Abstract
Western colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has two faces: on the one hand, it stands for military conquest and foreign domination, for economic exploitation, for inequality and patronising identity politics for the sake of ‘civilisation’, based on more or less racist discourses that evoke a ‘lazy native’ who needs be tamed. On the other hand, colonialism triggers a certain kind of modernisation as it introduces infrastructure, new goods, unknown lifestyles, and particularly educational and legal systems which paradoxcially are the first steps towards a civil society that enables the colonised to overthrow foreign rule finally. Both faces were shown to Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary, 1878–1918. In the following, I will try to provide answers to the question of to what extent the colonialism paradigm is applicable to this particular case, synthesising the research work of other scholars and my own.1
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Notes
See Clemens Ruthner, ‘“K.u.k. Kolonialismus” als Befund, Befindlichkeit und Metapher: Versuch einer weiteren Klärung’ in Moritz Csáky et al., eds, Habsburg postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2003), 111–28;
Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Peter Plener, Clemens Ruthner, eds, Kakanien revisited: Das Eigene und das Fremde (in) der österreichischungarischen Monarchie (Tübingen: Francke, 2004);
Clemens Ruthner, ‘Kakaniens kleiner Orient: Post/koloniale Lesarten der Peripherie Bosnien-Herzegowina (1878–1918)’ in Endre Hárs et al., eds, Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten in Österreich-Ungarn, 1867–1918 (Tübingen: Francke, 2006), 255–83.
Clemens Ruthner et al., eds, Wechselwirkungen: Austria-Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Balkan Region, 1878–1918 (New York: P. Lang, 2014).
Arnold Suppan, ‘Zur Frage eines österreichisch-ungarischen Imperialismus in Südosteuropa: Regierungspolitik und öffentliche Meinung um die Annexion Bosniens und der Herzegowina’ in Adam Wandruszka et al., eds, Die Donaumonarchie und die südslawische Frage von 1848 bis 1918: Texte des ersten österreichisch-jugoslawischen Historikertreffens Gösing 1976 (Vienna: ÖAW, 1978), 103–31;
Evelyn Kolm, Die Ambitionen Österreich-Ungarns im Zeitalter des Hochimperialismus (Frankfurt/M. et al.: P. Lang, 2001).
Barbara Jelavich, The Habsburg Empire in European Affairs, 1814–1918 (Chicago: McNally, 1969), 115ff.;
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Francis Roy Bridge, ‘Österreich(-Ungarn) unter den Großmächten’ in Adam Wandruszka, Peter Urbanitsch, eds, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918 (Vienna: ÖAW, 1973–1989), Vol. 6/1 (1989), 196–373;
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Edgar Hösch, Geschichte der Balkanländer von der Frühzeit bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2002), 129ff.;
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Robert J. Donia, Islam under the Double Eagle: The Muslims of Bosnia and Hercegovina, 1878–1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 8ff.;
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Muhamed Hadžijahić, Od tradicije do identiteta (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1984).
Stevan K. Pavlowitch, A History of the Balkans, 1904–1945 (London, New York: Longman, 1999), 116.
Robert Donia, ‘The Habsburg Imperial Army in the Occupation of Bosnia and Hercegovina’ in Béla Király, Gale Stokes, Insurrections, Wars and the Eastern Crisis in the 1870s (Boulder, New York: Columbia University Press), 375–91.
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Božidar Jezernik, Wild Europe: The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers (London: Saqi/Bosnian Institute, 2004).
Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).
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William O. McCagg, ‘The Soviet Union and the Habsburg Empire: Problems of Comparison.’ in Richard L. Rudolph, David F. Good, eds, Nationalism and Empire: The Habsburg Empire and the Soviet Union (New York: St. Martin’s Pr., 1992), 45–63, qtd. 50–51.
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Walter Sauer, K. u. k. kolonial. Habsburgermonarchie und europäische Herrschaft in Afrika (Vienna: Böhlau, 2002).
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Ruthner, C. (2014). Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1878–1918: A Colony of a Multinational Empire. In: Healy, R., Lago, E.D. (eds) The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137450753_10
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