Ottoman Rule
1815-1848 		1878-1918






Bosnia 1848-1878



With Serbia granted political autonomy, i.e. independence in everything but name, Bosnia-Hercegovina had become a remote Ottoman outpost, connected with the remainder of the Empire by a bottleneck of mountainous terrain, the Sandjak of Novi Pazar.
Meanwhile, nationalism became a political sentiment of ever growing importance. While Croat nationalism focussed on overcoming the partition of Croat lands (Dalmatia, Croatia-Slavonia, Militaergrenze) and foreign (Habsburg) rule, Serbian nationalists had achieved political control of core Serbia and hoped to expand their state so that all Serbs could be united under Belgrade's government.
A main flaw in the nationalist concept of thought was that it tied nationality with language and disregarded the confession. Both Serb and Croat nationalists did not accept a Bosnian Muslim nationality; both regarded the Bosnian Muslims as either Croat or Serb renegades which could be reassimilated.
After the Russo-Turkish war of 1878, the BERLIN CONGRESS reshaped the map of the Balkans peninsula. Serbia was granted full independence and the region around Nis; tiny Montenegro expanded, and Austro-Hungary occupied Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Sandzak of Novipazar - a step which infuriated Serb nationalists, as they had eyed at the annexion of Bosnia-Hercegovina to Serbia.






EXTERNAL
LINKS 		History of Bosnia-Hercegovina, by Andreas Riedlmayer, from Bosnian Embassy, from Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 edition, by Tyler Osgood, until 1800
Sarajevo over the centuries, from the Bosnia Page Links to Bosnian history, from Caltech
DOCUMENTS
REFERENCE Fred Singleton, A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples, Cambridge University Press (1985) 1999
H.J. Kornrumpf, Einige osmanische Dokumente zum Neubau von Kirchen in Bosnien 1853 (1994) (a few Ottoman Documents on the construction of new Churches in Bosnia 1853), in : Analecta Isisiana LV, Istanbul : Isis 2001, pp.279-290, in German [G]


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2002, last revised on June 21st 2005

Click here to go Home
Click here to go to Information about KMLA, WHKMLA, the author and webmaster
Click here to go to Statistics