Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840–1914 by Edin Hajdarpasic

Abstract

Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840–1914 by Edin Hajdarpasic Charles Wukasch (bio) Hajdarpasic, Edin. Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans,1840–1914. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015. Notes. Index. xii + 271 pp. $45.00 (cloth). On two occasions in recent years, I've chatted with young Bosnians. I asked each one if he or she was a Serbian, Croatian, or Muslim Bosnian. In both cases, the person replied adamantly "I'm Bosnian!" Now one can hardly generalize from two instances. However, it does make one wonder, at least based on these two brief conversations, whether the younger generation is moving away from the ethnic and religious labels of the past. One is reminded of the old joke about the census taker in Belfast, Northern Ireland, who asked a house owner what his religion was, Catholic or Protestant? When the reply was "neither—I'm an atheist," the census taker then asked "yes, but are you a Catholic or Protestant atheist." Whose Bosnia? comprises five chapters ("The Land of the People," "The Land of Suffering," "Nationalization and Its Discontents," "Year X, or 1914?", "Another Problem," plus an introduction and epilogue. Hajdarpasic's work is detailed and carefully researched. He recognizes the problem of defining terms which are often used loosely both in the media and even by academics: state, nation-state, nation, ethnic group, etc. One of his major contributions is the concept of the Muslim Bosnian as the "(br)other." In other words, the Bosniac, as viewed by the "true" Serb or Croat, is a fellow South Slav, yet has not been fully accepted as such. In "The Land of the People," Hajdarpasic comments "in the South Slavic context alone, thousands of pages were filled by debates over the implications of the term narod, which has been variously translated as the people, nation, folk, population, ethnic community, and so on; […] In Croatia, nineteenth-century scholars published lengthy accounts comparing different connotations of the term narod in different Slavic languages" (18). An integral element in defining a narod is, of course, language. Tied in with language is religion, folklore, history, etc. The emphasis in this chapter is on the life and work of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, although other important literary and cultural figures, e.g., Ivan Lukić, are dealt with. Hajdarpasic posits the question "who exactly were 'the Turks' in Bosnia, given that Serbian and Croatian activists used the same term both for their 'brothers of the Turkish faith' and for the hated Ottoman oppressors? Could any 'Turk' be a Serbian brother?" (32). Karadžić also posited the question "and where do they speak the purest Serbian?" (23). Ironically, Karadžić, although he felt that the "best" Serbian was spoken in Herzegovina, never visited either Bosnia or Herzegovina, citing as one reason lack of funds. Of course, it must be remembered that the [End Page 156] researchers of the nineteenth century (e.g., the Great Team of British folklorists) did not have universities and academic foundations to support their travel and research with grants. "The Land of Suffering" is largely concerned with what would today be called Islamophobia. Hajdarpasic discusses the portrayal in nineteenth-century South Slavic literature and art of the Muslim as a sadist who covets Christian woman. Ivan Mažuraić's epic poem Smrt Smail-age Čengića is undoubtedly the best example of the Turks' supposed propensity for torture by impalement (71). The Czech poet Jaroslav Čermák's painting The Abduction of a Herzegovinian Woman can only be described as Islamophobic and racist. As Hajdarpasic quotes a reviewer, "the sensational 'whiteness of the victim' contrasted with the 'swarthy Satanic ravager [i.e., of the Turks]" (76). One is also reminded of the U.S.'s racist past, when African-American men were stereotyped as lusting after white women. Chapters three through five ("Nationalization and Its Discontents," "Year X, or 1914?", "Another Problem") can be treated as a unit. Hajdarpasic catches the reader's attention with the opening line of chapter III: "One winter day in 1840, a small group of revolutionaries crossed the River Sava … vowing to 'liberate the Raya' [i.e., the Christian Muslims of Bosnia...