BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA.

For a long time Bosnia was the extreme western point of the Ottoman Empire, on the European side. The Muslim population was larger there than anywhere else in the Balkans (38.8 percent in 1879). The Muslims lived side by side with Christians, Orthodox Christians (42.9 percent), and Catholics (18 percent). Religious communities in the Ottoman system were strongly differentiated and judicially unequal. After a long process that ended during the nineteenth century the Orthodox Christians came to identify themselves as "Serbs" and the Catholics as "Croats." They considered themselves different peoples. But the entire population was Slavic and spoke the same language, usually called "Serbo-Croatian."

In 1878 the country (from then on named Bosnia-Herzegovina, Herzegovina being the southern part) passed under the rule of another, equally multinational empire: Austria-Hungary, which first occupied it and then annexed it in 1908. The Austrian power respected the already existing religious diversity and social structure: an aristocracy made up of Muslim landowners; peasants of all three religions; and in the cities, Muslim artisans and merchants, but also a strong Orthodox mercantile presence; and, all over, the heavy influence of the various churches. However, some Muslims migrated to Turkey after 1878 and Catholic merchants and civil servants came to settle in Bosnia-Herzegovina from other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (mostly from Croatia).

Politically, Bosnia-Herzegovina was Reichsland (land of the empire), indivisible between the two parts of the empire, Austria and Hungary, and administered by a common Austro-Hungarian minister of finances.

The empire tried hard to encourage a Bosnian identity and to oppose the demands of the Croats and the Serbs. The former wanted the union of the province with Croatia, which would have replaced the dual structure (Austro-Hungarian) with a triple one (Austro-Hungaro-Croatian), a solution that was flatly refused by the Hungarians. The Serbs, the largest of the three populations, wanted to be annexed to Serbia, a country then very hostile to Austria.

The Austro-Hungarian administration tried as best it could to play up the rivalry between these three local populations. It handled the Muslims with care, respecting their customs and moderating the attempts at conversion made by some Catholic clerics. In doing this the administration sought to rely on an alliance between the Muslims and the Croats to counter the ambitions of the Serbs.

The Austrian government launched a campaign of modernization in what was then a very backward province: railway systems were built, mining and processing industries were developed, and new European-looking neighborhoods were built in the cities. A real administration was created, schools opened, and students were trained in Austrian universities. This modernization allowed for the appearance of associations, political movements, and publications that expressed opinions reflecting, among other things, the divisions among the three ethnic groups. The Landtag (provincial parliament), despite its limited power, operated as a true legislature with parties representing each of the three groups.

Simultaneously, however, more radical political movements developed as well, such as Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia), which rejected foreign power and wanted either the unification of Serbia or the creation of a large South Slavic state, or "Yugoslavia." The group was made up mostly of young Serbs, but also included a few Croats. They were encouraged by Serbia's victory in the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), and were heavily repressed by the Austrian authorities. Some activists of Young Bosnia were in contact with a secret Serb terrorist organization called "The Black Hand."

Archduke and heir Francis Ferdinand's (1863–1914) visit to Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 was meant to symbolize Austria's intention to keep Bosnia-Herzegovina in the empire. Activists of Young Bosnia lay in wait, however, and one of them, the very young Gavrilo Princip (1894–1918), shot and killed the archduke.

Locally, the incident provoked violent reactions by both Muslim and Croat mobs against the Serbs. Externally, it engendered the Austro-Serbian and international crisis that led to World War I.

WORLD WAR I

At the beginning of the war, although Serbia was much weaker than Austria, the Serbian army advanced into eastern Bosnia almost up to Sarajevo. But in November 1914 it was pushed back and during 1915 the Austro-German army occupied all of Serbia. From then on Bosnia was far from the theater of operations. It was affected only by the massive arrests of individuals suspected of being pro-Serbian and by the heavy losses of soldiers fighting on all the battlefronts in the Austrian army.

In 1918 the first Austro-Hungarian defeats strengthened those, even within the Muslim and Croat populations, in favor of a "Yugoslav" solution in Bosnia. On 5 October 1918, after the liberation of Serbia by Serbian and Allied troops, Bosnian delegates participated in the "Council of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs" in Zagreb. This council proclaimed an independent state reuniting all Southern Slavs who had been until then under the rule of the Habsburgs. The Council also immediately began negotiations to unite the newly created state with Serbia. From then on Bosnian communities with Serb majorities proclaimed their incorporation into Serbia and called on the Serbian army to maintain order. On 1 December 1918 an agreement was signed in Belgrade unifying Serbia and the "State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs" under the Karadjordjevi? dynasty to form the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes," later called "Yugoslavia."

MONARCHICAL YUGOSLAVIA

The new kingdom emerged from the Serbian victory and the Serbs therefore became the dominant people. The constitution approved in 1921 was not federal, as the Croats had desired, but was strongly unitarian. Bosnia was no longer a distinct administrative unit.

The land issue was first to come up after the war. Serb farmers working on Muslim-owned lands wanted to take them over. Violence ensued, and many Muslims escaped to Turkey in self-exile. The governing power had promised agrarian reform. The reform it promulgated in 1919 was regarded by the Muslims as a despoilment but it still provided compensation for landowners. The troubles ceased.

Suffrage would henceforward be universal and no longer based on poll tax, as it had been under Austrian rule. Muslims voted in droves for the newly formed "Yugoslavian Muslim Organization" led by Mehmed Spaho (1883–1939). The royal government needed Muslim voices (and Slovene voices) to counter Croat opposition. Spaho participated in most of the governments under the monarchy, from the constitutional regime of the 1920s to the royal dictatorship established in 1929.

Bosnia enjoyed a period of peace. Lifestyles and dress codes became more European-looking (more quickly in the Christian population than among Muslims) but the economy remained stagnant. However, the government faced a strong Croat opposition. In 1939 Prince-Regent Paul (1893–1976) sought to resolve the matter by creating a "banovina [autonomous region] of Croatia," with large powers. In Bosnia the limits of the banovina were traced according to the numerical predominance of either Serbs or Croats in each locality, but without counting the Muslims. Thus was Bosnia divided for the first time. But this regime only lasted for two years: in April 1941 Adolf Hitler's (1889–1945) troops invaded Yugoslavia, whose army collapsed in only a few days.

WORLD WAR II

By decision of the occupying powers, Yugoslavia was divided. All of Bosnia, together with Croatia proper, was subsumed into the "Independent State of Croatia," governed by the poglavnik (führer) Ante Paveli? (1889–1959) and his movement the Ustaše (Insurgent), which became the sole authorized party. In this regime Catholics and Muslims were considered "Croats." Serbs, along with Jews and Gypsies, were deemed undesirable and were the victims of mass killings from very early on, either in their villages or later in concentration camps. The numbers of victims of these massacres were often inflated by Serb writers and minimized on the Croatian side. Today's best documented demographic research estimates that approximately one hundred fifty thousand Serbs were killed in Bosnia between 1941 and 1945, and just as many in Croatia (the numbers include all war-related deaths, not only the massacres).

It is no surprise that these acts of violence were answered by armed resistance, first on the part of the Serbs. The rebels were divided into two opposing factions: in eastern and southeastern Bosnia near Serbia and Montenegro, the Chetniks, a Serb nationalist and monarchist movement under the leadership of General Dragoljub Mihajlovi? (1893–1946) (at least, theoretically) remained loyal to the government exiled in London. The northwest, in contrast, was home mostly to Communist partisans led by Josip Broz (1892–1980), known as Tito, a Croat himself, who stayed in Bosnia for almost the entire duration of the war. The Chetniks engaged in numerous massacres, mostly against Muslims (seventy-five thousand Muslims were killed in Bosnia during the war), but also against Croats. The partisans promoted a policy of openness to all ethnic groups. As the war dragged on and the people's discontentment with the occupiers grew, this openness enabled the partisans to recruit a great many Muslims and Croats for whom they were the only alternative.

Bosnia therefore became the main stage of a triangular war. The Chetniks fought more often against the partisans than against the Germans, and openly collaborated with the Italians. Partisan resistance was much more active militarily. In March 1943 Tito also sought to negotiate with the Germans, but Hitler refused.

In the end, the partisans could pull together many more men and cause many more enemy casualties. They salvaged all the weapons that the Italians had left behind after they capitulated in September 1943, and they had the support of England and America. In October 1944 the Soviet army liberated Serbia. It was therefore Tito who took power over all of Yugoslavia.

COMMUNIST YUGOSLAVIA

As early as 1943 the Antifascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia meeting at Jajce, Bosnia, had already determined the future organization of the country: it had to be a federal and not an unitarian state, as it had been during the monarchy, and the diversity of its peoples had to be acknowledged. Bosnia-Herzegovina became one of six federated republics and regained its pre-1918 borders. Two peoples were recognized: Serbs and Croats. Muslims had the right to declare themselves as "nationally undetermined," which most of them did. Much later, in 1968, they were recognized as an individual people, called Muslims (with a capital "M," while muslim without the capital referred to the religion). Therefore, Bosnia officially had three peoples.

This recognition of the Muslims as a distinct people (as had been done with Macedonians and Montenegrins twenty-five years earlier) was an answer to the need to develop multiple partnerships within the federation and to avoid confrontation between the two "great" peoples: Serbs and Croats. It also served the state's foreign policy as Yugoslavia became closer with Muslim countries in the framework of the nonaligned countries movement. At the same time, Muslim Bosnian intellectuals celebrated Bosnia's history and traditions, creating nationalist myths that were parallel to those established a century before by Serbs and Croats. Religious Muslim political movements also began appearing, inspired by those in other Islamic countries. Due to diverse migratory currents, it was also during these years that the Muslim population (39.6 percent) outnumbered for the first time the Serb (37.2 percent) and Croat (20.6 percent) populations (according to the 1971 census).

After the fall in 1966 of Serb centralist minister Aleksandar Rankovi? (1909–1982), Tito started paying greater attention to national characteristics. In 1974 a new constitution implemented a quasi-confederate regime in which each republic was given very large powers. During the whole of the communist regime Bosnia was peaceful and fully enjoyed the progress taking place across the country: universal schooling, improvements in all means of communication, creation of industries, and a higher quality of life. Nevertheless, the gap between it and the northern and more prosperous republics (Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia) continued to grow. Bosnia was an underdeveloped republic that received federal aid. It was politically backward as well: unlike those that broke out in Zagreb in 1971 and Belgrade in 1972, there was no opposition movement in Bosnia in the 1970s. It remained a conservative republic with a particularly inefficient self-management system and very powerful oligarchies. In 1987 the country was shaken by a management scandal involving (Muslim) top executives at Agrokomerc, an agribusiness firm.

THE IMPLOSION

After 1985, Bosnia, along with other Serb-populated areas, saw a rise in Serb nationalist sentiments that collided with an ever-more-present Muslim and Croatian opposition. At the beginning of 1990, when a multiple-party system had been authorized, noncommunist nationalist parties began to form in each of the three communities. These parties went on to win the first free elections in December 1990. They stayed united and shared power. Alija Izetbegovi? (1925–2003), leader of the Muslim Party of Democratic Action, was unanimously elected president of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

When the crisis worsened in 1991 Bosnia and Macedonia proposed a plan for an "asymmetrical confederation" intended to reconcile the opposing Serb and Croat factions. The plan failed. During the Croatian War despite a few local incidents, Bosnia was never directly affected by military operations. It served only as a remote base for the federal army.

But when Slovenia and Croatia became independent the balance in Yugoslavia shifted. In the truncated federation, the Serbs had an overwhelming preponderance. The Muslim and Croat populations (the majority in Bosnia when put together) could not accept this. On 15 October 1991, the Bosnian parliament, in spite of the opposition of its Serb members, declared Bosnia-Herzegovina's sovereignty. Bosnia's Serbs and their leader, Radovan Karadži? (b. 1945), opposed the decision. They had begun to establish "Autonomous Serb Regions" in the spring of 1991, and in January 1992, they proclaimed a "Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina" (later called "Republika Srpska"), that would be separate from Bosnia, should Bosnia separate from Yugoslavia. The international community demanded a referendum for Bosnia's independence, which took place on 1 March 1992. The Serbs boycotted the vote. The voters almost unanimously chose independence for Bosnia, which was internationally recognized on 6 and 7 April. War immediately broke out.

THE WAR

The Serbs wanted to include as much territory as possible in the state they had proclaimed. They prepared for this by organizing their party efficiently with the full support of the Yugoslav army. Rather quickly, they managed to establish control over about two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina: all of the north, and all of the east. They sought to eliminate all non-Serb people from these regions: this was called ethnic cleansing, complete with massacres, rapes, looting, prisoner camps, and the destruction of places of worship. The majority of these operations took place between April and December 1992. Sarajevo, the capital city, resisted, but it was completely surrounded, besieged, and bombarded for more than three years (April 1992–October 1995).

Armed groups started to organize in the rest of the country also: the Croatian Defense Council, which formed quickly and had the full support of the Croatian army, and, later, the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which supported President Izetbegovi? and was mostly made up of Muslims. In the territories that these forces controlled, similar violence was exercised against Serbs.

The international community intervened from the very beginning of the conflict. But the United Nations peacekeeping troops were sent on humanitarian missions to relieve the population's suffering, not to stop the war. A series of international peace talks ensued, where, each time, a new plan for the division of Bosnia was proposed to representatives of each of the three communities. And each in turn rejected the plan (the Serbs, twice; the Muslims, once), and nothing was done to impose and enforce it. But the very idea of sharing the country was being legitimized by these talks.

Eventually, relations between Croats and Muslims deteriorated as well, following the same logic that caused the partition of Yugoslavia and then of Bosnia. There were twice as many Muslims as there were Croats, who feared the Muslims would dominate them, although they had a stronger army, at least at the beginning. Basing their actions on the partition plans designed by the UN, the Croats began appropriating certain regions and expulsing not only the army, but also the Muslims that lived there. The Muslims resisted, then took the offensive. This new war lasted for all of 1993 and became particularly violent with mutual massacres, camp imprisonment, the destruction of monuments, and expulsions. The Croatian army destroyed half of the city of Mostar and its famous bridge. It was a war where "everyone was against everyone." From time to time Serb and Croat forces would secretly connive as a result of meetings between their political leaders.

However, starting in 1994 (the second year of Bill Clinton's presidency in the United States), the West became more active. The United States forced Muslim and Croat forces to sign the Washington agreement: together they would found the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. They stopped fighting and became de facto allies against the Serbs, which won them a few military victories and great territorial gain in 1995. In the spring of 1995 (upon the election of Jacques Chirac in France), UN troops were given a quick-reaction force (British and French) that sometimes fired back at the Serbs in Sarajevo. Throughout August and September 1995 NATO airstrikes bombarded Serb positions in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This display of force brought the parties to sign a cease-fire agreement on 12 October 1995, and, under international pressure, to start negotiations at Dayton, Ohio. But in July 1995, a few weeks before all this could happen, Serb forces massacred seven thousand Muslim prisoners at Srebrenica, the largest killing yet. The Dayton negotiations concluded on 21 November 1995, with the understanding that Bosnia-Herzegovina would be a single state, within its original boundaries, but would be—divided into two "entities," the Republika Srpska (Serb), and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Croat and Muslim). The two entities would be of approximately equal size (49 percent and 51 percent of the country), and would each enjoy great powers. A UN High Representative would monitor the operations and ensure that the agreements were respected.

AFTER DAYTON

In 1998 Bosnia had a population of 3.2 million people as opposed to 4.3 million before the war. The estimated number of casualties varies from seventy-five to ninety-five thousand to one hundred sixty thousand. There were up to 2.2 million refugees, 1.2 million of whom went abroad, and the others to different regions of Bosnia. The destruction toll was enormous (fifteen to twenty billion dollars, according to the World Bank) and the economy was in shambles. The country was legally divided into two entities, and de facto three geographically intertwined territories, each under the rule of one of the three ethnic groups. The theoretically Croat-Muslim "Federation" was a myth. Each zone became, ethnically, almost homogenous, except for certain cities in the Muslim zone (Sarajevo, Tuzla), where diversity was better preserved.

The international administration succeeded in reestablishing links of communication between the different zones. International aid enabled the reconstruction of destroyed communities and a certain revival of the economy, especially in the "Federation," but the unemployment rate (48 percent in 1997) remained staggeringly high.

The following elections confirmed the dominance of the three nationalist parties, even though the international administration forcefully removed some of the more radical leaders. Only half of the refugees ever returned, and in each zone, the return of these "minorities" caused many problems. Some of the principal war criminals, particularly Radovan Karadzi?, had not been arrested as of 2005.

Bosnia-Herzegovina is no longer a multiethnic society, but a collection of small zones, each with a homogenous population, that only holds together because of the international protectorate. The central Bosnian power is nothing now but a fiction. It is a politically and economically fragile country.

See alsoCroatia; Izetbegovi?, Alija; Karadži?, Radovan; Mihailovic cute;, Dragoljub; Paveli?, Ante; Sarajevo; Serbia; Tito (Josip Broz); World War II; Yugoslavia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Bildt, Carl. Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia. London, 1998. Bosnia before and after Dayton, and international action, as seen by the first High Representative of the United Nations in Bosnia.

Djilas, Milovan. Wartime. Translated by Michael B. Petrovich. New York, 1977. Memoirs of war by one of Tito's principal deputies, containing numerous revelations.

Holbrooke, Richard. To End a War. New York, 1998. Testimony of the American negotiator of the Dayton agreements.

Secondary Sources

Banac, Ivo. The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics. Ithaca, N.Y., 1984. In-depth study of the national aspirations and policies of various peoples.

Batakovi?, Dušan. The Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina: History and Politics. Paris, 1996. A Serbian historian's point of view.

Donia, Robert J . Islam under the Double Eagle: The Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1878–1914. Boulder, Colo., and New York, 1981. Description of a clash of civilizations at in an era of major changes.

Džaja, Sre?ko M. Bosnien-Herzegowina in der österreichischungarischen Epoche (1878–1918). Die Intelligentsia zwischen Tradition und Ideologie. Munich, 1994. Definitive work on this period.

Krulic, Joseph. Histoire de la Yugoslavie de 1945 à Nos Jours. Brussels, 1993. A very fine study of the evolution of the communist regime.

Magaš, Branka. The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-Up 1980–92. London, 1993. This book brings its well-supported answers to the most controversial questions. Bosnia has an important place in it.

Malcolm, Noel. Bosnia: A Short History. London, 1994. First systematic history of Bosnia, very complete documentation.

Mel?i?, Dunja, ed. Der Jugoslawien-Krieg. Handbuch zu Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Konsequenzen. Opladen/Wiesbaden, Germany, 1999. International collective work containing the most complete and critical studies in the field: cultural facts, political history, statistics.

Mudry, Thierry. Histoire de la Bosnie-Herzégovine. Faits et Controverses. Paris, 1999. Deeply historical and very well-documented work; the "controversies" section is particularly useful.

Popovic, Alexandre. L'Islam Balkanique. Les Musulmans du Sud-Est Européen dans la Période Post-ottomane. Wiesbaden, Germany, 1986. Text by an expert on Islam.

Ramet, Sabrina P. Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962–1991. 2nd ed. Bloomington, Ind., 1992.

——. Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Miloševi?. 4th ed. Boulder, Colo., 2002. These two books by Ramet cover the region's history since the 1960s and shed light on the cultural and institutional issues.

Tomasevich, Jozo. The Chetniks. Stanford, Calif., 1975. Classic text on the Chetnik movement and World War II.

Paul Garde