The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  16

  Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1875–1903

  The European mandate to administer Bosnia-Herzegovina with which Austria was entrusted in 1878 could be no sinecure. At that time the provinces held the repute of being wilder and more backward than any other part of Turkey in Europe (except perhaps the inner fastnesses of Albania) – some said, even of Anatolia. The ‘towns’, except Sarajevo, the seat of the Pashalik, and perhaps Mostar, were mere hamlets. ‘Industry’ consisted of peasant handicrafts, trade was done largely by barter: ‘if anyone had money’, we are told, ‘he hid it away’.1 There were few schools and practically no medical services; plague, cholera and syphilis were rife. There were only three hundred and fifty miles of carriage-roads in the two provinces; work on a single railway was just beginning. For the rest, most movement was by mule-track, and the mule or ass was the usual vehicle of transport, whether passenger or goods.

  The agriculture from which the vast majority of the population (except that fraction of it, which was, indeed, not inconsiderable, which practised the calling of banditry) was of the most primitive kind. Some tobacco was grown in the Herzegovina and plum brandy distilled in Bosnia. Otherwise, the peasant scratched the ground with a wooden plough to raise a meagre crop of maize, or pastured his lean cattle, sheep and swine on the hill-tops and in the forests. The latter, which covered a large part of Bosnia, were in theory State property; in practice, a no-man’s-land plundered at will by any comer.

  There was little law or order, especially for the Christian population. The reforms enacted by the Porte during the preceding generation had, on paper, removed most of the disabilities under which Christians had previously suffered under Ottoman rule, but in practice, the reforms were largely ignored; the governors sent to Sarajevo by the Porte either proved unable to enforce the new order against the opposition of the local Moslems or, more often, collaborated with them in sabotaging it. Most of the Christians were also the bondsmen of Moslem landlords, for the local landlords who had adopted Islam when the Turks conquered the provinces had been allowed to retain their estates. When the central authority of the Porte ceased to be effective in these remote provinces – as it did in the seventeenth century – the descendants of this class were able to extend their estates by usurpation at the expense of the Christian communities; other properties were acquired by ex-officials, tax-farmers or other immigrants. The process was more difficult where the peasant was a Moslem, for a Moslem, even where he was a peasant, was a free man, and in 1878 there were still some 77,000 free peasant holdings, almost exclusively in Moslem hands, but the vast majority of the Christian peasants, put at 80,000 families of Orthodox and 23,000 Catholics, were now ‘kmets’ on the estates of the Moslem agas, or begs, as they were commonly, although inaccurately, called,2 of whom there were then some 6–7,000. Thus although there were still a few free Christian families (and many who had lost their freedom only recently, for the process of usurpation had been going on steadily, even in the nineteenth century) and a very few Moslem kmets,3 the proposition was generally true that a Moslem was a free man and the Christian (outside the towns) a kmet.

  The landowners had not only extended their estates, but had altered the form of them from the timar to the much more burdensome chiflik, which meant that the kmet’s obligations were, in practice, ruled by local custom, but hardly at all by law. As in Austria, these obligations had grown steadily heavier with the increasing demands of the begs, and had been the cause of many revolts. Laws regulating them had, however, been enacted in 1848 and (under pressure from the Powers) in 1859. Under these the robot was abolished (it was still occasionally practised thereafter, but on a small scale, demesne farming being rare). The kmet usually paid his landlord one-third (the so-called tretjina) of his produce of cereals, fruit and vegetables, and one half his hay; the payment was usually made in kind, sometimes in cash. The landlord was responsible for the upkeep of the tenant’s domicile, farm buildings, etc. In addition, the State took tithe of all produce, and a house-tax. The haratch, or poll-tax, had been abolished in 1854, when Christians were made liable to military service, but those not called up (and these constituted the great majority) paid a tax in lieu (the bedel-i-askeri) which amounted in practice to the same thing.

  When the Monarchy’s forces entered the Provinces they met, as we have said elsewhere, with strong resistance from the local Moslems, which it took some time to overcome; and this was not even counter-balanced by friendliness from the bulk of the Christian population, for the Serbs, who constituted the majority of the Christians, although hostile to the rule of the Porte, had not wanted it replaced by that of Austria; their wish had been for unification with Serbia or Montenegro. Only the local Croats sincerely welcomed the Austrians. For some months the Provinces had remained under military occupation, and this had been succeeded by a period of experimentation which had been frankly unhappy, especially since it was complicated by a dispute between Austria and Hungary over how the authority over the Provinces was to be exercised, neither Cis-nor Trans-Leithania being willing to leave the privilege to the other. On the other hand, neither wanted the Provinces for itself, and they could not be made into a ‘Reichsland’, as Germany had made Alsace-Lorraine, because Hungary did not admit the existence of an Austrian ‘Reich’. The problem was eventually solved by putting the Provinces in charge of the Joint Ministry of Finance – a device which was less absurd than it sounds, for that Minister’s other duties were hardly more than nominal. Even when this had been decided, it took some time before the administrative machinery took its definitive shape, of the Minister in supreme charge,4 three central sections (concerned respectively with internal affairs, justice and finance) and a network of subordinate instances in the smaller towns and districts; and for a time conditions were fairly chaotic. Austria had pledged herself to retain the former Turkish officials, but those gentlemen, who in any case would have been ill-qualified to administer the new order, had, with hardly an exception, fled (where they had not been slaughtered), leaving the country without any administrative services whatever. The Austrian Government appealed to the Austrian and Hungarian Ministries for replacements, and the Ministries naturally unloaded on to the Bosnian service all the corrupt or incompetent officials of whom they wished to disembarrass themselves.

  Nor was the Monarchy’s general policy fortunate: the only definitive measure enacted in these years in the Provinces was the extension to them of the Austrian military service law. This was greatly resented by the Christian population, which had in general been exempt from such service under the Turks; it produced a revolt, and although this was put down, remained a standing source of grievance among the Bosnians.

  A new chapter opened in July 1882, when Benjamin Kállay was appointed Joint Finance Minister, a post which he held until his death, in harness, just twenty-one years later (this was an extraordinary tenure of office for an Austro-Hungarian Minister, but the appointment, like that of the other two ‘common’ Ministers, was made by the Monarch, and was not dependent on Parliament).5 Kállay was perhaps a shade superficial and self-satisfied, but he was an honest and just-minded man, and an excellent administrator. Being a Hungarian, he could not help knowing a good deal about Croats, and he also knew the Serbs, for he had spent some years as Austro-Hungarian Consul-General in Belgrade. He also liked them: he had even written a strongly sympathetic history of the Serbian people (which he himself put on the index of books prohibited in Bosnia).

  Kállay’s regime was one of enlightened autocracy, and its autocratic nature must be emphasized. It was only in 1897 that the towns were allowed a small measure of autonomy, and then the concession was confined to the towns. It was only gradually that native Bosnians were even admitted to the administrative services, and then only on a small scale: as late as 1907 only 2,493 out of the 9,106 officials or State employees6 were native Bosnians, and hardly any of them were holding positions of responsibility.7 A considerable force of police, open and secret, was kept in the provinc
es, and such devices as the subsidizing of a Press favourable to the Government and severe control over Oppositional organs were used freely.

  But the regime also deserves the adjective. Kállay began by cleaning up the administration. The service, as it developed under his hand, still did not constitute the cream of the Austro-Hungarian bureaucracy, for the best men did not enter a service which took them into remote, lonely and unhealthy spots and was, moreover, badly paid. Furthermore, while the central serviesc contained some Germans and Magyars, and the financial branch a large number of Jews, the local services, which brought their holders into contact with the population, were necessarily staffed almost entirely with Slavs, and among these there were not even many Czechs, the only Slav people in the Monarchy who were natural bureaucrats.8 These posts were staffed chiefly with Croats (who constituted about half the total), Slovenes and Poles, peoples on the whole little accustomed to governing others. Consequently, cases of corruption and inefficiency still occurred. But on the whole, the service was incomparably cleaner and more efficient than anything which Bosnia could have produced out of its own resources, or which any of the contemporary Balkan States could show.

  Through this instrument, Kállay exercised a benevolent dictatorship, which in certain fields achieved a complete transformation of conditions before the occupation. Security became absolute: brigandage was stamped out and the incidence of crimes of violence became the lowest in the Monarchy. Justice became completely even-handed and accessible to all. The three local religions were placed on a footing of complete and scrupulously maintained equality and the freedom of all of them in puris spiritualibus (we shall have to return to the qualification implicit in these words) was entirely respected. In matters where expenditure was involved, Kállay’s hands were tied by a decision taken by the Austro-Hungarian Government at the outset of the occupation, that the Provinces were to be self-supporting: the central exchequer’s only contribution towards them was a ‘military credit’ of some £300,000 annually, towards the upkeep of the local garrisons, and everything else had to be met out of local resources. The State facilitated the issue of the loans out of which the railways were constructed, but all other expenditure was met out of local revenue. This gravely limited what could be done, especially in respect of public works, and it must be admitted that what was done included a few bad and expensive planning errors.9 and a certain amount of eyewash.10 On the whole, however, the available moneys seem to have been allocated between the different departments in just enough proportion to real needs11 and to have been well and wisely spent. Medical and veterinary services were improved out of recognition. A considerable number of State primary schools and gymnasia were constructed, and some exceedingly valuable technical schools of agriculture, etc., and a great deal done to improve local standards of cultivation. Over 1,000 miles of railways were built – narrow-gauge, indeed, owing to the difficulties of the terrain12 (these, as has been said, were financed by borrowing) and the figure would have been much larger had not the Hungarian Government persistently obstructed the establishment of direct railway communication between the Provinces and Cis-Leithania. The road system was brought, according to a sensible observer,13 up to the level of that of the Tirol and other mountainous provinces of Austria. Some valuable afforestation and irrigation was carried through. The State forests were managed on modern lines and made to yield a useful profit. The production of the salt-mines, another Government monopoly, was increased ten-fold. The Government devoted special pains to encouraging cottage industries, and some of these, including carpet-weaving, managed to compete on the Austrian market.

  A good deal of development was carried out also by private enterprise, which played a considerable part in modernizing the entire aspect of the Provinces.

  There was, of course, a reverse side to even the more striking-looking parts of the medal. Where the private enterprise was concerned, it could be argued that in many cases it took much more money out of the country than it put in, especially in the case of some concessions for the exploitation of forests, some of which were granted on incautiously generous terms. The Provinces themselves did not always benefit even by the wage-bills, not always through the concessionaires’ ill-will; but the Bosnian mentality was still very pre-economic: workers were apt to disappear once they felt their pockets full enough, or if they stayed, to keep an unconscionable number of holidays. Some enterprises in the Herzegovina were forced, against their will, to work entirely with imported labour from Dalmatia.14 To the taxpayer, the reverse side of the Government’s enterprises was the cost of them. Taxation rose some five-fold between the beginning and the end of Kállay’s regime. It is true that it was more justly allocated, more fairly collected and better spent than in Turkish days; also that taxable capacity had risen substantially; but this large increase nevertheless weighed very heavily on some elements in the population, and was one of the main grievances felt by them. It was felt the more bitterly because the Bosnians, on the whole, had little appreciation for such benefits as education, or even sanitation or security; they much preferred periculosam libertatem and actually resented much which, had they been modern-minded and correctly-thinking men, they would have appreciated. As that wise man, ‘Odysseus’, wrote:

  The Porte does not like being reformed, but at least it does not try to reform other people…. However irksome the regulations of the Porte may be, it is the only Government which gives its Christian subjects liberty to fight their quarrels out, and that is the only form of liberty which they really appreciate.15

  One problem which Kállay preferred not to touch at all was that of the landlord-tenant relationship. Some said that he wanted to placate the Moslems; others, to preserve the social structure as such (himself a member of a very ancient Hungarian ‘gentry’ family, he is recorded as having said that the Provinces needed a ‘gentry’ class through which they could be governed); he himself maintained that the kmets were not yet sufficiently worldly-wise to profit by emancipation; and it is a fact that the number both of peasants and of begs who went under when the winds of capitalism struck them was alarmingly large. But the perpetuation of the pre-Occupation system of land-tenure (the Austrians simply kept the law of 1857 in force, with the single modification that rents and taxes were now paid in cash) gave rise to widespread ill-feeling, particularly since a proportion of the chifliks had been recent usurpations which the peasants had fully expected the occupying authorities to rectify. The authorities, however, had found the task of disentangling usurpations from established title-deeds so difficult that they had simply recognized the entire status quo in respect of land tenure, and the only facility granted under Kállay’s regime to a tenant wishing to buy his holding was that the Government lent him half the purchase price, at 7%; the other half he had to meet out of savings (which he rarely possessed), or borrow privately, when he was asked an exorbitant charge.

  In the cultural field, the Government from the first laid down the principles of inter-confessional equality and of freedom of worship, and its supporters could make a good case for maintaining that it observed strictly both these principles. The religious susceptibilities of the Moslems were respected with a care which impressed observers. The Sultan was prayed for in the mosques;16 the green banner of the Djihad was hung out on the ritual occasions; the appointment of the clergy was left in the hands of the Sheik-ul-Islam. Moslem recruits in barracks were made to keep the observances of their faith with a strictness unknown in those areas in which the writ of the Sultan really ran, and often unwelcome to themselves. Cases between Moslems affecting such questions as family law were tried by their own judges, in special Courts. Only the administration of the Wakoufs was put under supervision, but this precaution was of great profit to those for whose benefit the institutions were designed to serve.

  The Catholics came under the general rules governing the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Austrian Crown, and prospered greatly under them. On the occupation, the Pope created
a new Province of Bosnia-Herzegovina, with an archepiscopal see in Sarajevo and suffragans in Mostar and Banjaluka. As the Bishop of Ragusa already held jurisdiction over parts of Herzegovina, this gave the Catholics a large organization which they expanded so successfully that whereas in 1878 they had possessed only thirty-five churches in the two provinces, there were a hundred and thirty-five of them in 1900,17 some of them in villages in which there was hardly a Catholic to be found.

  The Orthodox Church enjoyed full freedom of worship, and received its full quota of Government subsidies. Here, however, the Government did introduce a measure of indirect political control. The practice before the occupation had been for the Patriarch of Constantinople to appoint the Bishops, who were then paid out of a fund, known as the Vladicharina, which was raised by subscription from among the congregations of their sees. The parish priests were elected by their own parishioners, and similarly maintained by them. The Government bought the episcopal advowson off the Patriarch, abolished the Vladicharina, and paid the Bishops regular stipends out of general taxation. The parish priests were still elected by their parishioners, but no priest could be given a cure of souls unless he possessed a certificate of good morals, issued by the seminary.

  It cannot be denied that this was a salutary precaution, and as the instruction in the seminary was greatly improved, the effect of the Government’s measures was to raise substantially both intellectual and moral levels among the Orthodox priests. But it was equally obvious that an aspirant priest’s political views, as well as his personal morals, were taken into account when his certificate was issued, as were those of a candidate for a bishopric.

  Although, moreover, the expansion of the Catholics was due to their own efforts – the Government gave them no more than their due quota of subsidies – the fact remained that it was much faster than that of the Orthodox. Catholic children also entered the secondary educational establishments in far higher numbers than those of the Moslems or Orthodox (although not the Jews, whose proportionate quota was easily the highest of all) and were admitted in larger numbers into the State services. This was because they applied more readily, and were better qualified; but it gave colour, if not substance, to the accusation that the Catholics, or Croats, were being favoured at the expense of the Serbs.