Taming Balkan Nationalism: The Habsburg 'Civilizing Mission' in Bosnia 1878-1914

by Robin Okey

Overview

Concentrating on the politics of the Habsburg Monarchy's self-proclaimed "cultural mission" in occupied Bosnia in the period from 1878 to the outbreak of war in 1914, Taming Balkan Nationalism addresses two related issues: the impact of "Europeanization" in a backward society and the crystallization of the identities which have since dominated Bosnian life.

On the basis of wide reading in the Austrian, Hungarian, and south Slav sources, including the Hungarian-language papers of the two leading administrators of Bosnia, Benjamin von Kállay and István Burián, Robin Okey provides fresh and wide-ranging perspectives on a whole range of issues, including the "Orientalist" assumptions of Austrian policy, the struggle of administrators for the moral high ground with nascent Serb and Croat intelligentsias, Kállay's controversial policy of the "Bosnian nation", and the strategy and personality of the intriguing Burián. He also opens up the hitherto unexplored background to student terrorism in the secondary schools of pre-1914 Bosnia, from which the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to emerge.

Beyond this immediate historical context, the book also sheds much light on wider issues such as the construction of Serb and Croat nationhood in Bosnia, the beginnings of the Europeanization of Bosnian Muslims, and the new divisions created by the rapid pace of social, economic, and intellectual change as the nineteenth turned into the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199213917
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/17/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Robin Okey is Professor of History at the University of Warwick and has published widely on Habsburg, Balkan, and east European history.

Table of Contents

Preface1. Background to a Mission: Pre-Austrian Bosnia and the Powers2. Stuttering into Gear3. The Nature of the Kállay Regime4. Kállay and the Serbs5. Kállay and the Muslims6. Kállay and the Croats7. The Crisis of the Kállay Regime8. Towards Constitutionalism, 1903-10: Divergent Visions9. A Public Reckoning: Cultural Policy in the Bosnian Diet10. An Unofficial Reckoning: The Student Movement11. On the Eve of War: A Balance SheetReview and Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

"Erudite and balanced...Okey's study contains a wide assortment of archival and published sources that offer much information about the regime's education program, student movements, and civic organizations."—CHOICE

"The book is full of fascinating detail and intelligent analysis. The research is formidable and the organization admirable."—R.J. Crampton, The International History Review

From the Publisher