''This is page about Bosnians (as citizens of
Bosnia and Herzegovina).''
'Bosnians' (
Bosnian,
Serbian, and
Croatian:''Bosanci'' / ''Босанци''; sing. ''Bosanac'' / ''Босанац'') are people who live in, or come from,
Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the modern state definition a Bosnian can be anyone who holds a
citizenship in the state including members of the constituent ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina:
Bosniaks,
Serbs and
Croats. Additionally, ethnic minorities such as
Jews,
Roma,
Albanians,
Montenegrins, and others may consider themselves Bosnians. Some Bosnians consider themselves to be ethnic Bosnians.
In addition, there is a sizable population in Bosnia and Herzegovina who believe that Bosnians are a nation holding a distinct collective
cultural identity. By this usage, a Bosnian would be an individual who belonged to this culture. They assert that this collective identity is capable of diminishing or overcoming existing political and ethnic divisions
[1].
In the July 2007 survey
[2] conducted by
UNDP, 57% of surveyed identified an ethnic designation as the primary one, while 43% opted for "being a citizen of BiH". However, 75% of the surveyors answered positively to the question "As well as thinking of yourself as a [Bosniak, Croat, Serb],
do you also think of yourself as being a citizen of the whole of BiH?". In the same survey, 43% opted for Bosnian- Herzegovinian as the primary identity, 14% identified themselves solely with their specific ethnic or religious group, while 41% expressed the dual identity.
[3]
History
The earliest cultural and linguistic roots of Bosnian history can be traced back to the
Migration Period of the
Early Middle Ages. It was then that the
Slavs, a people from northeastern Europe, invaded the
Eastern Roman Empire with their
Avar overlords and settled the
Balkan peninsula. There, they mixed with the indigenous paleo-Balkan peoples known collectively as the
Illyrians. Centuries later, the
Croatian and
Serbian kingdoms emerged from the chaos of the
Dark Ages, contrasted by their subjects' adherence to
Catholic and
Orthodox Christianity. The Croats to the West swore allegiance to
Rome, influenced by neighboring Catholic kingdoms, while the Serbs to the East fell under
Byzantine influence and embraced Orthodoxy. Between these kingdoms an independent Bosnian state arose, marked by its weak religious structure and unclear ethnic affiliation. Inhabitants of the
Bosnian kingdom called themselves
Bošnjani, a regional name derived from the river
Bosna which flows through the heart of the country. Before the collapse of the
Roman Empire, the river was called the ''Bosona'' by the native
Illyrians, and some scholars speculate that the name Bosnia itself derives from this term.
The Bosnian kingdom grew and expanded under the
Kotromanic dynasty to include Croatian and Serbian territories. As such, Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians alike dwelt within its borders, along with adherents of a native
Bosnian Church whose origins and nature are a subject of continued debate among scholars. Those belonging to this sect simply called themselves ''Krstjani'' ("Christians"). Many scholars have argued that these Bosnian Krstjani were
Manichaean dualists related to the
Bogomils of Bulgaria, while others question this theory, citing lack of historical evidence. Both Catholic and Orthodox Church authorities considered the Bosnian Church heretical, and launched vigorous proselytizing campaigns to stem its influence. As a result of these divisions, no coherent religious identity developed in medieval Bosnia as it had in Croatia and Serbia.
As the centuries passed the Bosnian kingdom slowly began to decline, fractured by increased political and religious disunity. By then, the
Ottoman Turks had already gained a foothold in the
Balkans. First defeating the Serbs at the
Battle of Kosovo and expanding westward, the Turks eventually conquered all of Bosnia and portions of neighboring
Croatia. These developments would alter Bosnian history forever, introducing an Islamic component into the already confounded Bosnian ethno-religious identity. The Bosnian Church would forever disappear, although the circumstances under which it did are as hotly debated as its nature and origins. Some historians contend that the Bosnian ''Krstjani'' converted en masse to Islam, seeking refuge from Catholic and Orthodox persecution, while others argue that the Bosnian Church had already ceased to operate many decades before the Turkish conquest. Whatever the case, a distinct
Slavic Muslim community developed under Turkish rule in Bosnia, giving rise to the modern
Bosniaks.
About one hundred years ago, the term "Bosniak" had a similar meaning to the one "Bosnian" has today, in addition to being ethnic as well. In fact many of the people who lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina once considered themselves to be a part of the "Bosniak people", not exclusively Muslim Bosniaks (as today) but also the Bosnian
Catholics and
Orthodox Christians.
During the
Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1878 to 1918, the administration of
Benjamin Kallay, the Austro-Hungarian governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, enforced the idea of a strengthened unitary Bosnian nation (Bosanci) that would incorporate Muslim Bosnians as well as the Bosnian Catholics and Bosnian Orthodox Christians, who at that time were slowly beginning to separate into distinct peoples which threatened to distabilize Bosnia. Kallay symbolized the new nation with a structured, modern introduction of an official Bosnian flag, Bosnian language and coat of arms. In this way the Bosnian distinctiveness was strengthened and more importantly underlined and distanced from Serbian and Croatian nationalist interests in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
[ Plut, Dijana; (2002)]
“What is Democracy in Textbooks?” pg. 117-118
The idea was fiercely opposed by
Croats and
Serbs, as it came at a time when neighboring
Serbia and
Croatia were reinforcing their national and ethnic identity in the process of building their own
nation states. Unlike Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatian and Serbian understanding of nationhood in late 19th century was more deeply rooted in religion as in bringing people of same religion together into a single nation. This may very well explain their interests and obvious success in assimilating Catholic and Christian Orthodox Bosnians into unified Croatian and Serbian national identities. This policy further clouded the Bosnian national issue and the official use of the name, and essentially only Muslim Bosnians continued to exist in an ethnic Bosnian awareness. Famous contemporary Bosniak writer
Safvet-beg Basagic tells in his own words: ''Don't you know Bosniak, there was a time not long ago - at most 15 summers, when in our proud Bosnia and heroic land Herzegovina, from
Trebinje (south) to
Bosanski brod (north), a single Serb or Croat didn't walk. But today, through their whims, strangers spread from both directions (Serbia and Croatia). [...] Both guests have arrived, in a gentle false way, to take the most holy away from us - our proud and dear name (Bosniaks).
During the time when Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of
Yugoslavia and heavily influenced by Croat and Serb politics neither of the two terms
''Bosnian'' or ''Bosniak'' were recognized as a nation. Thus, Bosnian Muslims and anyone who confessed themselves to Bosnian ethnicity were listed under the category "regional affiliation" by the Yugoslavian statistics. This also applied to the last census in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1991. However, because of this, census format in former Yugoslavia was often subject of political manipulation. As a matter of fact, Muslim Bosnians requested the option ''Bosnian'' in the constitutional amendments of 1947 and 1973, but instead they had to declare themselves either as Serbs or Croats until 1963, "undecideds" or "Muslim in a national sense" (with lower case m) until 1973, and
Muslims (with capital M) until 1993.
In 1992 a referendum was held for the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina which was to be founded on a principle of a single Bosnian nation which would once again unite Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox Bosnians as one people. The referendum was however followed by a bloody
ethnic war, with the interference of neighbouring Croatia and Serbia.
When in 1990 the name
Bosniaks was re-introduced to replace the term Muslim it was too late for that term to be realistically accepted by non-Muslim Bosnians, as they were already naturalized into Serb and Croat nations and further radicalized by the ethnic animosities among all three ethnic groups.
This resulted in Bosniak, or even Muslim, as terms being (re)coined recently as a political compromise. Peculiarly enough, in the present day Bosnia it is practically impossible for a citizen to declare her/himself as Bosnian. It can be tedious to argue this point as one inevitably has to take a lot of flak from Croat, Serb, or even Bosniak nationalists in the process. It is often forgotten, or rather ignored, that the unfortunate division in Bosnia-Herzegovina along the ethnic lines has its origins in the 19th century, and that distinctive ethnic prefixes didn't even exist before. Due to the wide-spread practice in the Ottoman empire the distinction (for taxation purposes, military service etc.) was made based on religion and this heritage only contributed to the ethnic chaos in the Balkans that followed in the wake of its retreat from Europe, followed by the Croatian and Serbian nationalist policy in Bosnia.
Bosnians in respect to religion
Bosnians are a multi-religious as much as multi-ethnic society but this is not to say that its component religions and ethnicities are homogeneous and independent from each other.
According to Tone Bringa, an author and anthropologist, in respect to Bosnia and Bosnians she states that "''Neither
Bosniak, nor
Croat, nor
Serb identities can be fully understood with reference only to
Islam or
Christianity respectively but have to be considered in a specific Bosnian context that has resulted in a shared history and locality among Bosnians of Islamic as well as Christian backgrounds.''" According to Bringa, in Bosnia there is a singular, “trans-ethnic culture” that encompassed each ethnicity and makes different faiths, including Christianity and Islam, “
synergistically interdependent”.
[ Bringa, Tone; Being Muslim the Bosnian Way ISBN 0-691-00175-8 ]
A common anthropological trait present among many Bosnians that resulted from influence of religion on history in Bosnia and Herzegovina and which was continually evident among some Bosnians even today is also a preference for mythological method of knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer was very much dependent on oral tradition given that early
Bosnian Church was not well organised, and even where it was, there were not many written testaments left to the posterity to learn from. As a result collective memory of many historical events among Bosnians in absence of factual information have become the “facts” of collective memory which are not always in line with historical facts.
Still large numbers of Bosnians are secular which is a trend that has more profoundly found root in last 60 years in Bosnia and Herzegovina as they were part of the
Communist system that rejected, but tolerated, religion.
Bosnians today
Recently, the denial of Bosnian nationhood, as a unifying trait of those who stem from Bosnia and Herzegovina, has generally been used by some political factions to drive the constituent ethnicities of
Bosnia and Herzegovina further apart.
Because of this pressure and because of its complex history Bosnian national identity today remains a complex issue among its adherents. Variably members of the Bosnian nation, of various ethnic and religious backgrounds who live or stem from Bosnia and Herzegovina, define themselves Bosnians primarily as they feel they belong to the same geographical region which characterizes them with particular cultural and historical traits. However, many choose to declare themselves as Bosnian as a method for overcoming ethnic animosities aroused by the recent war. Due to more recent war and massive relocations of Bosnians they have experienced a significant internationalization of their identity with many considering themselves as having dual identity (one as Bosnians and another of the country where they currently live). As a result in diaspora Bosnians have shown tendencies towards more or less successful organizing into viable Bosnian communities.
Given heavy involvement of the European community in political integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian nationalization issue is viewed by some as a contemporary European experiment strikingly similar to modern
Europeanism movement.
Maps and demographic illustrations
See also
★
Bosniaks
★
Serbs
★
Croats
★
Herzegovinians
★
Bosnian War
★
History of Bosnia and Herzegovina
★
List of Bosnians
★
Yugoslavs
★ Views of the renowned writer
Meša Selimović on Bosnians
[2]
External links
★
Bosnia-Hercegovina: An Interdisciplinary Study
References
1. [1], from Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina website
2. UNDP Published a Major Research on Return, Identity, Politics and Social Trust
3. Pulse of the citizenry (Internet Explorer-only link)
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