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The Futile Crescent? Judging the Legacies of Ottoman Rule in Croatian History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2009

Patrick Hyder Patterson
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Extract

Beginningwith the conquests of theBalkans and Hungary in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and drawing to an end only with the Habsburg takeover of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878, the Ottoman interlude in the Croat lands has long been a cause of great anxiety, great sorrow, great resentment, and great pride. For many writers and interpreters of Croat history, the response to the Turkish threat has figured as a source of profound meaning—indeed, even as a source of identity—and they have clearly intended that their audiences see things in this way as well. Even today the encounter with the Turks may still carry that great weight. In one recent study of the long Croat-Turk relationship, for instance, Ottoman-era specialist Ive Mažuran unequivocally calls the time of invasion and occupation “the most tragic period in Croatian history.” This, then, is still a past that signifies.

Type
Forum: The Ottoman Menace
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 40 , April 2009 , pp. 125 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2009

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References

1 Mažuran, Ive, Hrvati i Osmansko carstvo (Zagreb, 1998), 12Google Scholar. All translations from foreign languages are my own unless otherwise noted.

2 Whereas most of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century accounts surveyed for the analysis presented here have evidently assumed otherwise, John Fine's review of a vast corpus of premodern sources suggests, in fact, that “there is no evidence to show such ‘Croat feeling,’ on any scale, at any time in the Middle Ages” and, furthermore, that such explicitly ethnic feeling actually did not arise until the nineteenth century. Fine, John V. A. Jr., When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans: A Study of Identity in Pre-Nationalist Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods (Ann Arbor, 2006), 7–9CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. As Fine insists, the critical question is this: “when an enemy (e.g., the Turks) struck, did people fight back as ‘Croats’ rather than as Christians or as subjects of the Hungarian crown (or any other ‘nationality’ label one might propose)? If one cannot provide an argument that people stood up as ‘Croats,’ then one can argue that, while patriotism or Christian ideology may have been present, a particular Croat patriotism or ethnicity was lacking.” Ibid., 7. The adoption here of the terminology that the subject literature itself presents does not carry any judgment that the people and places described really were what these tellers of history have said they were. Yet such considerations of caution need not stop our inquiry dead in its tracks. Indeed, there is significant scholarly value in an attentive examination of just who ends up being counted as “Croat” in those historical renderings that can themselves be fairly counted as “Croat.”

3 Kvaternik, Eugen, “Historijsko-diplomatski odnošaj kraljevine Hrvatske napram ugarskoj kruni Sv. Stjepana” [1861], in Kvaternik, Politički spisi: rasprave, govori, članci, memorandumi, pisma, ed. Kuntić, Ljerka (Zagreb, 1971), 217–319, here 235–36Google Scholar.

4 On the history and power of the antemurale christianitatis metaphor in accounts of Croat history, see, e.g., Žanić, Ivo, “Simbolični identitet Hrvatske u trokutu raskrižje-preziđe-most,” in Kamberović, Husnija, ed., Historijski mitovi na Balkanu (Sarajevo, 2003), 161–202Google Scholar.

5 For Slovene interpretations of the Ottomans and their significance, see, e.g., Simoniti, Vasko, Turki so v deželi že: Turški vpadi na slovensko ozemlje v 15. in 16. stoletju (Celje, 1990)Google Scholar.

6 It is clear that we might profitably look elsewhere as well. Themes of Ottoman cruelty and misrule have a long tradition in Croat historiography, dating back at least to the turn of the eighteenth century and the work of Pavao Ritter Vitezović (1652–1713), whose indictments of the Ottomans are regularly cited in nineteenth- and twentieth-century accounts. See, e.g., Vitezović, , Oživjela hrvatska, ed. Bratulić, Josip, trans. Zlatko Pleše (Zagreb, 1997)Google Scholar.

7 Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko carstvo, 12.

8 Quoted in Smičiklas, Tade, Poviest Hrvatska: dio drugi: od godine 1526–1848 (Zagreb, 1879)Google Scholar. Smičiklas was a leading Croat historian of his time and a nationalist activist.

9 See, e.g., Horvat, Rudolf, Najnovije doba hrvatske povjesti (Zagreb, 1906), 36Google Scholar (complaints about Hungarian efforts to compel the use of Magyar in public life).

10 Supilo, Frano, “Politika u Hrvatskoj: odlomci iz članaka” [1911], in Supilo, Izabrani politički spisi, ed. Petrinović, Ivo (Zagreb, 2000), 221–30, here 222–23Google Scholar.

11 On the cruelty of Ottoman rulers beyond the Croat lands, see, e.g., Klaić, Vjekoslav, Slike iz slavenske povijesti (Zagreb, 1903), 119–20Google Scholar (on Kosovo).

12 Kvaternik, Evgenij [Eugen], Istočno pitanje i Hrvati: historično-pravna razprava (Zagreb, 1868), 150Google Scholar.

13 Trumbić, Ante, “Iz mojih političkih uspomena: Suton Austro-Ugarske i Riječka rezolucija” in Trumbić, Izabrani politički spisi, 98–179Google Scholar, here 120.

14 Ibid.

15 Trumbić, “Elaborat o hrvatskom pitanju” [1932], in Trumbić, Izabrani politički spisi, 258.

16 Ibid., 259.

17 Prelog, Milan, Povijest Bosne u doba osmanlijske vlade: I. dio (1463–1739) (Sarajevo, n.d.) [c. 1924]Google Scholar.

18 In much the same spirit, the preeminent Prečani Serb political leader Svetozar Pribićević argued that “Kemal Pasha recognized that the Sultan was an obstacle to all progress of the Turkish nation, and he mercilessly overthrew the dynasty that had ruled for centuries.” “Pismo srbima” [December 1933], in Pribićević, Izabrani politički spisi, ed. Hrvoje Matković (Zagreb, 2000), 301–07, here 301.

19 Ferdo Šišić, Kako je došlo do okupacije i onda do aneksije Bosne i Hercegovine (1878. odnosno 1908.) (Zagreb,1938), 46. Trained in the late Habsburg period and stamped to a great extent with the professional consciousness of that era, Šišić became one of the leading lights of the Croat historical guild in the interwar period.

20 Ibid., 29, citing Koetschet, Josef, Osman Paša, der letzte grosse Wezier Bosniens und seine Nachfolger (Sarajevo, 1909), 75Google Scholar. While I have concentrated in this study on those instances in which history-tellers have spoken more generally about “the Ottomans” or “the Turks” as a group, comments about individual figures and events can be, as this vignette suggests, a rich source of insights into the interpretation of the Ottomans and their culture.

21 Sakcinski, Ivan Kukuljević, Juran i Sofia ili Turci kod Siska: junačka igra u trih činih [1839], ed. Turčinović, Josip (Zagreb, 1989), 55–56Google Scholar. A major literary figure, Kukuljević Sakcinski was also a prominent historian and political activist.

22 See, e.g., Zhelyazkova, Antonina, “Islamization in the Balkans as an Historiographical Problem: The Southeast-European Perspective,” in Adanir, Fikret and Faroqhi, Suraiya, eds., The Ottomans and the Balkans: A Discussion of Historiography (Leiden/Boston/Köln, 2002), 223–66Google Scholar.

23 Trumbić, “Članci ‘O programu’ u povodu fuzije Hrvatske narodne stranke i Stranke prava u jedinstvenu Hrvatsku stranku u Dalmaciji” [1905] in Trumbić, Izabrani politički spisi, 79–97, here 94.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Josip Juraj Strossmayer, letter to William Gladstone, 10 February 1877, from Seton-Watson, R.W., The Southern Slav Question and the Habsburg Monarchy (London, 1911)Google Scholar, here 429; reprinted at http://www.h-net.org/~habsweb/sourcetexts/stross5.htm (last accessed 1 June 2008).

27 Ibid.

28 On the “fanaticism” cultivated among Bosnia's Muslim Slav population, the bosanski Turci, see Klaić, Vjekoslav, Bosna: podatci o zemljopisu i poviesti Bosne i Hercegovine: prvi dio: zemljopis (Zagreb, 1878), 84–92Google Scholar.

29 Strossmayer, letter to Gladstone, 10 February 1877.

30 Klaić, Bosna, 116.

31 Prelog, , Povijest Bosne u doba osmanlijske vlade: II. dio (1739–1878) (Sarajevo, n.d.) [c. 1924], 36Google Scholar.

32 Trumbić, “Razgovor francuskog novinara Henri Pozzija s Dr Antom Trumbićem” [translation of conversation originally published in Pozzi, Henri, La Guerre revient (Paris, 1933)Google Scholar] in Trumbić, Izabrani politički spisi, 282–91, here 286. Trumbić spoke of the Serbs in terms that echoed the familiar denunciations of Turkish culture in earlier times: “The corruption, rapacity, and incompetence of their administration earned them the ridicule of Europe; now they are imposing that on us.” Ibid., 283.

33 Radić, Stjepan, Živo hrvatsko pravo na Bosnu i Hercegovinu (Zagreb, 1993) [1908], 12Google Scholar.

34 Radić, , Hrvatski politički katekizam: za svjetsku, slavensku i hrvatsku politiku, ed. Vukmanić, Miroslav (Opatija, 1995) [1913], 50–51Google Scholar.

35 Such hostile readings of Turkic culture proved persistent; see, e.g., Tomasic, Dinko [Tomašić], Personality and Culture in Eastern European Politics (New York, 1948)Google Scholar.

36 Starčević, Ante, “Stranke u Hrvatskoj,” in Starčević, Politički spisi, ed. Ladan, Tomislav (Zagreb, 1971) [1868], 159–96Google Scholar, here 170.

37 Horvat, Politička povijest Hrvatske, 2nd ed., vol. 1, ed. Albert Goldstein and Bože Čović, (Zagreb, 1990) [1936–1938], 319.

38 Ibid.

39 Trumbić, “Iz mojih političkih uspomena: Suton Austro-Ugarske i Riječka rezolucija,” 121.

40 Horvat, Politička povijest Hrvatske, vol. 2, 141.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Starčević denied the “national” character of Slovenes and Serbs. As Ivo Banac notes, his view was premised on the exclusive identification of a land with its nation-constituting inhabitants: “there could be only one political people in a given state, and the Croats, as the bearers of the indivisible Croat state right, were the sole political people on the territory of Starčević's Great Croatia.” Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, 1984), 86; see generally 85–89.

44 Starčević, “Stranke u Hrvatskoj,” 187.

45 Ibid. Ivo Banac observes that Starčević and his supporters “blithely idealized the Ottoman regime in order to bring out the defects of the Habsburg system.” Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia, 92.

46 Starčević, “Oko saborske adrese” [27 January 1866], in Starčević, Politički spisi, 140–58, here 151–52.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., 152.

49 Jalnuši Diletant, pseudonymous post to http://www.forum.hr, thread Društvo > Politika > Nazivi Balija i Osmanlija, http://www.forum.hr/showthread.php?t=123831, posted 10 December 2005 (last accessed 1 November 2007).

50 Mažuran, Hrvati i Osmansko carstvo, 310.

51 Ibid.

52 Tudjman, Franjo, Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy, revised ed., trans. Mijatovic, Katarina (New York, 1996), 108–09Google Scholar.

53 Quoted in ibid., 158.

54 Ibid., 108–09.

55 For a more complicated, dissenting reading of the Ottoman past and Croatian future, see Lovrenović, Ivan, Bosanski hrvati: esej o agoniji jedne evropsko-orijentalne mikrokulture (Zagreb, 2002)Google Scholar. Lovrenović takes issue with contemporary conceptions of the nation advanced by Tuđman and others, which he says resist the “Bosnian, Balkan, and Oriental elements” of the Bosnian Croat culture (features that Lovrenović, unlike many others, views rather favorably): “each one has had the aspiration of integrating them, but in a manner that would purify them from the outset, sucking out of them the substance of their identity—de-Balkanizing them and de-Bosnianizing them, and thus degrading their entire identity to the role of an agent of the Croatian state idea.” Ibid., 10 (emphasis in original). See also Moačanin, Nenad, Turska Hrvatska: Hrvati pod vlašću Osmanskog Carstva do 1791. (Zagreb, 1999)Google Scholar.