Edin Hajdarpasic: Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840–1914. Ithaca, NY, London: Cornell University Press, 2015. XII, 271 S., 11 Abb., 3 Ktn. ISBN: 978-0-8014-5371-7

Edin Hajdarpasic: Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840–1914. Ithaca, NY, London: Cornell University Press, 2015. XII, 271 S., 11 Abb., 3 Ktn. ISBN: 978-0-8014-5371-7.

A western image of Bosnia-Herzegovina and its inhabitants seems at times to be written in stone. Belgian economist and traveler Émile de Laveley’s description published in 1887 in The Balkan Peninsula is exemplary: “A Turk came to the station, well-dressed, large white turban, brown vest braided in black, wide flowing trousers of a deep red colour, gaiters in the Greek style, enormous leather girdle in which, amidst many other articles, appeared a long cherry wood pipe. He brought with him a carpet and saddle. I was told that he was not a Turk, but a Mussulman of Sarajewo, of Slav race, and speaking the same language as the Croats. This is a perfect picture of the East. […] The stationmaster […] spoke well of them all. ‘They are very straightforward. […] Their word is trustworthy […] but they are rapidly becoming spoiled. The need of money introduces insincerity’” (pp. 70–71).

How do Bosnians evoke such curiosity and confusion, such positivity that rapidly turns into distrust? The “European” knows them and at the same feels distant. But this is not only a western phenomenon: such attitudes also arose among southern Slavic groups themselves, as Edin Hajdarpasic persuasively writes. Indeed, he coins a new term to express internal entanglements – conflicts, overlaps and intermingling – of these types of “(br)others”. To be clear, Hajdarpasic uses the term as an “interpretive device, a strategy of double writing […]: ‘(br)other’ designates neither a new content nor a third term separate from the foundational binary” (p. 17). A Bosnian native and currently an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, Hajdarpasic uses the term (and image) mainly to denote the intertwined natures of national identity. His Whose Bosnia? is a study of the process of “nationalizing”, and he argues convincingly that nationalism, while potentially durable, is nonetheless open-ended (pp. 3, 123).

Hajdarpasic has written an insightfully nuanced, relevant and very much archival source-based monograph on transnational Serbian, Croatian and Bosnia-Herzegovina intellectual discourses during the long nineteenth century. His point of reference is an extraordinary spectrum of nationalists – “ethnographers, insurgents, teachers, academics, poets, politicians, and other actors often grouped together as ‘intellectuals’” (p. 5) – who dreamed about and vied for the right to call “Bosnia” their own. In other words, it is a research on an elite project. His precise time-frame follows the waning of the Ottoman empire’s reign (from 1699) to the first decades of the Habsburg Monarchy’s annexation (1878) and its “modernizing” mission in Bosnia up until the First World War, whose trigger of course was the June 1914 assassination by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist, of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife on the streets of Sarajevo. At ease in the linguistic diversity in the region and fluent in the relevant literature, Hajdarpasic succeeds in breaking down a beautifully rich and complicated Southern European history: in terms of geographies (cities, rural regions), religions, languages, cultural images (print media, illustrations, material objects), education, movements for social justice (between 1840 and 1914), divided loyalties and the diaspora (e.g., Muslim emigration from Bosnia).

In short, Whose Bosnia? is as much a theoretical work as an original interdisciplinary case study of nationalist movements, which he defines as “the proliferation and compulsion of patriotic desires” (p. 1). In the early chapters, Hajdarpasic meticulously traces the interconnected nineteenth century political imagination of Bosnia by Serbian and Croatian nationalists, who feel drawn to include this land, this periphery, into their greater national projects, even if they had never set foot in the territory before (Vuk Karadžić, for example) nor had met any Muslim Bosnians. In chapter two the author explores the inner and outer persistence of seeing Bosnia as a “community of suffering” under imperial domination (actual and artistically imagined). Even British militant nationalist feminist Emmeline Pankhurst, in 1913, takes note and pleas with the British elite to consider the similarities between the two causes – Bosnian liberation and British female suffrage – rather than offer sympathy to the former and ridicule and contempt to the latter (p. 55). In the later chapters Hajdarpasic relates the strivings especially by Bosniak elites themselves, torn between the entitlements granted to them by the imperial Ottoman or Habsburg monarchies as well as the promises – even blueprints – of “liberation” by an ever “linguistically correct” (p. 130) and militarising Greater Serbian and Croatian male youth: As Hajdarpasic writes, this “‘new youth’ of the Balkan Wars was explicitly gendered as having ‘the glorious and manly duty’ (muška dužnost) of liberating the nation, including its women” (p. 157). The author also does a fine job differentiating true Sarajevan radicals and the images the police or security forces projected on them, and how fears of youth radicalization were greatly exaggerated by the Habsburg government, which imposed more restrictive measures that in turn radicalised them.

Given the subject’s topicality and complexity as well as Hajdarpasic’s empirical thoroughness (e. g., the impressive number and quality of the Austrian-Hungarian documents perused in the State Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina), ease with relevant languages and inclusion of key secondary literature (e. g., works by Robin Okey, Maria Todorova) and well-written prose, along with relevant historical maps and artwork (The Allegory of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Alphonse Mucha, for example, serves as the hardback cover; cf. pp. 193–196) it should come as little surprise that this monograph, based on a 2008 PhD dissertation completed at the University of Michigan, was awarded the prestigious Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies in 2016.

A few small weaknesses do appear, however. For one, the publishers opted against a bibliography and for endnotes (comprising 54 pages) rather than footnotes. Second, each of the five main chapters tackles a theme that does not necessarily follow the previous one or set the stage for the next one: While this allows readers to afford long pauses between readings – a pleasing practice in these ever accelerating times – it underscores how several aspects of Whose Bosnia? do not receive much attention: notably, the voices from below. Third, while non-specialists will learn much from the richness of this historical narrative, some key terms (e. g., the “Illyrian movement”) could have been explained better. These minor issues aside, Hajdarpasic has contributed a valuable, exquisitely creative and insightful journey into the “South Slav problem” by southern European minds.

Laurie R. Cohen, Lübeck