(What follows is the topic as presented by Dr. Max Reidlspurger on Thursday april April 15, 1999 and selections from his webpage. I would have you access the webpage directly but the server wouldn't let me.)
I. The Land and Peoples: The roots of this conflict rest more with history, religion, and the concepts of nation and nationality than with ethnicity. Dr. Reidlspurger's remarks here will focus on these as a background to the current crisis.
A. The region in question here is the Balkan penninsula.
See Map
1. Danube and Sava rivers. (Rumania is considered
a part of Balkan history, but is not geographically part of the Balkans.
2. Dinaric Alps separate the Sava-Morava plain from
the Adriatic
3. Balkan (Turkish for mountains) Mountains crisscross
the area between the Morava Plain and Bulgaria. Click here for an ethno-linguistic
map of the region.
B. The cultural diversity of the peoples of the region is enormous.
An intersection between Germanic Central Europe and Slavic southeastern
Europe, Roman Catholicism-Orthodox Christianity-Islam, historical fault
line between Germans and South Slavs and Greeks and Russians
1. The Serbs are one
of a group of ethnically similar peoples speaking variations of a basic
South Slavonic language. As a consequence of their historical experience,
they are divided by religion. Contemporary journalist usage identifies
the Orthodox Serbs as just the Serbs or the Bosnian Serbs and Herzegovinian
Serbs. There are also the Muslims of Bosnia, most of whom are ethnic Serbs
who converted during the long Turkish rule of the region. They all use
a variation of the Cyrillic alphabet.
2. The modern Macedonians
are a mixture of South Slavs, whose language is closely related to Serbian
and is written with the Cyrillic alphabet, with the classical Macedonians.
The Macedonians are also Orthodox and some of their monasteries and churches
are among the most important in the Serb Orthodox religion.
3. The Bulgarians are
also South Slavs with a somewhat different language, but are mostly Orthodox
and also use the Cyrillic alphabet. Have contested the Serbs and Greeks
for Macedonia. See map.
4. The Croats use the
same language as the Serbs (Serbo-Croatian). They had an independent medieval
Kingdom in the 10th and 11th centuries, but came definitively under Hungarian
control 1089-91. Roman Catholicism became the dominant religion and their
branch of the language has thus subsequently been written with the Latin
alphabet.
5. The Slovenes are
the descendents of those South Slavs who had established an early medieval
Kingdom in the 700's in what is today Austria and Slovenia. Charlemagne's
Bavarian knights conquered the region inplanting Catholicism and bringing
those who region remained under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, later
Austria. Because of their history ofalmost 1200 years under Catholic-German
influence, the language is somewhat different language from Serbo-Croatian
and writen with the Latin alphabet. See map.
6. Albanians are NOT
South Slavs. They are the only significant modern remnants of the Illyrians
who dominated the Balkans in ancient times and comprise the Albanian nation-state
and had come to constitute 90% of the population of the Serbian province
of Kossovo.
7. Greeks are not South
Slavs contest the right of Macedonia to that name.
II. The foundation of the medieval nations --- significant for justifying modern nation-states.
A. 6th-7th centuries, South Slavs became established in the central Balkans, conquered by the Asiatic Bulgars, who were in turn assimilated as South Slavs
B. Bulgarian Empire carved out of the Byzantine Empire, occupying all
of modern Bulgaria, much of Serbia, all of Kossovo and parts of Macedonia
and Albania. 808-927
1. Converted to Orthodoxy.
2. Weakened after the death of Simeon in 927 and
reabsorbed by the Byzantine Empire by 1025.
3. Serbs had converted to Orthodoxy under Bulgarian
rule and were the reabsorbed into a resurgent Byzantine Empire.
4. But as the Seljuk Turks in the late 12th century
diverted the attention of the Byzantines and and the Crusaders then conquered
them early in the 13th century the Serbs consolidated into two political
units.
a. Bosnia and Herzegovina
fell under Hunargian rule and then in the 13th century became an independent
kingdom which survived until conquered by the Turks, definitively in 1463.
b. The Serbs of what is
today Serbia and Montenegro began to unify what had been separate principalities
in the last quarter of the 12th century.
C. The Serbian Empire
1. Stefan Nemanja (1196-1228)
established the first Serb Empire unifying Zeta (Montenegro today) and
Rashka in the Morava Valley.
2. First as vassal state to Byzantium.
a. After Crusaders' defeat
of Byzantium in 1204, declared independence.
b. Pope sought to convert
the Serbs by granting them the title of King, the Byzantine Emperor tried
to woo them back by making the Serbian Church independent with a Patriarch
at Pec in north-western Kossovo.
3. Under their storied Emperor, Stefan
Dushan in 1330 Serbia became the dominant power in the Balkans.
March on Constantinople --- died en route. Weakness thereafter and
susceptibility to outside conquest. Fortified Churches to provide
refuge in a time of uncertainty.
D. Slovenes, pushed West by the Avars, established their own Kingdom (Carantania) in the North, but came under the rule of the Kingdom of the Franks in 745, later Austrian rule --- conversion to Roman Catholicism.
E. Croats --- Kingdom recognized by the Pope in 924, came under Hungarian rule in 1102 and likewise became Roman Catholics.
F. Macedonians had no medieval nation to justify their identity, but look back to Alexander the Great, et. al., basis for squabble with the Greeks.
G. Albanians ---no medieval nation. Illyrians,
preceeded the Greeks and the Slavs ---- nominally under the control of
the Greeks, Macedonians, later Venetian Empire --- bckward, relatively
little impact from conquerors.
III. The Legacy of the Ottoman Turks
A. Conquest of the old Byzantine Empire and the Balkans after 1350's By 1526, all the South Slavs, plus the Greeks, Rumanians and Hungarians were conquered.
B. Serbs --- defeated at the Battle of Kosovo
Pole, 28. June 1389 --- warriors
died to a man --a day of national mourning and vow for revenge.
1. By 1485 only Dubrovnik survived as part of Venetian
Empire and the impregnable Black Mountain (Montenegro).
2. Central Serbia including Kossovo --- heavy taxes
and slave levy, but Orthodoxy tolerated
3. Bosnia, conquered in 1463 and Herzegovina 1483
---on the divide between the Catholic and Orthodox world no dominant religion
--- strength of the Bogomilian heresy.
a. Expedient conversion
to Islam of nobility and a significant numbers of peasants.
b.
Source of modern hostilities --- religious and social-economic, not ethnic.
C. Albanians: conquered gradually from about 1385-1480
1. Converted to Islam, seeing
the Turks as protectors against the Serbs.
2. Tribal hierarchy preserved
as chieftans and landowning classes were integrated into the Turkish administeration.
3. Under Turkish umbrella,
they flooded into Kossovo beginning at the end of the 17th century, becoming
the predominant population there.
D. The beginning of outside intervention
1683-1815..
1. The Habsburg reconquest 1683-1718 returned not
only the ancient holdings in Krain (Slovenes and some Croats) and Hungary
including its holdings in Transylvania (Rumania today), but also its South
Slav claims (much of the rest of Croatia and Slavonia). This line
held until the success of the national wars of liberation of the 19th century.
2. The Russian expansion: Drive to the Black Sea
capped by the victories of Catherine the Great. Right of intervention
guaranteed by treaty, 1774 and reaffirmed in 1792.
3. Napoleonic conquest of the Italian states and
of Austria in 1809 brought French rule to Dalmatia and sowed the
seeds of an Illyrian nationalism, brought the French concept of nation
and the idea of liberty from outside control.
IV. Revolutions of national liberation and the intervention of outside powers ("The Eastern Question") to World War I.
A. The Greeks were the first to revolt and establish an independent
state 1821. Not directly relevant here, but illustrates foreign interest
and involvement.
1. Phil-Hellenism --- impact on art architecture,
literature.
2. Joint British-French-Russian naval demonstration
against the Turkish-Egyptian forces at Navarino, 1827.
3. Russo-Turkish War 1828-29. 1829.8 created the
circumstances for:
1. Greek Independence, Treaty
of London, 1830. Guaranteed by Britain, France and Russia --- note the
limits of its territory.
2. Russian protectorate
over Moldavia and Wallachia --- kernel of modern Rumania.
3. Serbia given autonomy
and their own heredetary prince under the Sultan
B. Serbia: From Indepenence to World War I.
1. The Russo-Turkish War, 1877-1878 which totally
revised the map of the Balkans actually began with a revolt in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
a. Serb-Orthodox peasants
(42%), oppressed for centuries by Muslim-Serb aristocracy and privileged
peasant-landholders (40%) - remainder Catholic peasants.
b. Supported by i. Pan-Serbism
of Serbia population based on religious, social-economic anger against
centuries of Turkish rule matured into a sense of modern nationalism. ii.
Pan-Slavism of Russia ---- cover for drive to the Mediteranean iii. Habsburg-based
Jugoslavism.
c. Serbia declared war in
1876 and rebellion spread to Bulgarians.
i. "Bulgarian Horrors" brought attention of Britain to to the "Breakfast
War."
ii. Russia invaded in the Spring of 1877.
iii. Treaty of San Stefano (March 3, 1878) too favorable to Russia-- Bismarck
offered to "broker" a settlement. Treaty of Berlin (July 13, 1878)
2. Unresolved problems and the Road
to World War I.
a. Bosnia-Herzegovina given
to Austria-Hungary to administer.
i. Serb-Orthodox (43%) backward to the other nationalities because of 400
years of discrimination by the Turks.
ii. Croats (22%) favored by Austrian administration.
iii. Muslims (33%) the aristocrats and political and economic elites had
been favored by the Turks --- resented Austrian ruyle at first, but then
were able to take advantage of being integrated into the more advanced,
Central European infrastructure.
iv. ---1908 --- Pan-Serbism into Jugoslavism --- backed by Russia.
b. Bulgaria unified 1885-86
--- dispute and war with Serbia over territory.This 1908 political cartoon
from the French Parisian Petit Journal shows Franz Josef grabbing Bosnia-Herzogovina
(formal annexation) and an independent Bulgaria being torn away from Turkey.
Turkey looks on dismayed. For a sense of nationalist hostility of Serbs
against Austria, See War Fever in Serbia.
c. Unresolved nationalist
claims of the new Balkan States backed by the Russians led to the First
Balkan War, October-December 1912. Note Serb-Greek-Bulgarian expansion
into Macedonia; Serb expansion into Kossovo and Albania
d. The Albanian Question
i. Growth of national consciousness, particularly among immigrants in U.S.
and Italy.
ii. Not initially hostile to Turks, but when the Young Turk revolutionaries
pushed Ottomanization, those in Kossovo revolted on behalf of autonomy.
iii. In the wake of the Turkish collapse in the First Balkan War, Albania
declared independence, while Kossovo was occupied by the Serbs.
iv. Serb attempt to conquer Albania prompted the protest of Italy and Austria-Hungary
and the Treaty of London creating an independent Albania to the outrage
of the Serbs aimed at Austria-Hungary and her ally, Italy.
e. Compare the political
and ethno-linguistic maps of Europe on the eve of World War I.
f. Sarajevo, June
28, 1914.
g. The Arch Duke Franz-Ferdinand,
the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was a known proponent of autonomy
for the South Slavs within the Empire. This photo shows him and his wife
minutes before they were shot by a Serb nationalist who represented Serb
interests that feared the South Slav problem would be solved within the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Click here to continue.
