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.........................10 2. Ottoman Bosnia........................18 2.1 The origins of the Ottoman Empire...............18 2.2 The Ottoman system....................24 2.3 Bosnia Herzegovina under Ottoman rule...............34
3. Ottoman decline..........................52 3.1 The destabilization of the Ottoman Empire...............52 3.2 Effects of Ottoman decline in Bosnia and Hercegovina.........59 3.3 Ottoman reforms and the Tanzimat period..............64 3.4 Tanzimat effects in Bosnia and Herzegovina............70
II. The 1875 revolt 1. The situation of the peasants in Bosnia and Herzegovina........77 2. Influence of Croatian and Serbian nationalism in Bosnia........79 3. The international situation and Bosnia and Herzegovina.........84 4. The 1875 revolt and the relations between Britain and Bosnia and Herzegovina..........................89 2
III. Arthur J. Evans in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1. Arthur J. Evans.......................102 2. Arthur J. Evans and British travel writing on Bosnia and Herzegovina.........................105 3. Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection, August and September 1875.......................120 4. Arthur J. Evans and the 1875 revolt................141
Conclusion.............................150
Bibliography...........................154
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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
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Introduction
The most striking feature of Bosnia and Herzegovina in both Evans`s time and today is its predominantly Muslim population. The English public opinion discovered Bosnia and Herzegovina`s Islamic religion 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 oI the Balkan Peninsula: the Ottoman Empire. Bosnia`s uniqueness developed 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 Bosnia`s most critical problem: the agrarian reform. They did not lessen the burden oI the region`s peasants and did not 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 complete Iailure oI the previous year`s crop, 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`s 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 geographically close, Bosnia was perceived as a culturally distant country, as Turkey in Europe`, more eastern than other Eastern European countries and as an oriental country 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. Evans`s 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.
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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 was ruled by local noble Iamilies, independent landowners who 'were oIten able to dictate the succession to the Bosnian crown Irom their position oI territorial power 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 did agricultural and military service in the landowners` estates and paid a tithe, and 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 unity 2 , both internal and against external conquerors. Bosnia`s great prosperity in the Middle Ages was largely due to the exploitation if its rich soil. Mining was the 'key to its wealth 3 : 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 which means silver` its Latin name was Argentaria`) 4 which became the most important mining town and commercial centre in the whole region. Many towns developed on trading, including Foca, Visoko, Jajce, Travnik and Vrhbosna, which in the late middle ages consisted oI a little more than a fortress and a village, and which was quickly developed into the city oI Sarajevo by the Turks aIter 1448`. 5
In that period three important bans ruled Bosnia: Ban Kulin (from 1180 to 1204), Ban Stjepan Kotromanic (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
2 J. Fine, Le radici medievali-ottomane della societ 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. CIr E. Ivetic, 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 Dusan (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 aIIected the Iate oI the whole oI Bosnian religious liIe and civilization in the Middle 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 Lovrenovic:
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 I. Lovrenovic, Bosnia, A Cultural History, London, Saqi Books, 2001, p. 40
7 Ibid., op. cit., p.48
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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, the most distinctive and puzzling feature of [Bosnian] history` 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 by a priest called Bogumil (meaning beloved by God`). 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 world 9 . Furthermore:
The visible world was Satan`s creation, and the men could free themselves from the taint of the material world only by following an ascetic way of life, renouncing meat, wine and sexual intercourse. The identiIication oI matter with Satan`s real had some far-reaching theological implications: Christ`s reincarnation had to be regarded as a 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
8 N. Malcolm, op. cit., p.14
9 F. Conte, Gli Slavi, Le civilta aellEuropa centrale e orientale, Torino, Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1991, p.508
10 N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 27-28
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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 in the whole history oI medieval Bosnia there is nothing that has become so entangled in various theories, romantic ideas, controversy and mystification as the Bosnian Church and the supposed Bogomil heresy oI its adherents.` 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 stecci, scattered throughout the entire territory of Bosnia and especially of Hercegovina, coinciding with the area of activity of the Bosnian Church. The stecci 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 I. Lovrenovic, op. cit., p. 51 14
human figures and stylized floral designs. 13 Since some of the gravestone carried the word Gosti (a member of the Bosnian Church, literally meaning guest`) 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, literally meaning grandIather` Iollowed in the hierarchy by the gosti (guests`) and the starci (the old`) 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. Hsch, Storia dei paesi balcanici dalle origini ai giorni nostri, Torino, Giulio Einaudi editore, 2005, p.67
16 J. Fine, op. cit., p.10
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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 Tomasevic Iorced its clergy to convert 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 country that took on the most speciIic cultural and spiritual proIile among the South Slav medieval lands`. 17 The Bosnian state found itself between Rome, the Christianity oI the West, and Byzantium, the Christianity oI the East, and as Lovrenovic remarks:
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 suIIiciently intense inIluence upon it to achieve its radical assimilation. |.| in the Middle Ages the cultures of the east and west coexisted here |.| side by side with the Catholic and Orthodox churches the Bosnian Church. Side by side with the Cyrillic, Greek, Latin and Glagolitic script Bosancica. Side by side with Byzantine and Serbian art, and the west European Romanesque and Gothic transmitted through the Croatian coastal towns a national tradition oI stecci, manuscript illumination, and fine craftsmanship. 18
Old and fortified towns, castles and churches should be added to the list of Bosnia`s important cultural achievements. Its capacity to blend together traditional and local elements and imported elements from the surrounding civilizations was the aspect
17 I. Lovrenovic, op. cit., 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.
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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 its name ('Balkan in Turkish means mountain), 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. Oriental` traits 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
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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-independence due to the so called Interregum`. During this period a civil war broke out within the Ottoman Empire among Bayezid`s sons, and the emergence of
20 D. Hupchick, The Balkans, From Constantinople to Communism, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p.102
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Tamerlane`s reign 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`s army 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 in a Iabled imperial city.` 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 Istanbul, and rapidly grew into a multiethnic, multicultured, and bustling economic, political, and cultural center for the Ottoman state` 23 the ideal capital for a powerful and expanding empire. Mehmed II The
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
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Conqueror` wanted to protect his empire Irom 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 Skanderbeg`s 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 MagniIicent The Law Giver` (1520-1566). 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 France were engaged in the Hundred Years` War (1338-1453), 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 warriors considered it their sacred duty to expand Islam`s worldly domain by Iorce, buttressed by the promise that those who died in the effort received the immediate reward of everlasting paradise` 25 . This principle motivated the Ottoman army so much that they defeated European armies battle aIter battle. In Iact, the Turk warriors` commitment to both holy war and their Ottoman commanders consistently gave them the combat advantage in terms oI morale and unity oI command`. 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. The conquered Christian populations of the Balkans were submerged in a powerful, highly centralized, theocratic imperial state grounded in the precepts of Islamic civilization and Turkish traditions.` 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 its vast domains polyglot peoples, |.| formidable armies, its advanced culture and exceptional religious freedom, and, above all, its unique administrative system based exclusively upon slaves oI Christian origin`. 28 The Ottomans` success lay in combining an absolutistic and strictly military form of government with a great cultural and administrative autonomy of its subject people 29 . 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 empire: the Ottoman Empire was an Islamic, rather than Turkish state. Islamic principles regarding the state`s nature were Iundamental.` 30 Since the Ottomans established their conquests on the concept of holy war, its natural aim was the expansion oI the domain oI Islam, the duty oI the ruler was to extend the rule oI Islam over as wide a territory as possible` 31 . The territories oI the domain oI Islam` were those where Islam was practiced, in contrast to the domain oI War`, which were territories inhabited by inIidels`. The religious precepts oI the 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
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single community oI true believers`. Islam thus played a bonding role for the population oI the empire, but despite the emphasis on religious war the objective was not the destruction of the darlharb [the domain of war] or its people, but their conquest and domination in a manner oI advantage to Islam.` 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 points out: all 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 were administrators.` 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 sultan`s 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`s property. Slaves were prisoners of war, but the vast majority was constituted by Christian subjects recruited through the so called system of the aevirme, or collection`. It was first conducted on a small scale during the late fourteenth century and was institutionalized by the sultan Murad II in the fifteenth century and until the late seventeenth century it was the main source oI slaves used to Iill the ranks oI the sultan`s slave household`. 34 The aevirme 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 administrators oI the state and the trusted members oI the sultan`s household. The 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 talented and perIormed their duties well, since advancement in the slave household theoretically depended on merit, although favoritism, political expediency and bribery could inIluence individual promotions.` 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 owned, paid, Ied, clothed, armed, housed, and led them in battle`. 37
The aevirme 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 at least 200,000 children Irom the Balkans had passed through the system in its two
35 B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 41
36 D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 129
37 Ibid., p.127
27
centuries oI operation.` 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 aevirme. 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 Sokolovic, who became grand vizier and restored connections with his native Bosnian Serb family and protected the Serbian Orthodox Church, re-establishing the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate in Pec in 1557. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries nine grand viziers were of Bosnian origins. An important consequence of the aevirme was that the Serbo-Croatian language was implanted into the heart oI the Ottoman state` 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 and political eIIect on the country: it created a class oI powerIul state oIIicials and their 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-Iarmers` creating a unique situation in Bosnia where the
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. The conquered territories were the sultan`s 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
The empire`s Iundamental 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 (protected Ilock`) included 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 the state`s absolute 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
The Koran, in a society where Islam was more than a state religion, it was the heart oI the Ottoman state` 41 , was the empire`s oIIicial law code. Because 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, responsible Ior the province`s law and 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 hara, 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 subjects with religious tolerance since they were recognized as People oI the Book` in the Koran. OI course, Islam was the supreme faith in an Islamic state. Under the eriat, the Ottoman Empire`s Christians and Jewish subjects were aIIorded 'protection (zimma) that is, continued existence as practicing Christians and Jews, on condition that they acknowledged the domination of Islam and its temporal authorities and accepted inIerior legal and social status.` 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 devirme (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 Ottomans` interest 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. With the precept oI the People oI the Book` in mind, the subject Christian population was divided into millet, based solely on religious aIIiliation and administered by the highest religious authorities oI each`. 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 duties |.| Each millet became an integral part oI the empire`s domestic 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 identity among the Ottomans` subject 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 the IiIteenth century, the 'Turkish threat had become a 'Turkish presence in the 34
political, economic, social and Iinally religious liIe oI Bosnia.` 46 In 1462 the King of Bosnia, Stjepan Tomasevic, turned Ior help to 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 with Bosnia on King Tomasevic`s suggestion, and personally led an attack in May 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 proclaimed the ban King oI Bosnia`. Although much oI the territory was soon won 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 Kingdom oI Bosnia` in 1465, appointing as king a member oI the Kotromanic dynasty, 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 I. Lovrenovic, Bosnia, p.83 35
Some territories of Herzegovina also managed to resist the Ottoman offensive of 1463. The Herceg Stjepan Vukcic regained some lands, but aIter the Iall oI the town oI 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, territorially, administratively and in social, economic and cultural liIe, Bosnia- Herzegovina in the sixteenth century to all intents and purposes became a province of the Ottoman Empire` 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 recognizing the nobility`s 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. Bosnia at the end oI the IiIteenth century and during the sixteenth 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
The process oI Islamization oI a vast portion oI Bosnia`s population, the most distinctive and important Ieature oI modern Bosnian history` 50 , was a gradual process that took almost a century and a half. Conversions to Islam never accompanied the Ottomans` conquest and control oI the Balkans 51 , (the non-Muslims were spared forced conversion thanks to the Islamic precept that recognized Christians and Jews as People oI the Book`) 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 settlement oI Muslims Irom outside Bosnia`s borders. The aefters, 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
reIerred to by Bosnian Christians, as Turks` but this had nothing to do with ethnic Turks, usually called Osmanli`. 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 conquerors` religion voluntarily, 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 orders 52 . 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 status thanks to the Imperial Grant oI Privilege, which gave Bosnian Franciscans and Catholics the right to their faith and, eo ipso, to civilization, political and ethnical identity and liIe` 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 years oI the Ottoman conquest (an Orthodox population was introduced to
53 I. Lovrenovic, op. cit., p. 95
54 F. Adanir, The Formation of a Muslim Nation in Bosnia-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
large parts oI Bosnia as a direct result oI Ottoman policy` 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. In many Bosnian villages 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 also I. Lovrenovic, p.96
56 Ibid., p. 57 40
frontier between Christian and Muslim was not distinct, as peasants retained or adopted elements oI both religions` 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 one`s position in the society, 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 hara and the devirme. 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 devirme was one oI the main engines oI Islamicization throughout the Balkans, and its 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, governor`s 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. Both towns were transIormed Irom small 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 beys. 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 which attracted many people Irom the surrounding countryside. Sarajevo`s 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, the Turkish name Ior governor`s palace. LiIe in Sarajevo during this period 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 it` 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, they were welcomed and well treated by the Ottoman Empire` 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 called El Cortijo` by Jews, and Velika Avlija` 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, but the 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 periods`. 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 the great majority oI the Bosnian Gypsies were Muslim`. 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 and all religious organizations forbade intermarriage` 67 , the peasants belonging to various millets shared the same hard agricultural life, and were usually
66 I. Lovrenovic, op. cit., p. 108
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, throughout the long years oI Ottoman domination the Christian and Muslim societies lived side by side in relative peace and understanding, although with considerable mutual exclusion`. 68 The typical oriental style that was shaping the Bosnian towns did not aIIect the villages, where a petriIied, patriarchal way oI liIe continued at a minimum level, in primitive houses that had scarcely changed over the centuries` 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 emphasize the negative aspects oI the Ottoman domination, and so it would be easy to 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 I. Lovrenovic, op. cit., p. 109
70 A. Parmiggiani Dri, op. cit., p. 74
47
Iorm` 71 . Bosnia was home to a unique Ottoman and Islamic oriental culture, enriched with a native Bosnian character that made this country`s position 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 example oI Bosnia`s ability to blend in native and 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 bosancica 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 the Franciscans` eIIorts to root it out. 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 Sarajevo Haggadah`, 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, languages and traditions, and Bosnia`s unique character derived Irom the ability to 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 cause oI the Ottoman long destabilization, especially as the result of consistent external, Western European economic and military-technological pressures` 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 inIluence, a process known as the Eastern Question`. The said policy had negative effects on the Balkans and especially on Bosnia, which became the outpost oI a declining empire` 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 in the Ottomans` society 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 I. Lovrenovic, 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 and servants. They became mental and moral cripples` 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` posts were given to non-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, so that the most Iamous and Ieared unit oI the Ottoman
75 Ibid., p.120
53
army gradually changed into a militia oI city traders and artisans.` 76 The aevirme 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 the new non-military landholders viewed their holdings purely as sources of personal enrichment and bent every rule at every opportunity to convert their leases into hereditary property Iree oI government supervision.` 77 Thus, former fiefs belonging to the sultan were transformed into ifliks, 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 Ottomans` real 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. The Industrial Revolution represented the Iatal blow Ior the empire`s selI- 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 westerns` cheap, Iactory-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 iflik owners and the Christian zimmi merchants, who got rich by trading with the West, whereas most Ottomans subjects experienced only increased financial and labor hardship compounded by rising official bribery, extortion, and corruption`. 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. Moreover, Western Europe`s technological revolution, the use of gunpowder and the formation and development of a professional army were all elements that made the Western Powers` armies much 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 beginning oI the empire`s territorial contraction. 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, it lagged behind the West in economic development, military strength, political cohesion |.| and intellectual progress` 81 .
3.2 Effects of Ottoman decline in Bosnia and Herzegovina The destabilization of the Ottoman Empire had a vast negative effect on the whole Balkan territory, but although oppressive taxation, heavy tithes and labor
81 L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 131 58
service, high prices, and indebtedness came to characterize the lot oI the Ottomans` Balkan peasant population by the late eighteenth century`, the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina was even worse. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the provincial Ottoman society was undergoing a period of important socioeconomic changes that would heavily aIIect the country`s Iuture development. As in the rest of the empire, the government`s need Ior revenues transIormed timar estates in iftliks, 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, whose plans were to expand eastwards at the Turk`s expense. Bosnia`s position was that oI an outpost oI a declining empire` 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 I. Lovrenovic, op. cit., p. 100 59
and Herzegovina thus became increasingly polarized, backward and provincial in its social, economic and cultural structure. The tendency of the population was to withdraw into an isolation that had strongly divisive currents within it` 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 oI Bosnia`s society, because:
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. For the Ottoman government the patriarchal throne represented a lucrative source of income patriarchs were appointed and removed in rapid succession to collect the Iees and bribes as Irequently as possible` 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 the central government`s control, 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 choking even the minimal existence oI ordinary townsmen and peasants alike`. 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, in 'The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 33, No. 81, p. 410 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 crushed by the sultan`s army. ThereaIter the new, reformed army played a major role in the reforming efforts, while the conservative opposition was left without its main supporter. Mahmud`s reIorms extended to the administration, where he tried to limit 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. The sultan`s reIorms were intended at 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 members and by the Iact that centuries oI conIlict with Christian Europeans bred prejudice, disdain, and Iear regarding all the things Western` 90 . More radical reIorms were made by Mahmud`s son, Abdulmecid I. The sultan and his followers wanted to preserve the empire through Western European-like political, military, economic, and educational adaptations while retaining Ottoman government, Islamic belieIs and practices, and most traditional customs and mores` 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 Glhane, 92 a declaration oI intentions that promised a government based on security oI liIe, honor and property; equal justice; and a regular system oI taxation` 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-payers). |.| he decreed a new penal code and created a 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 mandated 94 .
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 the proclamation did not pass beyond the paper stage` 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. The sultan Abdulmecid thus reaIIirmed the 1839 proclamation`s principles and assured
95 L. S. Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 317 66
the Great Powers` Iirm support Ior his reIorms and the assurance that the empire`s 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 them equal rights in matter oI taxation, justice, military service, education, public office, and social respect` 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 Peninsula 97 . 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 reorganization oI the Orthodox millet 'to suit the progress and enlightenment oI the time 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 society demanded more radical measures. As Ior the Christian population, the reIorms
98 Ibid., p. 386 68
had simply come too late` 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
The Muslims oI Bosnia Herzegovina |.| were becoming increasingly disillusioned 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-aga Rizvanbegovic, who was given the 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 region`s 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 to Bosnia one oI the most eIIective and intelligent governors it ever had in this last century oI Ottoman rule: Omer Pasha Latas.` 102 He
101 B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 350
102 N. Malcolm, op. cit., p. 124 70
successfully crushed the uprising led by Ali-aga Rizvanbegovic (who was attempting at 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 Pasha 103 , continued with the reforms in the 1860s, years in which Bosnia was experiencing a truly golden age` 104 oI cultural eIIlorescence and political development` 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 an unjust way. Topal was not able to solve Bosnia`s 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
Bosnia and Herzegovina under Topal`s direction was an Ottoman Balkan province that proved to be an exception the general mediocrity oI the vilayet system`. 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 inIlamed the whole South Slav population and was a signal for revolt in other parts of the Balkans ruled by Turkey`. 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 I. Lovrenovic, 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
populations to take up arms and Iight with their Bosnian brothers` against the Turks. 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 reforms Iailed to lessen the burden oI the region`s peasants and did not solve 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 1859 decree actually reinIorced the system oI private estate which was quite obviously against the interests of the greater part of the population of Bosnia the peasants, both
110 Stavrianos, op. cit., p. 399
111 M. Ekmecic, Ustanak u Bosni 1875.-1878., Sarajevo, Veselin Maslesa, 1973, p. 17
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serIs and Iree peasants.` 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 oI the crop (known as the trecina, meaning third`). Since the state tithe, a money payment equivalent to one-third of the crop, was deduced Iirst, and the trecina was calculated on the remainder, this meant that these two basic dues accounted Ior Iorty per cent oI the peasant`s total product; and there were other state taxes of various kinds
which were still collected in the old unjust way through tax farming 113 . 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 I. Lovrenovic, op. cit., pag. 107
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 landlords 114 . 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 Habsburg predilection Ior Balkan expansion.` 115
Both in Croatia and in Serbia nationalist ideas developed into programs for cultural and national unification and freedom 116 . 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 neither
114 B. Jelavich, History of the Balkans, p. 352
115 D. Hupchick, The Balkans, p. 255
116 I. Lovrenovic, 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 past` 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 Although it was a Croatian-sponsored program, |.| its basis was Yugoslav, that is, it embraced all of the South Slav peoples and not merely the Croats.` 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 the Habsburg`s inIluence, where the border Serbs developed an East-West European intellectual alloy that eventually spawned modern Serbian nationalism`. 121 Serbia`s sense oI ethic and national awareness was developing quickly, 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 inIluenced by Russia, the Mother Russia` whom they looked at as their reIerence point 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. Vuk SteIanovic Karadzic, 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 possible to the vernacular, Iollowing his motto write as you speak and read how it is written 122 `. 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 Karadzic, he simpliIied the literary language and orthography and 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 stokavo dialect as the language of the future Illyrian nation. The stokavo was spoken by the majority of Croatian people inhabiting Dalmatia and Slavonia, by Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Serbs and Montenegrins. Karadzic, 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-Croatian 123 . It was an important political move that expressed the desire to elect a common language to build a united Yugoslav nation. The
122 In Serbian pisi kao sto govoris i citaj kako je napisano`
123 The intellectuals chose the stokavo 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 entitled Serbs All and Everywhere` published in 1849, Karadzic claimed that whoever spoke the stokavo 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 Serbian Minister oI Interior, Ilija Garasanin, wrote a secret memorandum known as Nacertanife regarding the foreign policy of Serbia, where the political union of all the Serbs (as conceived by Karadzic) was considered Ior the Iirst time. It was the beginning oI the Greater Serbia` nationalist idea among Serbian politicians 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, Bosnia was a prize Ior which both the Orthodox and Catholic neighbors were keen to compete.` 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. Croatian and Serbian programs presupposed the inclusion oI Bosnia- Herzegovina, but not one oI them seriously considered Bosnia`s 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 I. Lovrenovic, op. cit., p. 106
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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 Bosnia`s union with Serbia.
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 Great Powers` interests in the area and their 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 its control a crucial issue in the Great Powers` imperial interests, and any major event in the region became a matter of their concern 127 , since the rise of nationalism among the Empire`s non-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 important colony, India, and by the 1830s Britain was convinced that upholding the 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 themselves.` 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 Britain`s most dangerous rival, 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 Empire 130 , in the hope that it would eliminate the growing Balkan nationalist movements, fearing Russian inIluence over the empire`s Orthodox subjects. 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. This ideology, known as the Third Rome Theory`, lay at the heart oI much oI Russia`s 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 In hopes oI reducing ethno national tensions within the Ottoman Empire, British ambassador to 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 group. |.| In the end, however, the Tanzimat Iailed to win the continued loyalty oI the Balkan non- Muslims, and, as national concepts spread and grew among them, most Orthodox Slavic Balkan nationalists viewed Britain as an unIriendly Great Power`. CIr D. Hupchick, op. cit., p. 250 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 Balkan area too, the heartland oI Orthodoxy.` 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 oI the Balkan populations and gaining their sympathy and gratitude towards the Mother Russia`, under the inIluence oI Panslav doctrines popular in the Russian society during the 1870s. The Habsburg Empire shared Russia`s anti-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 Russia`s ports were in the north oI the country and were closet by ice Ior extended periods during the 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`s large quantity of raw material. In addition, its acquisition would be an effective counterweight to Russian inIluence in the Balkans and Iitted with Austria`s plans Ior expansion eastwards. Another important reason Ior Austria`s interest in 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 Powers` consuls and representatives throughout the Balkans reported regularly on these questions. Peasant groups also sent their petitions concerning their grievances not only to the Porte, but to the foreign representatives. Any major rebellion would necessarily be a matter oI European interest.` 134 The Great Powers had also declared themselves protectors of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman
133 I. Lovrenovic, op. cit., p. 148
134 B. Jelavich, op. cit., p. 351
86
Empire, and that gave them certain rights of intervention in favor of the Balkan Christians iI extremely dangerous or atrocious conditions arose` 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 cete. Each unit was under the direction of a leader, or voaa, and conducted mainly a guerrilla warfare, because a frontal attack with the more numerous and better equipped Turkish army would prove disastrous 136 . 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 M. Ekmecic, 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, New York, Ams Press Inc., 1966, p. 14 and M. Stojanovic, 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 8 th 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 inactive 139 . 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
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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 commission composed oI the Great Powers` representatives was Iormed to help mediate 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 M. Stojanovic, op. cit., p. 25
141 W. G. Wirthwein, p. 18-19
142 Ibid., p. 24
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disinterested contemplation, and in a month`s time 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 However, it was pure window-dressing` 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. Andrassy`s eIIort to Iind a rapid solution and to avoid Russian intervention Iailed. Serbia`s new ministry under Ristic was extremely sympathetic 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
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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 reform 149 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 M. Stojanovic, op. cit., p. 73
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fanaticism, as well as a program of reform for Bosnia and Herzegovina 152 . 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. The result oI a year`s eIIort by the Great Powers 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 Great Powers` worries 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 M. Stojanovic, op. cit., p. 78
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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 Dante`s inferno`. 156 The atrocity agitation was thus in full swing when Gladstone, leader of the Liberals, placed himselI at its helm, Ieeling the responsibility oI silence 'too great to be borne. 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 interested in the implications the Bulgarian Horrors` could have on his election 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 1880 158 . Gladstone`s coming to power did not change the pro-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
among English public opinion, as shows the Iact that Gladstone`s pamphlet entitled The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East sold 200,000 copies in a month and did more than any other publication oI the century to destroy pro-Turkish feeling in Britain` 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 The Bulgarian Horrors` 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 insurgents` units were active throughout the entire territory and were Iighting the 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
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oppressive rule of the Ottomans. Panslav feelings were growing in importance and strength in Russia, and were urging armed intervention to Iree their brothers` Irom 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 Britain`s policy still Iavored the preservation oI the Ottoman Empire, Austria and Russia`s interests in the Balkans were increasingly coming to a Iriction and Bismarck`s Germany was trying to balance the Concert oI Powers, especially the 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 guaranteed the liberties oI all the Sultan`s subjects, thus rendering the changes proposed 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. Now it was Russia`s turn to declare war on the Ottoman Empire 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 SteIano was signed, which represented the Iullest practical expression ever given in Russian Ioreign policy to the Panslav ideal`. 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
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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 unrepresented and unheard, and the Bosnians and Herzegovinians who had set oII this complex series oI crises in the summer oI 1875` 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
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Balkan nationalities, which now conIlicted violently with one another. But the Iragility of the 1878 settlement in the Balkans arose from the fact that it had been designed to suit the convenience oI the Great Powers, and above all oI Austria and Britain`. 172 It was a triumph for the diplomacy of the Great Powers (Russia excluded), and in particular for Britain. Disraeli could well claim that he brought back to London Peace with Honor` because Britain`s interests extended in Cyprus and most oI European Turkey was preserved. 173 From the viewpoint of the Balkans the Congress was a failure. Ethnic and national considerations were disregarded by the Powers, and every one oI the Balkan peoples was left thoroughly dissatisfied. |.| For 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 especially through the Balkans because it was the oppressed minorities oI Europe that linked Arthur`s political |liberal| opinions with his opportunities 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,
178 The Ashmolean Museum, which opened in 1683, was the world`s Iirst public museum. 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 Evans was Iascinated with the area`s diversity, but also by its archeological potential. 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 oI adventure, however, the two brothers were witness to the start oI what is considered one of the most important periods of social upheaval in Bosnia`s modern history` 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, an immensely well inIormed book, both about the historical and contemporary state of that unhappy part of Europe` 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. Evans`s articles focused on the suffering Christian raya and its revolts, showing both affection and moral support Ior the people and their cause` 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`s 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 cause oI the South Slavs, also against the new occupier, Austria. Evans`s anti-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 O. Hadziselimovic, 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 Henry Austell`s travel account oI 1585. Four years later, in 1589, Bosnia is 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 end 188 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 Herzegovina 189 . As a consequence, Bosnia and Hercegovina remained for the British almost a terra incognita`. 190 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 Herzegovina 191 . It is closely connected with the increase of interest of the British in European Turkey` as a consequence oI Britain`s 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 most mysterious and Iascinating oriental country within European Turkey, 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 O. Hadziselimovic, 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
Pasha`s military campaign, but also an interesting 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 were attracted by Bosnia and Herzegovina because they saw in it a new world, in 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 wealth, it was a 'primitive country with oriental culture, and the slow methods oI 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 O. Hadziselimovic, op. cit., p. xxiii 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 expansion at the Turks` 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 the author`s views, which often coincided with the official line of British foreign policy, 196 with the result that what they described was generally accepted as true.` 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-Europe 198 , 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 Balkans, opened an Orthodox girls` school in Sarajevo and taught in it all 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 civilizing mission` 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 backward 203 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, in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Jul., 2004), p. 622
202 M. Todorova, op. cit., p. 222
203 A. Hammond, art. cit., pp. 601-624 109
in the evolutionist theory and in the racial discourse 204 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, the violence oI Bosnian Muslims, appearing in the context oI the peasants` revolts 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 society` 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 civilization, it was a symbolic border 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
civility.` 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 result being an image oI this Orient as a culturally remote country, traversed by veiled women and idle turbaned men and peppered by Muslim mosques adorned with Oriental minarets.` 209 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 removing Bosnia Irom European civilization`, locating it within a more Oriental and less East European or Balkanic space 210 .
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 discovered` 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 Pan-Slavic` movement and the emergence oI the Balkan national movements. 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`s 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 Slavic peoples, was Gladstone`s election campaign, begun in 1876 a Iew months aIter
215 O. Hadziselimovic, op.cit. , p xxviii
115
the publication oI his travel account. |.| Evans begun to oIIer public speeches and 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 Gladstone`s, national project. In 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
Evans`s itinerary 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 Arthur Evans`s travelogue is 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 Bosnia`s ancient and medieval past, but it also pays much attention to modern history 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. Evans`s Iascination with Bosnia and his adventurous
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 Ottoman government as malign` 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 most interesting in Europe, and to open people`s eyes to 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 mountains and slept in Iorests, and how they visited places that have never been described, and it is possible never visited, by an 'European beIore`. 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 the local population, paying attention to costumes and antiquity` 223
highlighting the cultural aspects, since he believed, and wanted to demonstrate, that the Southern Sclaves are capable oI the highest culture and civilization.` 224
Evans arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 9 th 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 the travelogues describe the city, that strikes the stranger as other than German` but where there are no buildings oI beauty or interest` 225 except for the Cathedral and St. Mark`s Church. Evans 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. Their beauty was, in Evans`s view, the inheritance of the Italian element, which probably came Irom the old Roman cities oI these parts` 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 Evans`s aristocratic, Victorian sense oI superiority 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 that it is natural that the Croats, lying between two more civilized nationalities, should be well practiced in foreign tongues` and even iI he added that they have a natural aptitude Ior learning them` he remarks that the more civilized race seems to climb over the shoulders oI the ruder Croats`. 227 After spending a day in Karlovac in a large market among Croatian peasants, and after acknowledging that there are none oI the medieval survivals oI an old German town 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 imagine anyone who could tolerate such strains long unless he wear a kilt.` Evans`s sense oI 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
elaborate carvings that speak oI an ancient civilization` 228 Evans continued his journey towards the town of Sisak, where he saw what he called the Turkish society` Ior the 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 into the Croatian Brod and the Turkish` Brod) from where they started their journey on foot through Bosnia. The river Sava was the true frontier between Croatia and Bosnia, in Evans`s words the watery boundary-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 houses and churches and citizens in the mourning hues oI Western civilization`; on the other side minarets and narrow wooden streets, gorgeous Turkish officials, brilliant maidens and mummied dames, cheerIul Iezzes and red Bosnian turbans` 230 . Evans was leaving Europe and entering a new world, a new continent, for to all intents and purposes a Iive minutes` voyage transports you into Asia`. 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 Egypt 231 .
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, an authentic East within Europe,` 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 oI Mahometan Conservatism |.| Ianaticism has struck its deepest roots among her 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 diIIerent country, a diIIerent land: the Bosniacs themselves speak oI the other side oI the Save as Europe.`` 234 It was not only a journey in another continent, but also in the past, Ior the traveler in Bosnia is still in the Middle Ages`. 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 Evans`s intention to walk across the country he was very surprised and 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 to walk Ireely and saIely in their own country, everybody was too aIraid that others`, 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 suspicious 237 : 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 Romanist call Christ Krst`, and themselves Krisciani`, while the Greeks speak oI Hrist` and oI themselves as Hrisciani`; so that H in Bosnia is a shibboleth. The Greek Bosnians use Cyrillian characters, and call themselves distinctively Serbs or Pravoslaves, that is, the orthodox`; the others look on the Cyrillian character as a snare of the devil, and, far from trying to claim fellowship with the people of Free Serbia, style themselves as Latins Latinksi`- for it always seems to be a tendency of Romanists to thrust patriotic interests into the background. 238
237 the moment was Iar more critical than we had any idea oI, and to the mind oI even a liberal Turk our design of leaving the road and plunging into the mountains was, on any other hypothesis, sheer insanity Ior anything that we might protest about the English passion Ior scenery and mountaineering.` CIr A. 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 peasants` clothes, noting that they still had much in common with those Iound on the European` 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 Serbia with more horror than Irom Stamboul, these Latin women oI Tesanj betrayed, 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, la belle Serbe 239
and also the male Christian and Muslim clothes differed only slightly, sometimes the only visible difference was represented by the turban. In Tesanj 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 Bosnia; in the travelers` eyes this occurred at a very high price: through the decadence of Oriental traditions and the acquisition of degrading Western practices that Evans refused to accept. 241
Evans`s Iocus was not only on Muslim conservatism and, as he wrote, Ianaticism`, 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: what was more striking was the
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 |.| there was something pathetic in the sight of so many Christians, dressed indeed in the garb of Mahometans, but still clinging to the faith of their fathers.` 242 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, although separated by creed and the barriers oI nature, and the caprice of man, it is this national poetry that has kept them from forgetting that they are brothers, that has turned their mind`s eye back Irom the divisions oI the present to the union of the past.` 243 It is thanks to the poetry, praised by many Romantics across Europe, that Evans stated that the Slavic race is capable oI attaining to the highest 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 their character are accidental badges oI servitude and oppression removable by a few
242 A. Evans, op. cit., p. 133
243 Ibid., p. 139
244 Ibid., p. 140
127
generations oI Iree government` 245 , and cited the example oI their selI-liberated brothers in Montenegro and Free Serbia` concluding that in happier circumstances they too might hold up their heads and display the spirit oI heroes.` 246
Evans came across one of the most interesting monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the stecci, 247 Ior the Iirst time in the near Tesanj, but dealt with them extensively only later, when he was on his way towards the Franciscan monastery of Guciagora`. Recognizing their antique origins, Evans linked 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 and asked himselI to whom are these mysterious blocks to be reIerred?` 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 Bogomils and, nonetheless, because the Bosnians reIerred to the tombstones as the Bogomiles. 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 stecci 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 stecci, is one of the most interesting yet debated topics of Bosnian history. Evans linked the conversions to the widespread presence of Bogomils in the Bosnian territory, who were ready to welcome 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
Evans and his brother arrived at the monastery oI Guciagora, where they were 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 said that to travel in Bosnia at present without Turkish guards was sheer 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 massacre` 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 Iriars` 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
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Herzegovina had participated in the revolt, and the leading Croatian Pan-Slav figure, Bishop Strossmayer, advocated union with Serbia. After the Franciscan monastery oI Guciagora, Evans visited the Franciscan 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: one perceives how it is among these Franciscan brotherhoods that the traditions oI the old Bosnian kingdom most live on`. 252 Evans also noted that they were in the very midst oI the mineral treasury oI Bosnia,` 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), Bosnia lacked a civilized government` that was able to start the industrialization and economic development. 254
252 The presence in the monastery oI the precious 1340 Book oI Arms reinIorced Evans`s opinion. Ibid., 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. CIr B. Jezernik, Europa selvaggia, p.28-33 130
Evans reached the city of Travnik, where he saw a woman so veiled that outside the limits of conservative old Bosnia, her disguise would be laughed at by the Turks themselves` 255 and he once again talked about the strange nature of Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He added that an Englishman who had travelled through a great deal oI the Ottoman dominions, but who had not visited Bosnia, could hardly be induced to believe that [such a veiled figure] represented a woman oI European Turkey`. 256 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 Mahometan Sclaves`. Their appearance was unusual too, Ior those Sclavonic renegades` are oIten blue-eyed and fair-haired. Evans reached Sarajevo the Damascus oI the North` 257 and the Iocus oI the Mahometan Ianaticism oI Bosnia` 258 and the metropolis oI Ianaticism` 259 on 21 August. In Sarajevo Evans visited the English Consulate, where he Iound himselI once more among the comforts of an English home, and surrounded by the quiet of an English garden` Evans`s words about the garden are remarkable: here, in this rich soil, under 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 Muslims` 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 Bosnia and Herzegovina as perhaps the most terrible Ieature oI the tyranny under which the Bosnian raya groans` because those, who should protect, betray him, and those, to whom he looks for spiritual comfort, wring from him the last scrap of worldly belongings which has escaped the rapacity oI the inIidel`. 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 were that the 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, according to Evans, Bosnia lacked a civilized government`, and was not able to exploit this important natural resource, which was successfully done not surprisingly - by the Romans. Also, the deployment of comparison of Britain and the Balkans a Bosnian landscape like English country` |.| was an intrinsic part of Victorian denigration of the region, indicating the full distance between these poles of Europe by the ironic placement oI civilized` qualities in this grossly uncivilized` context. CIr A. Hammond, The uses of Balkanism, art. cit., pp. 611
261 Ibid., p. 267
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them hand in hand with the Turkish officials, and set them, often, as even worse example of moral depravity` 262
Evans explored Sarajevo and recorded its oriental` aspect: beautiIul mosques, a market with shops and traditional products and the city`s varied but prevalently oriental` population including Muslims, Jews Catholics and Serbs or Pravoslaves`. He 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 because the Mahometan is incapacitated by his Iatalistic want oI enterprise Irom taking part in any but small retail trades`. 263
On 24 th 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 welcomed by a turbaned youth, who is a very good specimen oI the untutored savage, as he exists in Bosnia at the present day` 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
Nature`s gentlemen the Bosniacs certainly are not! There is not here that surviving polish oI an older civilization |.| the 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 called primitive social relations` that were common to the whole South Slav populations:
In these Illyrian lands I have oIten been addressed as brat, or brother, and the Bosnians are known to call the stranger shija` - neighbor. I, who write this, happen individually not to appreciate this egalitaire` spirit. I don`t choose to be told by every 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 28 th August, four days after they left Sarajevo, Evans and his brother arrived in Mostar on 28 th 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
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Herzegovina, which was by then raging in the whole region, and who obtained an interview with the Vali, or Governor-General oI Bosnia` for them. The conversation took a personal, rather than political character, and Evans recorded the Vali`s amusement in his praising the scenery of Herzegovina and of the Neretva valley: the beauty oI the mountain scenery was an aspect oI the outside world which had evidently never ever suggested itselI to |the Vali`s| mind, and it tickled his Iancy immensely`. 267 It seemed, only Englishmen were able to appreciate the beauties of nature! Evans, however, showed respect for the Turkish official and his educated manners. The Vali knew well that the Ottoman Empire in Europe is irremediably doomed` and that the situation within the Empire was desperate:
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 ceased to exist; |.| the master whom he serves is the source and seminary oI all 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: the impression which the streets oI Mostar are perpetually Iorcing on us is that we have come once more on the Iringe oI Roman civilization`. 269 Evans recognized Italian-style houses and architecture, as well as more Mediterranean features in the inhabitants. The prooI oI Mostar`s early civilization,` 270 i.e. its Roman past, is the beautiful Mostar Bridge. InIluenced by Sir Gardner Wilkinson`s 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 antiquity 274 . 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 came across one oI the most curious sights that we observed in our Bosnian- Herzegovinian experiences` 275 i.e. a gravestone near the Tassarovic village, where both Christians and Muslims buried their dead:
Here, in one God`s acre, alike the InIidel and 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-villagers as against the Begs` 276
273 B. Jezernik, op. cit., p. 261-268
274 Evans`s theory proved wrong, because the meaning oI Mostar is guardians oI the bridge` and is 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 30 th of August, after a fifteen-hour ride on horseback, Evans reached the Dalmatian Irontier at Metkovic. Within the limits of Christendom, Evans immediately recognized a more Italian feature and character in the boatman he hired to take him and his brother to Stagno: his behavior and conversation Iormed a marked contrast to the rudeness and asperity of the ordinary Bosniac or Herzegovinian`. 277 Evans and his brother found themselves once more within the limits of Christendom with whole skins.` 278 They safely reached Ragusa (Dubrovnik) by boat, where at last, aIter painIully exploring some oI the turbid streams and runnels of the medieval civilization of Bosnia, we take our seat beside the fountain-head oI Illyrian culture` 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 Irom the Iact that Ragusa has inherited something of her former civilization, a peculiar refinement, both in her peasants and citizens, not to be met anywhere else throughout these lands`. 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, and the most beautiful garden and hothouse flowers grow wherever there is a chink in an old wall` 281 , not like in Bosnia, where beautiful flowers could flourish only in the consuls` gardens, in civilized gardens, under civilized hands.
4. Arthur J. Evans and the 1875 revolt The insurrection and Evans`s travelogue 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 slightly sensational topic which had lately been forcing [itself] on our attention`. 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 threaten Evans`s saIety and England`s interests. 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 who were threatened by the Muslim Ianaticism.` Evans himself was warned of the fanaticism of the Bosnian Muslims by the Franciscan monks at the monastery of Guciagora. However the insurrection was still Ielt as distant, as something that was 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. Evans realized that a Bosnian insurrection was beginning to dawn upon us` 282 . On his way to Sarajevo Evans was informed that revolution had broken out in Bosnia` 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
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citizens. From the German consul in Sarajevo Evans learned many interesting Iacts and course of the insurrection in Bosnia [that] reveal such frantic oppression and gross misgovernment as must be hardly credible to Englishmen` 283 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 before their eyes. There is a proverb among the Bosnian Serbs, No justice Ior the Christian`.
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 system and manner` oI 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 the most galling oppression, and the main cause oI the present revolt`. 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 harac, 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, in 'The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 33, No. 81 (Jun., 1955), pp. 402
141
It was in Mostar, where he arrived on 28 th 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, so that suffering from this double disability, social and religious, the Christian kmet, 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
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the soil as iI he were a slave`. 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, the impossibility oI obtaining justice |.|, the atrocious 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 revolt in Herzegovina was the tyranny of the agents of the Turkish government and the Mahometan landlords` 288 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. The insurrection was in its origin agrarian rather than political. It was largely an affair of tenant-right.` 289
Evans then described the outbreak of the revolt. In the district oI Nevesinje 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. The population oI Nevesinje presented seven demands to the Commission, that provided an interesting commentary on the Turkish rule in the Herzegovina, and savour neither of Panslavism nor of disloyalty to the sultan.` 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 Pash went to Nevesinje and promised
289 Ibid., p. 366
290 M. Ekmecic, 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 Pash left the village, the Christian population had to take refuge in the mountains to escape Irom the Ianaticism` oI the Muslim inhabitants. The ones leIt in the village were killed by the Muslims. Thus on 1 st July the civil war in the Herzegovina begun, not by Christians, but by Mussulman Ianatics` 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 Nevesinje. At this early stage, the Catholics and the Orthodox Iought together, which greatly surprised Evans who noted that one oI the most curious features of the present insurrection has been the way in which the two Christian sects have Iought side by side`. 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. Ekmecic, op. cit., p. 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 Vuk Karadzic`s nationalism, 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, were aIraid oI living under a prevalently Christian state which, in the insurgents` plans, 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 insurgents` army was 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`s territorial possessions to safeguard her routes to India, fearing that the formation of small, independent Balkan states would imperil the important route to Britain`s most important colony. 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. The demand oI the insurgents` representatives to 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. Arthur Evans`s travelogue, 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 and Herzegovina because he had a deep knowledge oI the country`s present and past 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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