and independent. The peasants were
reduced to mere subsistence and worked on their estates paying high taxes in money
and in kind and were subjected to heavy labor obligations. The unbearable situation of
the Bosnian peasants reached a critical point when the tax collectors and the local
nobility demanded their share of taxes and tithes in the summer of 1875, despite the
complete crop failure of the previous year. The peasants could not pay the taxes and,
exhausted by years of abuse and exploitation, took up arms and commenced an armed
revolt which soon expanded to the whole territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The
main cause for the revolt was the agrarian question and tense relationship between the
peasants and landlords. At the beginning it was a social revolt, commenced by the
peasants who demanded the end of unjust exploitation, redistribution of the land and
better conditions of life. Only later, under the influence of Serbian nationalism and
Panslavism, it became war against the Ottoman domination and for national
independence, with the aim of unifying Bosnia and Herzegovina with Serbia.
149
The insurrection was followed by the European Great Powers with concern, causing
tensions among them because of the conflicting interests they had in the Balkan
Peninsula and the future they had planned for the decaying Ottoman Empire. Austria-
Hungary and Russia wanted to expand in the Balkan region and used the 1875
insurrection as a pretext to interfere in the Bosnian revolt to justify their intervention
and projects of expansion in the area. Great Britain, on the other hand, wished to
preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire to safeguard her
routes to India, fearing that the formation of small, independent Balkan states would
The antagonism and
rivalry within the Great Powers eventually led to a war between Russia and the Ottoman
Empire despite numerous vain efforts for a diplomatic solution to the insurrection and to
the European crisis it had triggered. The Bosnian insurrection was no longer a local
uprising. It became an international matter of concern for the balance and peace of the
Great Powers, who were now interested in finding a solution to the problem.
The insurrection lasted until 1878, when the representatives and delegates of the
Great Powers, Turkey and the Balkan States met at the Congress of Berlin to discuss the
peace terms Russia had imposed on the defeated Ottoman Empire. Until that moment,
from its first outbreak in 1875, the armed revolt had been going on in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, leading the country into disorder and hunger and causing a huge wave of
refugees that sought protection in the neighboring countries of Croatia and Serbia. The
revolt was led by Bosnian Serbs with the aid of volunteers from Serbia, who were
organized in small units specialized in guerrilla warfare. The insurgents suffered heavy
defeats by more numerous and better equipped Turkish troops. The insurrection failed
due to poor military organization, small number of fighters and lack of the support of
150
the population since it was no longer a social upheaval. It started as a peasant revolt for
land and better life conditions, involving also the Catholic and, in minor degree, Muslim
members of the Bosnian population, but the Serbian nationalism took the lead of the
revolt and changed its nature, giving it a political character. As a consequence, the
peasants felt excluded from the revolt and fled abroad for protection instead of fighting
at home. Bosnia lacked internal cohesion and central organization. It was weak and
fragmented, so that the end of the insurrection depended only upon international
mediation and diplomatic relations.
solve the agrarian question and establish independent Bosnia and Herzegovina was
rejected and the Congress of Berlin granted Austria-Hungary the right to occupy the
country. Thus the 1875 revolt failed in its main objectives, i.e. agrarian and political
reform and ended with another foreign domination. The Austrians established the same
situation as before the revolt and nullified the hopes of the Bosnian population for a
better life.
Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot during the
Insurrection, August and September 1875, is probably the best English testimony from
Bosnia and Herzegovina during the revolt and one of the most reliable voices from the
insurrection. The revolt was one of the most important social upheavals in the modern
history of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Evans was well aware that he was witnessing
the end of the Ottoman domination. It had huge consequences for the future of the
country that was dominated by the Ottomans for more than four centuries. Evans was an
involuntary witness to the 1876 revolt, but he was not a passive observer. He was aware
of the difficult situation in the country, of the corrupted Ottoman system, of the faults of
the landowning and tax collection systems that hugely damaged the peasants. He
151
described it in detail in his travelogue showing a deep understanding of Bosnian society,
history and population. He was able to give a complete and detailed picture of Bosnia
history. His account is particularly valuable because during his journey he gathered
reliable information from the European diplomats and missionaries, representatives of
religious institutions and important Ottoman officials, giving a comprehensive and
broad view of the insurrection. Thanks to this valuable source of information, Evans
correctly concluded that the main causes of the Bosnian revolt were the agrarian
question and social unrest. He observed that the members of the raya who took up arms
and started the revolt were mostly Orthodox, with the participation of Catholics, and
sometimes Muslims too, because people of all ranks were victims of the corrupt feudal
system. They rose up in order to improve their life and work and against huge taxes they
had to pay. Only later, when Evans was no longer in the country, the revolt became a
rebellion with national connotations. Even when it became war for national
independence and for union with Serbia, Evans still supported it. He wished to see the
South Slavs living in autonomous, free states, but his desire, as well as the desire of the
inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula, was shattered by the Austro-Hungarian occupation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878.
152
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