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Bosnia & Herzegovina myths for dummies

 

Bosnian language myth

The Karadjordjevo partition myth

Myth about pre-war interethnic idyll or «Paradise next door»

Myth about Bosnian nation

 

 

 

Bosnian language myth

Bosnian language is «essentially» the language of all the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was called Serbo-Croatian before the collapse of Yugoslavia and only extremists's nationalist passions created artificial rift which has no linguistic foundation whatsoever (but is a socio-political reality one must accept). Moreover, Bosnian language is not only a «successor language» (along with Croatian and Serbian) to the old Serbo-Croatian, but also the true heir of the entire corpus of literary and linguistic works written on the Bosnia & Herzegovina soil which (although tangentially in most cases) mention the name «Bosnian language».

 

Reality

There was not, ever, "Serbo-Croatian" standard language. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has specified different Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) numbers for Croatian (UDC 862, acronym hr) and Serbian (UDC 861, acronym sr), while hybrid «Serbo-Croatian» language, a political construct not yet dumped into history's dustbin, is referenced in equally hybrid manner-UDC 861/862, acronym sh. The situation is comparable to other closely related languages in the terms of genetic linguistics: further examples include, for instance, Hindi and Urdu, Czech and Slovak or Bulgarian and Macedonian. These are similar, mutually intelligible standard languages which crystallized out of basically the same dialectal "prime matter"- as is the case with Norwegian and Danish or Malay and Bahasa Indonesian. But to describe them as "variants of a language" (British and American English analogy is frequently (mis)used) is sheer nonsense.

Croatian and Serbian differ in:

1.script (Latin and Cyrillic)
2.grammar and syntax (ca. 100 rules)
3.phonetics (ca. 100 accentuation rules)
4.orthography (although both languages use phonemic orthography, its structures differ for Serbian and Croatian. Croatian has retained numerous morphonological orthographical prescriptions, while Serbian tends to extend the area of applicability of phonetic principle )
5.morphology (more than 300 different morphology laws. Also: Croatian is a purist language- unlike Serbian. Moreover, even "internationalisms" like organize are different: organizirati in Croatian, organizovati in Serbian. )
6.semantics (here, the structural differences are too complex to be described in a rough outline)
7.vocabulary (ca. 30% of everyday vocabulary is different. In 100,000 words dictionary, 40,000 are either Croatian or Serbian. According to a pre-eminent Croatian linguist, Serbian and Croatian languages differ in 150,000 words in a corpus of 500,000 entries).
Entire books have been translated from one language to another. Probably the most bizarre case is Swiss psychologist Jung’s masterwork “Psychology and Alchemy”, translated into Croatian in 1986, and retranslated, in late 1990s, into Serbian not from the original German, but from Croatian. A translation and “translation’s translation” differ on virtually every page.
Bosnian language is a relative newcomer. Colloquial language spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina was a Croatian and Serbian hybrid which can be ironically termed Serbo-Croatian, since, as a standard language, it was a heavily Serbianized Croatian language (particularly in vocabulary and syntax). Since the break-up of communism and administratively imposed mixed “Serbo-Croatian” bastard norm, Bosnian Muslims appropriated the orphaned “Serbo-Croatian” and, slightly modifying it by infusion of Islamic oriental idioms, renamed it Bosnian language. Croats and Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, liberated from shackles of communist bureaucratic artificial linguistic uniformity, returned to their national standard languages. Bosnian Muslims’ contemporary efforts to give a historical “legitimacy” to the name of their national language are exercise in futility since the term “Bosnian language” was almost exclusively used by Croatian writers and lexicographers in 17th and 18th centuries (both in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina) to designate a dialectal variant of Croatian language.

The following myth is frequently encountered: a unified Serbo-Croatian language appeared at the turn of the 19th/20th century, when efforts of Serbian language reformer Vuk Karadžić and Croatian Illyrian national movement (headed by Ljudevit Gaj) converged to give birth to the standard Serbo-Croatian language. But the reality is quite different: processes of languages standardization for Croats and Serbs (Bosnian Muslims did not take part in this matter) were almost independent-with the exception of a few decades in the second half of the 19th century which were not as crucial as some old-school philologists had supposed. The most celebrated single event, the Vienna agreement (signed by 7 Croatian litterateurs/philologists and 2 Serbian philologists) from 1850 was actually not "implemented" ( to use the politicos' buzzword), and even the value of its content is dubious.

Croatian language

Modern Croatian standard language is a continuous outgrowth of more than 9 hundred years old literature written in the mixture of Croatian Church Slavonic and vernacular language. If we narrow out the subject, the Croatian Church Slavonic had been abandoned by mid 1400s, and Croatian “purely” vernacular literature has been in existence for more than 5 centuries- a story of remarkable linguistic continuity with only a few shock points.

The standardization of Croatian language can be traced back to the first Croatian dictionary (Faust Vrančić: Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europae linguarum –Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmatiae et Ungaricae, Venice 1595.) and first Croatian grammar (Bartul Kašić: Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo, Rome 1604.). Interestingly enough, the language of Jesuit Kašić’s unpublished translation of the Bible (Old and New Testament, 1622-1636) in the Croatian štokavian-ijekavian dialect (the ornate style of the Dubrovnik Renaissance literature) is as close to the contemporary standard Croatian language (problems of orthography apart) as are French of Montaigne’s “Essays” or King James Bible English to their respective successors- modern standard languages. But, due to the unique Croat linguistic situation, formal shaping of Croatian standard language was a process that took almost four centuries to complete: Croatian is a «three dialects» tongue (a somewhat simplistic way to distinguish between dialects is to refer to the pronoun «what», which is ča, kaj, što in, respectively, čakavian, kajkavian and štokavian dialects) and «three scripts» language (Glagolitic, Croatian/Western/Bosnian Cyrillic and Latin script, with Latin script as the ultimate winner). The final obstacle to the unified Croatian literary language (based on celebrated vernacular Croatian Troubadour, Renaissance and Baroque (acronym TRB) literature (ca. 1490 to ca. 1670) from Dalmatia , Dubrovnik and Boka Kotorska was surmounted by Croatian national «awakener» Ljudevit Gaj's standardization of Latin scriptory norm in 1830-50s. But, Gaj and his Illyrian movement (centred in kajkavian speaking Croatia’s capital Zagreb) were important more politically than linguistically. They "chose" štokavian dialect because they didn't have any other realistic option- štokavian, or, more precisely, neoštokavian (a version of štokavian which emerged in the 17th /18th century) was the major Croatian literary tongue from 1700s on. The true transition to neoštokavian and establishment of a corpus of worthy (although aesthetically inferior to the TRB) literature can be located in the works of writers from southern Dalmatia, Herzegovina, central Bosnia and Slavonia in the 2nd half of the 18th century. The main authors are Grabovac, Kačić, Relković, Kanižlić and numerous Bosnian Franciscan chroniclers. This is a full-fledged literary language, accepted even in Croatian pockets where kajkavian dialect had been still spoken and written on, as the lingua franca of the Croatian nation. The 19th century linguists and lexicographers’ main concern was to achieve a more consistent and unified scriptory norm and orthography; an effort followed by peculiar Croatian linguistic characteristics which may be humorously described as “passion for neologisms” or vigorous word coinage, originating from the purist nature of Croatian literary language. One of the peculiarities of the "developmental trajectory" of the Croatian language is that there is not one towering figure among the Croatian linguists/philologists, because the vernacular osmotically percolated into the "high culture" via literary works so there was no need for revolutionary linguistic upheavals-only reforms sufficed.

http://www.ihjj.hr/index_en.html

 

Serbian language

As for Serbian standard language, there is a complete asymmetry between its position at the beginning of the 19th century and the Croatian linguistic situation. Unlike Croats, apart from a few writers like Obradović and Venclović ( in the 18th century ), Serbs did not have a literary tradition in the vernacular. It was Vuk Karadžić, an energetic and resourceful Serbian language and culture reformer, whose scriptory and orthographic stylisation of Serbian linguistic folk idiom made a radical break with the past; until his activity in the 1st half of the 19th century, Serbs had been using Serbian variant of Church Slavonic and a hybrid Russian-Slavonic language. His “Serbian Dictionary”, published in Vienna 1818 (along with the appended grammar), was the single most significant work of Serbian literary culture that shaped the profile of Serbian language (and, the 1st Serbian dictionary and grammar thus far). Considering Croatian language and linguistic history, Karadžić's upheaval was the revolution that decisively moulded the language for Serbs; yet, his influence on Croatian standard idiom was only one of the reforms for Croats (mostly in some aspects of grammar and orthography; also, the majority of his innovations were not, as far as Croatian language is concerned, “innovative” at all- they have been present in Croatian literary and linguistic corpora for centuries). Since both languages shared the common basis of South Slavic neoštokavian dialect, they interfered in many normative issues, particularly in orthography, phonetics and syntax. But, due to the fact that these two languages have had a radically different past of almost four hundred years, only a few decades of moderately peaceful convergence- it was inevitable that they should diverge, especially when political pressures were applied to forge them into one, Serbian-based, language.

http://www.rastko.org.yu/isk/pivic-standard_language.html

 

Bosnian or Bosniak language

The irony of Bosnian language is that its speakers, Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks, are, on the level of colloquial idiom, more linguistically homogenous than either Serbs or Croats, but have failed, due to historical reasons, to standardize their language in the crucial 19th century. The first Bosnian dictionary, rhymed Bosnian-Turkish glossary authored by Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi , was composed in 1631. But, unlike Croatian dictionaries, which were written and published regularly (in the formative period 1600. to 1850s more than 20 Croatian dictionaries had appeared), Uskufi’s work remained an isolated foray. At least two factors were decisive:
-Bosnian Muslim elite wrote almost exclusively in Oriental (Arabic, Turkish, Persian) languages. Vernacular literature, written in modified Arabic script, was thin and sparse.
-Bosnian Muslims’s/Bosniaks’s national emancipation lagged behind Serbian and Croatian, and since denominational, rather than cultural or linguistic issues played the pivotal role, Bosnian language project didn’t arouse much interest or support. Here, one must add a word of caution: from ca. 1600 to ca. 1800, a number of Croatian dictionaries and grammars mention the term “Bosnian language”. But, in these works it stood as a reference to štokavian dialect (as distinct from kajkavian and čakavian) of the common name for stylised Croatian language-Illyrian or Slovinian language, which encompassed all three dialectal variants. No “Bosnian language” reference has had any ethnic/national implication in the modern sense of the word. Also, now we can witness a growing tension due to a rather bizarre situation: Croats and Serbs object to the name «Bosnian» for the language of Bosnian Muslims/Bosniaks and contend that this is a sneaky manoeuvre to boot Croatian and Serbian languages from administration and media by imposing one «official» language with deceptively all-encompassing name. They say that the language of Bosniaks should be called Bosniak ( no «Bosnian» nation-no «Bosnian» language) . So far, they failed to halt what they see as a «creeping Bosniakization» in areas of mass media and state administration.

So, prescriptions for the language of Bosnian Muslims in the 19th and 20th centuries were written outside of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was an artificial blend of Croatian and Serbian, a stew of Serbian and Croatian orthographies, phonologies, vocabularies and morphologies- “Serbo-Croatian” language. After the collapse of Yugoslavia Bosniaks remained the sole inheritors of the “Serbo-Croatian” hybrid and are trying to reshape it, under the new name of “Bosnian language”, into a distinct national/ethnic standard language.

http://www.bosnianlanguage.com/

 

The Karadjordjevo partition myth


During the meeting in the Karadjordjevo estate (Serbian province Vojvodina), March 30th 1991., Croatian president Tudjman and Serbian president Milošević struck a deal whereby they agreed about the respective influence spheres and the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, completely ignoring even mere existence of Bosnian Muslims. Thus, the "alliance made in Hell" came into being, Serbs and Croats united trying to annihilate Bosnia's statehood and laying the ground for joint military aggression and ethnic cleansing to come.


Reality

Croatian and Serbian presidents Tudjman and Milošević have met March 30th 1991 at the Karadjordjevo estate in Serbian province Vojvodina. Details about this meeting, apart from usual diplomatic statements, are unknown. The press release stated that all controversial issues were discussed. As yet, no single shred of evidence (transcripts, video tapes, testimonies, interviews, Xeroxed documents, microfilms, intelligence agencies materials) has appeared. Croatian and Serbian participants of the meeting (various officials and political advisers), who have in the meantime parted ways with Tudjman and/or Milošević (Šarinić, Bilandžić, Jović) and could only profit by disclosing compromising data and transferring the burden of “partition guilt” onto the shoulders of both former leaders (exculpating themselves with the commonplace excuse that they’ve been involved in the whole affair under duress and pressure of Croatian and Serbian “autocrats”)-all have denied that an agreement on any issue had been achieved.

Moreover, the course of events has rendered the possibility of a previous settlement impossible: next 9 months have witnessed an all-out war against Croatia, covering circa 2/3 of her territory and perpetrated by Serb-controlled Yugoslav National Army (the JNA) and local Serb militias, aided by flood of volunteers from Serbia proper. The city of Vukovar was attacked and completely destroyed, while the city of Dubrovnik, a Croatian coastal town, was besieged and shelled. War has spilled over to Croat-populated areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the Milošević-controlled JNA as the main “ethnic cleanser” of Bosnian and Herzegovinian Croats (when Croats were expelled from south-eastern Herzegovina and their houses systematically burnt (Ravno municipality)- Bosnian Muslim leadership has shown total indifference, encapsulated in the by now legendary phrase:" This is not *our* war". ) The “Karadjordjevo deal addicts” conveniently forget that the supposed agreement, reached in the March 1991., would have been brutally nullified on the battlefield areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as early as in 1991. Considering the following facts: the fiercest fighting in the Bosnia and Herzegovina war occurred between Croats and Serbs (Bosnian Posavina); also, the post-Dayton (1995.) interethnic borders between Bosnian Serbs and Croats do not coincide with any of the presumed “secret partition maps” which circulated in the last decade of the 20th century (both in geopolitical and journalist circles)- the Karadjordjevo partition deal is, for any rational person, impossible to believe in.

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/myths.html


Myth about pre-war interethnic idyll or «Paradise next door»

Until the imported Goebbels-like propaganda of contemporary Croat and Serbian chauvinists, all nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Croat, Serb, Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak ) led harmonious lives of tolerance, mutual respect and gradually growing unity, primarily through numerous interethnic/denominational marriages and cultural homogenization achieved by common, «Bosnian» culture which encompassed all strata of the society, from academic treatises to popular rock culture. Ethnic and denominational boundaries (legacy of the 19th century nationalist ideologies ) were rapidly disappearing and Bosnian «nation» was well in the sight when ominous nationalists with their incendiary rhetoric poured across the borders with Serbia and Croatia to fan the flames of the last European 20th century genocidal war.

Reality

Bosnia and Herzegovina has in past five centuries been a contested land of fierce, although frequently repressed, interethnic hatreds. Originally a European Christian-Catholic land (with a number of Serbian Orthodox inhabitants who dwelled in parts bordering with Serbia and Montenegro), it was conquered in the 15th century in the course of Ottoman Islamic expansion. During the four-centuries long Turkish/Ottoman rule, a considerable part of native populace had converted to Islam and have been perceived by remaining native (and newly arrived) Christian peoples (Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs) as Quisling-like traitors who joined the ranks of their Asiatic oppressors. More, active participation of Bosnian Muslims on the side of the Ottoman Empire, both in terrorization of Bosnian Christian population and, frequently, as the bulk of Turkish military units in 4 centuries long warfare against their coreligionists & compatriots in Croatia and Serbia-all this unmasks the "historically-grounded" interethnic/denominational harmony thesis as a grotesque nonsense. The accumulated weight of other events (the growing tension between Croatian and Serbian national ideologies, ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Serbia during the establishment of Serbian state in the 19th century, fascistoid dictatorship in Royal Yugoslavia, the enormous bloodletting during WW2 in Bosnia and Herzegovina (ca. 328,000 dead-the biggest toll among former Yugoslav republics), Communist dictatorship (1945.-1991.) which only exacerbated the situation) – all this could not have been counterbalanced by sham «brotherhood and unity», a ubiquitous phrase covering manoeuvres of Communist ruling elite which was trying to rewrite the history and fuse the three Bosnia and Herzegovina nations (Croats, Serbs, Bosnian Muslims) into one, easily governable amorphous mass devoid of ancient national loyalties.

During the period of Communist rule (1945. -1991.) Bosnia and Herzegovina was organized as the "triple" pyramidal structure: the privileged class, with the unquestionable domination from the police to the education and economy, were Serbs thanks to their relative numerousness, to the "merit" of suffering in the puppet Independent State of Croatia/NDH (1941. -1945.) (yet overblown by the statistics manipulations), to the dominance in the communist apparatus, as well as to the role of the extended hand of the Belgrade centralism of their fellow-countrymen.
On the second place were Bosnian Muslims who were supported by Tito's supreme authority as the bearer of the "statehood" tendencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the counter-balance to the Serbian and Croatian historical national and territorial aspirations towards B&H and, as the high birth-rate "Oriental" ethnos, which, paradoxically, having given up many Oriental-Islamic ways of life, was good anyway like the bridge to the Islamic countries in the Non-alignment movement. Grateful to the Communist Yugoslavia which recognized them the status of a nation, as well as brainwashed with the indoctrination by which they "succeeded" to forget their participation en masse in the armed forces of NDH - Bosnian Muslims became the factor number 2.in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the staunchest followers of Yugoslav phantasm.
Croats, as the least numerous and most suspicious/"treacherous" element, were bearing the stigma of a "reactionary" Catholic nation, accused of genocide and brutality of NDH (while Muslims were "generously" exculpated, and Serbs, the main Communist executioners in Bosnia and Herzegovina, were battening on the privileges “secured” by over-representation in Communist partisan units which perpetrated mass war crimes) underwent the destiny of second-class citizens. Constantly under police supervision and politically persecuted, their ethnic territories intentionally economically neglected, forced to emigrate (out of the economical emigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croats, who made up ca. 1/5 of the population, gave over 2/3 emigrants), with the repression of the Croatian language and intruding Serbian, from the education to the mass-media - Croats were particularly the subject of the totalitarian police regime (being 20% of the B&H population, they comprised more than 70% of political prisoners populace) : all with the purpose of depopulation and elimination of the Croatian nation like the "carcinogenic" element, which subverted realization of the Communist totalitarian paradise on the earth.

One of the favourite delusions of Western "liberal" dogmatists is the "mixed marriages" argument: supposedly high level of interethnic/denominational marriages is *the* litmus of tolerance and almost spontaneous benevolence of "Bosnians" of all creeds and persuasions. Also, according to that view, the majority of B & H population lived in ethnically/nationally "mixed" areas- a "patchwork quilt" simplified picture.

But-reality was something entirely different.

True, compared to the pre-WW2 period, the number of ethnically/denominationally "mixed" marriages has experienced a dramatic growth. But, this is easily explicable by a combination of general modernization, increased mobility (both social and geographical) of the population, disappearance of more traditional rural ways of life, as well as Communist Yugoslav indoctrination which preferred interethnic "mixing" as a sort of glue which would (in theory) serve as an integrating factor or at least as a buffer to the unrelenting national/ethnic tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The crucial (and easily overlooked) fact is that interethnic marriages comprised less than 5% in any B & H nation (Bosnian Muslim, Serb, Croat) and that the significant part of these marriages dissolved following the collapse of Yugoslavia and Bosnia & Herzegovina- consequently erasing from history a pseudo-national category of "Yugoslavs" (who made up 5.5% of pre-war Bosnia population).

As far as presumed territorial inseparability of B&H nations: only 28.3 percent of the total population of Bosnia and Herzegovina (excluding Sarajevo) lived in ethnically mixed areas or in the municipalities which had a relative majority of one of the three sovereign and constituent nations. The larger towns/cities had the greatest ethnic variety (with Sarajevo being the most mixed, while Banja Luka, Zenica, Tuzla and Mostar were notably less mixed) and constituted only 18.8% of the total population. The great majority (over 80%) of the B&H inhabitants lived in either mono-ethnic areas or in ethnically segregated urban ghettos in midsize towns (which was, prior to Communist "planned ethnic urban mixing", the habitation pattern in bigger cities).
As for the alleged interethnic idyll destroyed by "imported" nationalists (across the borders with Croatia and Serbia), this contention is all too easily refuted by following facts: Bosnia and Herzegovina was the place of the most brutal conflict between Croats, Serbs and Muslims in both WW2 and post-1991 wars; also, during Communist Yugoslav dictatorship, this republic had more political prisoners than any other federal unit except Croatia. So, nationalist “encampment” of B&H nations is not something induced by vitriolic propaganda which spilled over Bosnia and Herzegovina borders, but a natural way of life of native peoples.
The definite proof of falsity of "harmonious multiculturalism" dogma were 2002 parliamentary elections. Croatia and Serbia immobilized and "pacified" by a web of "stick and carrot" offers from EU and USA (they were anything but antagonistic towards schemes of BH High representative who shamelessly pressured voters to cast their votes for supposedly "multiethnic" parties (essentially, only superficially reformed Communists who all-too-willingly accepted the role of International protectorate's lapdogs))- the Bosnia and Herzegovina electorate chose the other way. Despite electoral and post-electoral engineering, they voted for their respective "nationalist" parties- therefore sending the myth about "bad guys across the borders- chief troublemakers" down the toilet.

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/naunces.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/evil.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/komyu.html




Myth about Bosnian nation

Version 1.

Croatian and Serbian names and identities are "imported" into Bosnia and Herzegovina (chiefly as a result of concentrated anti-Bosnian propaganda efforts). These "fabricated" national/ethnic identities and concomitant national loyalties have no historical continuity going back to medieval (*-1463.) and Ottoman (1463.-1879.) periods-hence, they are only artificial constructs engineered and «implanted» into Bosnian Catholic and Orthodox collectives by implacable enemies of Bosnian statehood, Croats and Serbs (or, if we penetrate deeply enough behind the scene, the Vatican and Russian Orthodoxy). Thus, originally three-denominational Bosnian nation (Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox) was cunningly split along religious lines. Hopefully, this 150 years old ideological aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina is still defeatable:contemporary scholarship which has dismantled Croatian and Serbian historiographical concoctions, current sociopolitical trends openly hostile towards secessionist nationalisms and international community consensus will work in one direction: Serbian and Croatian loyalties of Bosnian Orthodox and Catholics shall inevitably vanish in the near future-willy-nilly (they will, according to the proponents of this thesis, «transfer» or «return» their ethnic/national identities to the supposed ancient «Bosnian» nation). Intransingent Croat and Serb nationalists will leave the country for good, and the Bosnian nation ( with Muslims in the pivotal role), will be reborn.


Reality

The former thesis can be frequently encountered and elaborated (more or less explicitly) in recent (post-1991.) Bosnian Muslim historiography. Also, stated in such a «rough» and simplistic manner, it provides almost inexhaustible emotional/mental fodder for Bosnian Muslims's growing national self-awareness and their central historical narrative which has re-created dominant popular self-image and serves as the compass in dealing with their Croatian and Serbian neighbors, both inside & across Bosnia and Herzegovina borders. From this point of view, fact that Croat and Serb peoples have been indubitably present in Bosnia and Herzegovina (which encompasses much more than a combination of medieval regions Bosnia and Hum, especially in the Croatian West) and have left indelible marks of their being in history, culture and identity of the entire region; or that the noun «Bosnian» had not possessed ethnic/national connotation in the medieval period, but was a signifier referring to the subjects of Bosnian polity- all this is ignored or pronounced a historical fabrication by contemporary Bosnian Muslim national ideologues. Addiction to the fictions about Croatian and Serbian «false ethnic identities» is ineluctably locked with another piece of wishful thinking- projections about the dreamt-on disappearance of both Croats and Serbs from the soil of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the very idea that Bosnian Croats and Serbs would/could «give up» their national identities and loyalties is ludicrous. The utter absurdity of the thesis is valuable only as a diagnostic tool for assessment of cognitive disorder plaguing much of Bosniaks's/Bosnian Muslims's «state of mind». Other than that, its extravagant ludicrousness doesn't deserve any rational analysis.

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/disorder.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/bihist.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/evil.html


Version 2.

Croatian and Serbian names and identities have been "imported" into Bosnia and Herzegovina in past two centuries.These "fabricated" national/ethnic identities and concomitant national loyalties have no historical continuity going back to medieval (*-1463.) and Ottoman (1463.-1879.) periods, since extant documents (manuscripts from medieval Bosnian Banovina, and, later, kingdom, as well as numerous other sources) clearly establish the Bosnian name as the true national/ethnic signifier for Bosnia & Herzegovina population in the recorded history after great migrations that had swamped the decaying Roman Empire.
However, since Bosnian Catholics and Orthodox «embraced» Croat and Serb national loyalties in last two centuries, Bosnian Muslims remain the sole inheritors of the ancient Bosnian name and ethno-political identity. Hence, after Bosnian Muslims officially adopted the name «Bosniaks», terms «Bosnian» and «Bosniak» have become interchangeable, leaving Bosniaks or Bosnian Muslims in the role of pillar of «Bosnianhood»-whatever this name may refer to.


Reality

During its turbulent history, territory known today as Bosnia and Herzegovina has passed through many stages of expansion and few phases of contraction, as well as demographic alterations and dramatic shifts in national loyalties determined by changes of denominational adherence. In short:

a) before acquiring any kind of distinct political identity, Bosnia was just one among many half-legendary early medieval «Sclavinias» (Slavic units) which had been backwater parts of Croatian and, later, Hungarian-Croatian kingdom. There is no trace left in historical chronicles, cultural heritage or archaelogical excavations that this early Bosnia (which covered no more than 20% of contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina, mainly around Sarajevo- then called Vrhbosna) possessed any political or ethnic individuality and identity.

b) pre-Ottoman Bosnia (and appended historic territories which nuclear Bosnia had politically absorbed from ca. 1180 to ca. 1390.) was a typical medieval political unit (first Banovina (a characteristic Croatian name for Duchy), then kingdom) without specifically ethnic loyalties. This state was a rimland of Western Christendom which had in last two centuries of its existence succeeded in annexing numerous Croat Catholic lands in West and South ( parts of Dalmatia and other, far less illustrious territories) and, to a much lesser extent, parts of crumbling Serbian Orthodox empire in the East (Raška-Rascia, the Drina river basin). Also, some incorporated counties, like Hum and Travunja in the Southeast had had mixed Croat Catholic and Serbian Orthodox populations- the central distinguishing factor among these South Slavic ethnicities in the making had been adherence to the Western Catholic civilization for Croats and to the Eastern Byzantine culture for Serbs; those differing loyalties produced multifarious distinct traits ranging from ecclesiastical-political culture and organization to the modes of artistic and literary expression. Such «expanded» Bosnian polity which emerged in the 1st half of the 15th century territorially «overlapped» with current Bosnia and Herzegovina ca. 70-80% (and temporarily held suzerainty over Dalmatia in Croatia, as well over border parts in contemporary Serbia and Montenegro). So, having in mind that the majority of medieval Bosnia was composed of ancient ancestral lands for Croats in the West and South and Serbs in the East- it is completely nonsensical to deny the presence of Croat and Serb names and ethnicities in the pre-Ottoman (*-1463.) Bosnian polity.

c) after the Turkish conquest (1463.) and subsequent Ottoman rule (1463.-1879.) medieval Bosnia disappeared, leaving its name to one of the Turkish military provinces. Its original population, overwhelmingly Catholic (with the Orthodox predominant in the East and remnants of local Bosnian Church adherents scattered throughout central Bosnia and Hum) was dispersed and disappeared from Western Bosnia in the 300 years long warfare; early «clash of civilizations» fought on Croatian, Hungarian and Bosnian lands. Other indigenous inhabitants remained in subjugated position, while many more converted to Islam (mainly from the 15th to 18th centuries) in order to escape persecution and improve their standing, so that by the 17th century local Muslims constituted the majority of what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina. Also, numerous Serbian and Wallachian Orthodox settlers, geared in the Ottoman military machine, moved in from the already conquered eastern areas of the Balkans. The origins of the three nations now present in Bosnia & Herzegovina can be traced back to this period (ca. 1500. to ca. 1800.) of intense islamization when «triple» ethnic-denominational differentiation served as the focal point for growth of modern national individualities based on ancient ethnic loyalties: Bosnian Catholics (the true inheritors of tradition and myths of medieval Bosnian state which survived mainly through the agency of ecclesiastical Bosnian Franciscan province) crystallized around Croat national identity- their «Bosnian» loyalty relegated to the layer of subnational provincial or regional allegiances. Bosnian Orthodox, along with settled Orthodox Wallachi were fused into modern Serbian nation in the mould of Serbian Orthodox Church-the spiritual successor of medieval Serbian culture and concomitant ethnic identity. And, finally, Bosnian Muslims, inheritors of the Ottoman Islamic civilization in Bosnia, after passing through many phases of denominational and semi-national fragile loyalties (Turkish, Croatian, Serbian, Yugoslav, Muslim) embraced the Bosniak national identity which, by the very linguistic closeness and difference to the ancient Bosnian name (it is Turkish word meaning «Bosnian»), unequivocally speaks of the specifically Islamic and Ottoman origin of the Bosniak nation, born in the melting pot of the Turkish empire.

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/feeling.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/evil.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/medi.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/early.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/mature.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/otto.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/aushu.html


Bosnia: territory, history and ethnic identity

The growth of medieval Bosnian polity can be best traced via historical atlases. If we juxtapose these on the map of present Bosnia and Herzegovina (it is placed between Croatia in the North, West and South and Serbia & Montenegro in the East):

then, we get the following picture from the earliest periods ( 925 A.D., during the reign of Croatian King Tomislav ) on:

which clearly demonstrates the difference between territorial compass of contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina and its early nuclear ancestor. This is even more striking when various stages of pre-Ottoman Bosnian polity can be seen in succession, as is the case with the page at http://www.studenti.de/bih/historija.php4 . Although a word of
caution should be added (being a site for Bosnian Muslims/Bosniaks, whose major obsession is to «enlarge» (if it can't be done otherwise, then only virtually in cyberspace) the territory of medieval Bosnian political unit in order to give historical legitimacy to current national/political aspirations)-nevertheless, it presents a rather good snapshot overview.

The following «international» links to historical maps would suffice to illustrate the territorial compass of early medieval Bosnia prior to any kind of political individual existence:

http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_0800.html
http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_0900.html
http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1000.html
http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1100.html

After the «entrance» into history under Kulin Ban (ca. 1180), Bosnian polity (Banovina/Duchy, Kingdom) had expanded into neighboring Croatian and Serbian lands:

http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1200.html
http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1300.html
http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1400.html

violet via scarlet to khaki colored regions depicting Bosnia's territorial growth from ca. 1100. to 1391.

One could justifiably pose the question: so what ? Why all the fuss about historical borders ? States expand, collapse-this is a banal fact from history 101. The answer is relatively simple:
this display of historical cartography would have been superfluous (or even ridiculous) had not contemporary Bosnian Muslim ideologues and some foreign «historical experts» been very vocal in negating Croatian and Serbian ethnic and cultural stamp on the Bosnian polity in past millennium: the revisionism of the worst kind is persistently trying to rewrite the history in order to give «historical legitimacy» to the schemings of current geopolitical machinators and Bosnia & Herzegovina neocolonialist foreign administrators. Also, the planners of megaserb expansionist drive which was the chief instigator of the last (1991.-1995.) war in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, have been desperately trying in past two centuries to distort the perception of pre-Ottoman Bosnian history in order to give «historical credence» to their recent (post 1840s) territorial appetites. And, ironically, Croatian historiography, which could have posed the most solidly founded claims on Croathood (even in «diffused» medieval sense) of the greatest part of what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, suffered (apart from a few looney fringe historians) from the syndrome of "shrinking" and minimalist version of Croatian medievalistics misrepresented as the scientifically objective approach. Hopefully, all these distortions in service (or servitude) of very mundane geopolitical programs will be dispelled in near future.

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/feeling.html

Turkish conquest, depicted in:

http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1500.html
http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1600.html
http://www.euratlas.com/history_europe/europe_map_1700.html

pushed the borders further westward and incorporated into Bosnia & Herzegovina Croatian historic lands (later called «Turkish Croatia») which had never been a part of medieval Bosnian state and now constitute ca. 20-30% of contemporary sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Still-even more important than these historical maps is the fact that all pre-Ottoman cultural heritage is either Croat or Serb. There is no exclusively «Bosnian» heritage that would fall outside broader Croatian or Serbian cultural traditions: even the manuscripts associated with that peculiar institution, Bosnian Church are written in Croatian or Western Cyrillic (also called Bosnian Cyrillic or bosančica) and belong to the Croat national heritage. The adjective «Bosnian» in these cases stands for political and territorial, but not ethnic (even in medieval sense of the word) designation.
Croatian heritage encompasses virtually all (with the exception of Eastern parts of B&H) sacral architecture on the Bosnia and Herzegovina soil in the pre-Ottoman period, as well as earliest monuments of Bosnian literacy (Humac tablet, Gršković and Mihanović fragments) and numerous illuminated manuscripts like Duke Hrvoje's Missal and Krstyanin Hval's Miscellany. Extensive overview of Bosnian Croat heritage can be found on following sites:

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/croart.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/hval_eng.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/jajce_en.html

http://www.finns-books.com/croatico.htm

http://www.danstopicals.com/hvalovzbornik.htm

http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/et02.html

http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/et03.html

http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/et04.html

Serbian heritage is covered at:

http://solair.eunet.yu/~ecolibri/index_e.html

http://www.rastko.org.yu/rastko-bl/umetnost/likovne/srakic-ikone/srakic-ikone_bih_e.html

Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak cultural heritage can be seen at:

http://www.ois.unsa.ba/

http://www.ferhadija.com


The accumulated weight of these historical & cultural traditions is the best antidote to every myopic historical revisionism and to the «Bosnian nation» fiction tacitly endorsed by current B &H foreign administrators: Bosnia and Herzegovina, as it is now, is a country of three (Croat, Serb and Bosniak/Bosnian Muslim) nations. There is no Bosnian nation. Nor will it ever be.

 

National identities in Bosnia and Herzegovina


One of the nebulous contentions frequently encountered in newer Bosnia and Herzegovina historiography (especially in works written by allegedly dispassionate foreign «specialists in the field») is that virtually all indigenous inhabitants of medieval Bosnian polity, as well as the Ottoman military Bosnia province dwellers, possessed «primary» Bosnian ethnic individuality and loyalty (apart from Bosnian Muslims's supraethnic Islamic Ottoman identification) -while Croatian and Serbian names and identities have been either «imported» at later stages or, at best, represented marginal regional allegiances subsumed under more general Bosnian identity. According to this historical narrative, a three denominational Bosnian proto-nation existed prior to the 19th century mass lining up of the Bosnian Catholics and Orthodox into Croat and Serb "national encampments" as the result of national propaganda from Croatia and Serbia. But- this story has no historical foundation whatsoever.

If we follow numerous mutations of meaning Bosnian name has passed through, we shall encounter chaos of bewildering ethnic and religious signifiers: in the case of pre-Ottoman Bosnian polity (ca. 1180- 1463) the term «Bošnjanin» (pronounced Bosh-nya-nin), as well as its Latin version Bosnensis referred simply to the inhabitant of medieval Bosnian political unit. Since various extant manuscripts (mainly documents dealing with commercial arrangements between Bosnian nobles and the city of Dubrovnik) not unfrequently juxtapose the noun «Bošnjanin» and other ethnic, denominational or regional names like «Hrvat»/Croat, «Srbin»/Serb, «Latinin»/Latin and «Dubrovčanin»/Ragusan, the idea that «Bošnjanin» had had quasiethnic connotations has been entertained. But, upon closer examination, this hypothesis was abandoned because evidently ethnic Croats like Duke Hrvoje Hrvatinić
(literally «Croat Croatson»), one of the most significant figures in Bosnian history, are referred to as «Bošnjani»/Bosnenses, and, more- there is no need to ascribe ethnic identity to a subject in a commercial deal if the subject's reappearance in other available documents never alluded to the ethnic designation.

In the times following the Ottoman conquest, the name «Bošnjanin» was turkified into «Bošnjak» (Bosh-nyak, Bosniak in English), which is the name Bosnian Muslims had officially adopted as their own national name (it was «plebiscitarily» accepted on the September 28th 1993., at the 2nd Bosniak Congress- an institution of Bosnian Muslim intellectuals and ideologues). But, during early Ottoman rule, the term «Bošnjak» was applied exclusively to the Christian population, while islamized natives were referred to as «Bosnalu». However, in following centuries (16th to 19th), this name, under various hyphenated forms («Bošnjak-milleti», «Bošnjak-taifesi») had acquired additional nuances of meaning: it became the common term for all the inhabitants of Bosnian Turkish pashaluk/military province. However, it is just one regional reference. Bureaucracy of the theocratic Ottoman empire couldn't even imagine that Muslims and Christians in one of the provinces of the vast Islamic polity would constitute a separated, supradenominational community. Nor was it thinkable to the Bosnian Christians and Muslims. As pointed out earlier, the origins of the three nations now present in Bosnia & Herzegovina can be traced back to the period (ca. 1500. to ca. 1800.) of intense islamization when «triple» ethnic-denominational differentiation served as the focal point for growth of modern national individualities based on ancient ethnic loyalties: as Camus has said, people become what they already are-notwithstanding the fact that they may not yet be aware of it. Bosnian Croats and Serbs have definitely crystallized into modern nations during the 19th century, simultaneously retaining their regional Bosnian and Herzegovinian identities rooted in history and conjoining with their compatriots in Croatia and Serbia. Bosnian Muslims, on the other hand, have set out on the trek (one might say a trudge) for self-identity. Feeling in their bones the unbridgeable separateness and distance from both Croats and Serbs, these «Turkey's abandoned children» found themselves in an uneasy position: being a cultural/denominational
transplant from Asia Minor grafted onto South Slavic ethnicities whose nascent Croat and Serb identities melted away in the process of islamization, they vacillated between a few national and semi-national individualities: Turkish, Croat, Serb, supranational Yugoslav and quasidenominational ethnic Muslim designation- Bosnian Muslims were officially recognized as a nation under the name of Muslims in the 1971. Yugoslav census. Finally, as has been mentioned earlier, this identity crisis was resolved in a rather bizarre way: «Bosniak» designation (actually, a Turkish word meaning «Bosnian») was adopted in 1993. as a sign of differentiating ethnic identity from denominational loyalties. Although circumstances of the procedure may look somewhat silly (it was unanimously accepted on September the 28th 1993., at the 2nd Bosniak Congress- an institution of Bosnian Muslim intellectuals and ideologues ), it seems that, in all likelihood, Bosnian Muslims have definitively reached the goal in their quest for national identity.

The ancient Bosnian name has remained both as a supranational country name (there is no «Bosnian» people in the same sense there was no «Soviet» people in any ethnic meaning of the word) and regional designator for an inhabitant of Bosnia (incidentally- it is frequently (mis)used in reference to the inhabitants of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the noun «Herzegovinian» has at least two deficiencies: it is a tongue twister, and, more, it comes second. How do you call citizens of Trinidad and Tobago or Sao Tome and Principe ? Or Serbia and Montenegro ? ). Also, after not few morphological changes, in its turkified «Bosniak» form and reduced meaning, it became the national name of Bosnian Muslims- one of the three nations living in the Bosnia and Herzegovina.

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/disorder.html

http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/feeling.html











   
 
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