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Yugoslavia Bosnia and Hercegovina
In the seventh century, Croats and Serbs settled in the land
that now makes up Bosnia and Hercegovina. Dominance of the
regions shifted among the Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and
Byzantine rulers for generations, before the Croatian and
Hungarian crowns merged and Hungary dominated. Foreign
interference in Bosnia and Hercegovina exacerbated local
political and religious hostilities and ignited bloody civil
wars.
The heretical Bogomil faith played an important early role in
Bosnian politics. Ban Kulin (1180-1204) and other nobles
struggled to broaden Bosnian autonomy, rejected the Catholic and
Orthodox faiths, and embraced Bogomilism, a dualistic offshoot of
Christianity. The Bogomils enraged the papacy, and the Catholic
kings of Hungary persecuted them to exterminate the heresy and
secure Hungarian rule over Bosnia. Kulin recanted his conversion
under torture, but the Bogomil faith survived crusades, civil
war, and Catholic propaganda.
In the fourteenth century, Bosnia became a formidable state
under the rule of Ban Stefan Tvrtko I (1353-91). Tvrtko joined
Bosnia with the principality of Hum, forerunner of Hercegovina,
and attempted to unite the South Slavs under his rule. After the
Serbian Nemanja dynasty expired in 1371, Tvrtko was crowned King
of Bosnia and Raska in 1377, and he later conquered parts of
Croatia and Dalmatia. Bosnian troops fought beside the Serbs at
Kosovo Polje. After that defeat, Tvrtko turned his attention to
forming alliances with Western states. Rival nobles and religious
groups vied to gain control of Bosnia after the death of Tvrtko;
one noble in Hum won the title of "Herzeg," (German for "duke")
whence the name "Hercegovina."
The fifteenth century marked the beginning of Turkish rule in
Bosnia. Most of Bosnia was taken in 1463, Hercegovina in 1483.
Many Orthodox and Roman Catholics fled, while Bogomil nobles
converted to Islam to retain their land and feudal privileges.
They formed a unique Slavic Muslim aristocracy that exploited its
Christian and Muslim serfs for centuries and eventually grew
fanatical and conservative. Turkish governors supervised Bosnia
and Hercegovina from their capitals at Travnik and Mostar, but
few Turks actually settled in this territory. Economic life
declined and the regions grew isolated from Europe and even
Constantinople. As the sultan's military expenses grew, small
farms were replaced by large estates, and peasant taxes were
raised substantially. When the Turkish Empire weakened in the
seventeenth century, Bosnia and Hercegovina became pawns in the
struggle among Austria, Russia, and the Turks.
The nineteenth century in Bosnia and Hercegovina brought
alternating Christian peasant revolts against the Slavic Muslim
landholders, and Slavic Muslim rebellions against the sultan. In
1850 the Turkish government stripped the conservative Slavic
Muslim nobles of power, shifted the capital of Bosnia to
Sarajevo, and instituted centralized, highly corrupt rule.
Austrian capital began to enter the regions, financing primitive
industries, and fostering a new Christian middle class. But the
mostly Christian serfs continued to suffer the corruption and
high rates of the Turkish tax system. In 1875 a peasant uprising
in Hercegovina sparked an all-out rebellion in the Balkan
provinces, provoking a European war. The Treaty of Berlin, which
followed the Turkish defeat of 1878, gave Austria-Hungary the
right to occupy Bosnia and Hercegovina to restore local order.
The Treaty of Berlin brought a period of manipulation by the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. The empire suppressed Muslim and
Orthodox opposition to the occupation and introduced an orderly
administration. But it retained the feudal system because Bosnia
and Hercegovina technically remained Turkish states. Seeking to
increase the Catholic population of Bosnia, Vienna sent Austrian,
Hungarian, Croatian, and Polish administrators, and colonized
northern Bosnia with Catholic Slavs and Germans. The
administrator of the regions, Baron Benjamin Kállay (1882-1903)
fostered economic growth, reduced lawlessness, improved
sanitation, built roads and railways, and established schools.
However, Kállay, a Hungarian, exploited strong nationalist
differences among the Muslim Slavs, Catholic Croats, and Orthodox
Serbs.
At the turn of the century, nationalist differences reached
the point of explosion. Fearful that Turkey might demand the
return of Bosnia and Hercegovina after a revolutionary government
was established in Constantinople, Austria-Hungary precipitated a
major European crisis by annexing the regions in October 1908.
Serbia, which had coveted the regions, mobilized for war. The
crisis subsided a year later when Russia and Serbia bowed to
German pressure and all Europe recognized the Serbian annexation
as a fait accompli. Domination by Austria had embittered the
ethnic groups of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Muslim Slavs resented
Turkish withdrawal from the Balkans; the Croats looked initially
to Vienna for support, but were increasingly disappointed by its
response; and the Bosnian Serbs, deeply dissatisfied with
continued serfdom, looked to Serbia for aid.
Data as of December 1990
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