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Bosnia: A Short History
" A Short History" was celebrated on its first publication as a brilliant work of history which set the terrible war in the Balkans in its full historical and political context. This revised edition has been updated with a new chapter that covers the events of 1993-1995 and remains the definitive work on the complex history of Bosnia. 'A quite brilliant piece of historical record-straightening. Everyone who wishes to have an opinion about Bosnia must read this book.' - Niall Ferguson, "Daily Mail". 'Clear-sighted, authoritative and eloquent.' - Dimitri Obolensky, "Times Literary Supplement". 'A Triumph of clarity, learning and balance.' - Adrian Hastings, "New Statesman and Society". 'Excellent.' - Paddy Ashdown, "Sunday Times". 'This is a splendid work of synthesis on a very complex subject, written with insight and the best, indeed the only, informed book on a history that has become both topical and tragic.' - Hugh Trevor-Roper, "Sunday Telegraph". 'A marvellous book, a work of great scholarship.' - Margaret Thatcher.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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February 2, 2013
Much of what goes by "history" in the Balkans is actually myth, generated and repeated by the regional tribes to serve their chauvinistic purposes. The serious historian will necessarily clash with those treasured myths. Malcolm is a serious historian.
When published in 1994, in the middle of the war, this book was Malcolm's herald to an uncomprehending world. He had the fortitude to state up front that he believed the Serbians were primarily responsible for the destruction of Bosnia. For this, he was attacked as "biased." He is not so much biased as opinionated. Objectivity does not require neutrality. Or, as he expressed it himself, truth is not the average of the contending viewpoints.
Two main themes pervade.
First, the idea of Bosnia as a distinct, free-standing nation is very old and very well-established. The oft-heard claim that Bosnians are "really" Croats or "really" Serbs is historically unsupportable. In a fascinating digression, Malcolm demonstrates that the core ancestors of modern Bosnian Serbs were not even Slavs. They were Vlachs, a Romanized migrant tribe, remnants of the Illyrians, who pre-dated the 6th century Slav migration by hundreds of years. So much for Serbian and Russian affinity for their "Slav brothers."
Nor was was Bosnia merely an arbitrarily-drawn administrative district. It was an independent kingdom from the end of Byzantine dominion in 1180 until the Ottoman conquest in 1463 (Herzegovina was annexed in 1326). The Ottomans conferred on it the distinction of being a separate eyalet, or province of the Empire, with its own high-ranking pasha. The Austro-Hungarians from 1878-1918, and Tito's communists from 1945-1989, in their turn treated it similarly.
Malcolm's second major theme is that the much-cited "ancient hatreds" that were said by superficially-informed Western commentators to have "re-surfaced" after the collapse of the Yugoslav state did not exist. All the grim episodes in Bosnian history, he maintains, were engendered by outside forces, not internal hatreds.
That is especially true of the 1992-95 war. Bosnian Catholics and Bosnian Orthodox Christians share nothing distinctive with inhabitants of Croatia or Serbia, except religion (the more-or-less common language cuts across all religions; and there is no distinctive Bosnian or Serbian or Croation race). Croatia and Serbia, in their competition with each other, have long tried to persuade their co-religionists in Bosnia that they were "really" Croats or Serbs. Slobodan Milosevic pushed that gambit to its limits. In truth, the claim that religious hatred characterized the history of Bosnia is a distortion.
During the 400 years of Ottoman rule, there seems to have been little religious strife. Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims lived in substantial harmony, at least in comparison to the bitter religious conflicts occurring on the main part of the European continent. Jews and Gypsies were treated better by these Mohammedans than by just about any country in Christian Europe.
When the Ottomans completed their conquest of Bosnia in 1463, resident Muslims were 2% of the population. By about 1600, they were a majority. Malcolm goes to lengths to argue that the conversion was voluntary. He cannot avoid conceding that non-Muslims were discriminated against. "Voluntary" converts attained lower taxes and access to the courts and to government careers. Moreover, about 200,000 Christian boys were forcibly taken to Istanbul for conversion during that century and a half in the infamous devsirme. But mass conversion was not coerced in the brutal way that our Christian ancestors so nobly enlightened conquered pagans.
Similar harmony continued under the Austro-Hungarians, who made tolerance an imperial policy; and, despite some localized pogroms, through the inter-war period as well. Under Tito, all religion was repressed (though not forbidden). The combination of 40 years of atheistic communism plus the greater secularism of the modern era made Bosnia, on the eve of the 1990s war, one of the most secular nations in the world.
Malcolm is scornful--almost bitter, it seems--of the Western belief at the time that the 1990s war was a "civil war" caused by a thing called "violence" which "flared up" on both sides, rather than what it was--a carefully-planned Serbian invasion of a woefully out-gunned Bosnia.
Milosevic had control of the federal Yugoslav army. His strategy, borrowed from the Vietnamese communists, was to set up "Serb autonomous regions" in Bosnia; to arm them through the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic (now on trial at the Hague); to create violent local incidents inviting Bosnian reaction; then to have the autonomous regions request "protection" from the federal army.
The actual war began when a leader of the Serb irregulars, the notorious Arkan, attacked the town of Bijeljina, in northeastern Bosnia just across the border from Serbia. It was the axial point of two swaths of territory to be taken over by the Serbians: across the top of Bosnia, linking Serbia with Banja Luka, and down the eastern border to the ethnically Serb areas of Herzegovina. Federal artillery would pound each town, then the irregulars would go in and terrorize the populace. In six weeks, the federal army supporting various paramilitaries took 60% of Bosnia.
The federal army supposedly was then withdrawn, and the fighting left to the Bosnian Serbs under command of the future butcher of Srebrenica, Ratko Mladic (still at large). In fact, Malcolm argues, it was all a sham, with most of the federal army staying in Bosnia under different cloaks (shades of Vietnam, again).
Malcolm excoriates the West for two mistakes. The first was its refusal to lift the arms embargo, which in practice disadvantaged only the Bosnians. To lift it, said British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd with astonishing thick-headedness, "would only prolong the fighting."
The second was to proffer the Vance-Owen Plan calling for ethnic cantons labeled as such, but leaving the boundaries unsettled, which invited further fighting. Worse, it engendered a true civil war, as Muslims and Bosnian Croats battled each other for territory.
Malcolm adds that the final Western blunder was to abandon all pretense of enforcing the Vance-Owen plan, and adopt instead the tragically laughable policy of establishing UN-protected "safe areas." One of those was Srebrenica. The book ends in 1993. The worst horrors were yet to come.
Malcolm's credibility slips in only one respect. He seems to bend too far over backwards to present Muslims favorably--not just the Bosniaks of the recent war, but the Ottomans as well. Were they really so mild and well-meaning?
Books, like Olympic divers, should get degree-of-difficulty marks. This was a hard book to write. The sources are scanty and access to them difficult. Bosnia was settled, invaded, and impinged upon by so many civilizations that there is no unified tale, just dozens of fragmented tales. The bibliography is in ten languages.
The old tale of the blind men and the elephant is too simple a metaphor for Bosnia. Any faction can argue any position and find some past episode to support it. A novice in Balkan history like me must be modest in evaluating a work by so learned and diligent an expert as Malcolm. I can, though, exercise the veteran trial lawyer's instinct for credibility. On that basis, I judge him honest and sincere, at a minimum, and mostly credible. That's a solid endorsement in a field so suffused with axe-grinding.
When published in 1994, in the middle of the war, this book was Malcolm's herald to an uncomprehending world. He had the fortitude to state up front that he believed the Serbians were primarily responsible for the destruction of Bosnia. For this, he was attacked as "biased." He is not so much biased as opinionated. Objectivity does not require neutrality. Or, as he expressed it himself, truth is not the average of the contending viewpoints.
Two main themes pervade.
First, the idea of Bosnia as a distinct, free-standing nation is very old and very well-established. The oft-heard claim that Bosnians are "really" Croats or "really" Serbs is historically unsupportable. In a fascinating digression, Malcolm demonstrates that the core ancestors of modern Bosnian Serbs were not even Slavs. They were Vlachs, a Romanized migrant tribe, remnants of the Illyrians, who pre-dated the 6th century Slav migration by hundreds of years. So much for Serbian and Russian affinity for their "Slav brothers."
Nor was was Bosnia merely an arbitrarily-drawn administrative district. It was an independent kingdom from the end of Byzantine dominion in 1180 until the Ottoman conquest in 1463 (Herzegovina was annexed in 1326). The Ottomans conferred on it the distinction of being a separate eyalet, or province of the Empire, with its own high-ranking pasha. The Austro-Hungarians from 1878-1918, and Tito's communists from 1945-1989, in their turn treated it similarly.
Malcolm's second major theme is that the much-cited "ancient hatreds" that were said by superficially-informed Western commentators to have "re-surfaced" after the collapse of the Yugoslav state did not exist. All the grim episodes in Bosnian history, he maintains, were engendered by outside forces, not internal hatreds.
That is especially true of the 1992-95 war. Bosnian Catholics and Bosnian Orthodox Christians share nothing distinctive with inhabitants of Croatia or Serbia, except religion (the more-or-less common language cuts across all religions; and there is no distinctive Bosnian or Serbian or Croation race). Croatia and Serbia, in their competition with each other, have long tried to persuade their co-religionists in Bosnia that they were "really" Croats or Serbs. Slobodan Milosevic pushed that gambit to its limits. In truth, the claim that religious hatred characterized the history of Bosnia is a distortion.
During the 400 years of Ottoman rule, there seems to have been little religious strife. Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims lived in substantial harmony, at least in comparison to the bitter religious conflicts occurring on the main part of the European continent. Jews and Gypsies were treated better by these Mohammedans than by just about any country in Christian Europe.
When the Ottomans completed their conquest of Bosnia in 1463, resident Muslims were 2% of the population. By about 1600, they were a majority. Malcolm goes to lengths to argue that the conversion was voluntary. He cannot avoid conceding that non-Muslims were discriminated against. "Voluntary" converts attained lower taxes and access to the courts and to government careers. Moreover, about 200,000 Christian boys were forcibly taken to Istanbul for conversion during that century and a half in the infamous devsirme. But mass conversion was not coerced in the brutal way that our Christian ancestors so nobly enlightened conquered pagans.
Similar harmony continued under the Austro-Hungarians, who made tolerance an imperial policy; and, despite some localized pogroms, through the inter-war period as well. Under Tito, all religion was repressed (though not forbidden). The combination of 40 years of atheistic communism plus the greater secularism of the modern era made Bosnia, on the eve of the 1990s war, one of the most secular nations in the world.
Malcolm is scornful--almost bitter, it seems--of the Western belief at the time that the 1990s war was a "civil war" caused by a thing called "violence" which "flared up" on both sides, rather than what it was--a carefully-planned Serbian invasion of a woefully out-gunned Bosnia.
Milosevic had control of the federal Yugoslav army. His strategy, borrowed from the Vietnamese communists, was to set up "Serb autonomous regions" in Bosnia; to arm them through the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic (now on trial at the Hague); to create violent local incidents inviting Bosnian reaction; then to have the autonomous regions request "protection" from the federal army.
The actual war began when a leader of the Serb irregulars, the notorious Arkan, attacked the town of Bijeljina, in northeastern Bosnia just across the border from Serbia. It was the axial point of two swaths of territory to be taken over by the Serbians: across the top of Bosnia, linking Serbia with Banja Luka, and down the eastern border to the ethnically Serb areas of Herzegovina. Federal artillery would pound each town, then the irregulars would go in and terrorize the populace. In six weeks, the federal army supporting various paramilitaries took 60% of Bosnia.
The federal army supposedly was then withdrawn, and the fighting left to the Bosnian Serbs under command of the future butcher of Srebrenica, Ratko Mladic (still at large). In fact, Malcolm argues, it was all a sham, with most of the federal army staying in Bosnia under different cloaks (shades of Vietnam, again).
Malcolm excoriates the West for two mistakes. The first was its refusal to lift the arms embargo, which in practice disadvantaged only the Bosnians. To lift it, said British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd with astonishing thick-headedness, "would only prolong the fighting."
The second was to proffer the Vance-Owen Plan calling for ethnic cantons labeled as such, but leaving the boundaries unsettled, which invited further fighting. Worse, it engendered a true civil war, as Muslims and Bosnian Croats battled each other for territory.
Malcolm adds that the final Western blunder was to abandon all pretense of enforcing the Vance-Owen plan, and adopt instead the tragically laughable policy of establishing UN-protected "safe areas." One of those was Srebrenica. The book ends in 1993. The worst horrors were yet to come.
Malcolm's credibility slips in only one respect. He seems to bend too far over backwards to present Muslims favorably--not just the Bosniaks of the recent war, but the Ottomans as well. Were they really so mild and well-meaning?
Books, like Olympic divers, should get degree-of-difficulty marks. This was a hard book to write. The sources are scanty and access to them difficult. Bosnia was settled, invaded, and impinged upon by so many civilizations that there is no unified tale, just dozens of fragmented tales. The bibliography is in ten languages.
The old tale of the blind men and the elephant is too simple a metaphor for Bosnia. Any faction can argue any position and find some past episode to support it. A novice in Balkan history like me must be modest in evaluating a work by so learned and diligent an expert as Malcolm. I can, though, exercise the veteran trial lawyer's instinct for credibility. On that basis, I judge him honest and sincere, at a minimum, and mostly credible. That's a solid endorsement in a field so suffused with axe-grinding.
August 23, 2016
Bosnia: A Short History, by Noel Malcolm, is an excellent and concise account of Bosnian history from the period of Slavic migration in the sixth century to the collapse of Yugoslavia and the beginning of the Bosnian Genocide (this book was published in 1994, before the end of the war in the Balkans and many of the more gruesome details were publicly known). Clearly, the Bosnian War had much influence on the book due to its publication date, but Malcolm writes a concise history that spans many aspects of Bosnian history in detail.
Malcolm begins with a brief overview of the region before Slavic migration, talking about local Illyrian tribes, Roman rule and the presence of valuable mineral mines in the area. Malcolm moves on to the movement of the Slavic tribes into the region, and the intermixing of Vlach tribes from Bulgaria. We then follow the ins and outs of Bosnian history up to its invasion by the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1400's. Bosnia existed as an independent kingdom up until this point, at times allying or fighting neighbouring kingdoms from Hungary, Serbia or even Italy. the Hungarian Kingdom sought to control Bosnia for many years, and Venice had designs on expanding its control over Dalmatia by annexing the vulnerable hinterland bordering the province from Bosnia.
Malcolm details the ethnic and religious composition of Bosnia at this point. As an extremely controversial subject to this day, he does a remarkable job trying to remain level headed, especially at a time when a genocide was occurring inside the country of subject. Malcolm talks about the mixing of Slavic-Croatians and Serbians within Bosnia, as well as the arrival of Vlachs, Ragusan traders, and even Germans from Transylvania in the pre-Ottoman era.
Bosnia at the time was heavily Catholic, with a large concentration of Orthodox Christians in the Herzegovina region. Pious Catholics viewed the Bosnia Christians as slightly heretical, as they often mixed in local customs and beliefs to create a Christianity more suited to them, but heretical to Papal and Franciscan Catholics. Malcolm takes much time to disprove the theory that Bogomilism (a form of dualist Christianity closely related to Manichaeism, which believed Earth and humanity were naturally evil, and only good deeds could bring one closer to God, amongst other ideas) and were instead motivated by numerous internal customs and traditions that allowed for a more adaptive form of Christianity.
In the mid-1400's, the Ottoman Turks began their conquest of the Balkan region, in competition with Hungary, and succeeded in annexing Bosnia and most of the Balkans. This led to a period of Turkish rule, which marked a large change in Bosnia's religious make-up. Islamic conversion was very successful in Bosnia, second only to Albania, and many Bosnian's converted. The Turks also settled large numbers of Orthodox Christians into the area, to counter the influence of Catholicism closely associated with the Ottoman's rivals in the region, including Venice and Austria. Malcolm also writes a lengthy and interesting chapter on Jews and Gypsy's in Bosnia, and the shifting tolerance and persecution of these communities in Turkish-Bosnia. Muslim landowners became local elites in much of Bosnia, as well as Orthodox priests. The Turks also encouraged nomadic tribesmen to move to the border regions of Bosnia to use as proxy-soldiers in their struggles with Hungarian and then Austrian competition in the area, which both later states reciprocated. Turkish rule began to crumble in the 19th century, as internal struggles within the Ottoman state and foreign interference began to incite rebellious movements, inter-ethnic and religious strife, and nationalistic tendencies. After a series of Balkan wars in the mid 19th century, Austria-Hungary gained control of the region, formally annexing it in the early 20th century under pressure from a growing Serbian nationalism in newly independent Serbia.
Austro-Hungarian rule came to an end following WWI, and led to the creation of a unified Yugoslavia under the direction of the victorious Allies. Bosnia at this time became more of a backwater, with many identifying as Serbian leaving for that region, and Croatian leaving for Croatia. The growing military might of Germany and Italy leading up to WWII created a tense political situation which the King of Yugoslavia tried to appease, to no avail. Germany eventually invaded, setting up occupation zones for themselves, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. This era led to the rise of Yugoslavian resistance groups, such as Tito's Partisans, as well as a number of nationalist rebel groups within Serb-dominated regions. Croatians largely cooperated with the Nazi regime. The fall of the Axis powers eventually lead to a Partisan victory, with Tito proclaiming a Communist state - which Tito ruled for many decades.
The Communist state in Yugoslavia was quickly kicked out of the Comintern by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. This lead Tito to pursue a Neutrality league, bringing him into contact with many Arab nations unaligned to either side of the cold war. This period also lead to the reintroduction of Bosnia's Muslim's as important posters in the Yugoslavian state due to their understanding of Islamic tradition and the uses this would have in foreign relations with other unaligned states. The era also saw Bosnia continue its tradition as a backwater of Yugoslavia, with its representation in the Yugoslav government severely weakened. Indeed, Bosnia retained many autonomous rights, but was not considered a homogeneous region like Serbia or Croatia.
This distinction was one of the main issues in the fall of Yugoslavia. Croatians and Serbian peoples living in Bosnia both wished to gain either autonomy or accession to their respective nations, and when Yugoslavia fell apart, and both Croatia and Slovenia declared independence, and an aggressive and genocidal Serbia began to rise up, Bosnia became the battle ground between the opposing forces. Originally supported by Croatia, independent Bosnia soon fell out with their allies, and both sides began a long campaign of violence and genocide to try and ensure maximum territorial and political gain. The book ends at this time, before some of the most iconic scenes of the conflict, and much of the more heinous genocidal acts were committed within Bosnia. Malcolm does note, however, that massacres were taking place, the words "ethnic cleansing" were being toyed with by a foot-dragging United Nations, and so on.
Malcolm's account of Bosnia's history is fascinating. The many tales of conquest and annexation that Bosnia faced throughout its history is interesting. Malcolm does an excellent job comparing the various aspects of Bosnian history, and refuting the more ethnically charged contemporary myths about the nation. He goes into great detail, sometimes to his own detriment, about Bosnia's religious and ethnic composition himself, something he freely admits is difficult to understand due to the ravages of time and the difficulty of obtaining primary sources. Even so, Bosnia: A Short History is an interesting read about a nation that has experienced much trouble and much peace in its long and storied history, and continues to be an important centre for global affairs. Recommended for its concise nature and strong academic qualities, as well as the ease of reading and insight into the intricacies of Bosnian history.
Malcolm begins with a brief overview of the region before Slavic migration, talking about local Illyrian tribes, Roman rule and the presence of valuable mineral mines in the area. Malcolm moves on to the movement of the Slavic tribes into the region, and the intermixing of Vlach tribes from Bulgaria. We then follow the ins and outs of Bosnian history up to its invasion by the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1400's. Bosnia existed as an independent kingdom up until this point, at times allying or fighting neighbouring kingdoms from Hungary, Serbia or even Italy. the Hungarian Kingdom sought to control Bosnia for many years, and Venice had designs on expanding its control over Dalmatia by annexing the vulnerable hinterland bordering the province from Bosnia.
Malcolm details the ethnic and religious composition of Bosnia at this point. As an extremely controversial subject to this day, he does a remarkable job trying to remain level headed, especially at a time when a genocide was occurring inside the country of subject. Malcolm talks about the mixing of Slavic-Croatians and Serbians within Bosnia, as well as the arrival of Vlachs, Ragusan traders, and even Germans from Transylvania in the pre-Ottoman era.
Bosnia at the time was heavily Catholic, with a large concentration of Orthodox Christians in the Herzegovina region. Pious Catholics viewed the Bosnia Christians as slightly heretical, as they often mixed in local customs and beliefs to create a Christianity more suited to them, but heretical to Papal and Franciscan Catholics. Malcolm takes much time to disprove the theory that Bogomilism (a form of dualist Christianity closely related to Manichaeism, which believed Earth and humanity were naturally evil, and only good deeds could bring one closer to God, amongst other ideas) and were instead motivated by numerous internal customs and traditions that allowed for a more adaptive form of Christianity.
In the mid-1400's, the Ottoman Turks began their conquest of the Balkan region, in competition with Hungary, and succeeded in annexing Bosnia and most of the Balkans. This led to a period of Turkish rule, which marked a large change in Bosnia's religious make-up. Islamic conversion was very successful in Bosnia, second only to Albania, and many Bosnian's converted. The Turks also settled large numbers of Orthodox Christians into the area, to counter the influence of Catholicism closely associated with the Ottoman's rivals in the region, including Venice and Austria. Malcolm also writes a lengthy and interesting chapter on Jews and Gypsy's in Bosnia, and the shifting tolerance and persecution of these communities in Turkish-Bosnia. Muslim landowners became local elites in much of Bosnia, as well as Orthodox priests. The Turks also encouraged nomadic tribesmen to move to the border regions of Bosnia to use as proxy-soldiers in their struggles with Hungarian and then Austrian competition in the area, which both later states reciprocated. Turkish rule began to crumble in the 19th century, as internal struggles within the Ottoman state and foreign interference began to incite rebellious movements, inter-ethnic and religious strife, and nationalistic tendencies. After a series of Balkan wars in the mid 19th century, Austria-Hungary gained control of the region, formally annexing it in the early 20th century under pressure from a growing Serbian nationalism in newly independent Serbia.
Austro-Hungarian rule came to an end following WWI, and led to the creation of a unified Yugoslavia under the direction of the victorious Allies. Bosnia at this time became more of a backwater, with many identifying as Serbian leaving for that region, and Croatian leaving for Croatia. The growing military might of Germany and Italy leading up to WWII created a tense political situation which the King of Yugoslavia tried to appease, to no avail. Germany eventually invaded, setting up occupation zones for themselves, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. This era led to the rise of Yugoslavian resistance groups, such as Tito's Partisans, as well as a number of nationalist rebel groups within Serb-dominated regions. Croatians largely cooperated with the Nazi regime. The fall of the Axis powers eventually lead to a Partisan victory, with Tito proclaiming a Communist state - which Tito ruled for many decades.
The Communist state in Yugoslavia was quickly kicked out of the Comintern by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. This lead Tito to pursue a Neutrality league, bringing him into contact with many Arab nations unaligned to either side of the cold war. This period also lead to the reintroduction of Bosnia's Muslim's as important posters in the Yugoslavian state due to their understanding of Islamic tradition and the uses this would have in foreign relations with other unaligned states. The era also saw Bosnia continue its tradition as a backwater of Yugoslavia, with its representation in the Yugoslav government severely weakened. Indeed, Bosnia retained many autonomous rights, but was not considered a homogeneous region like Serbia or Croatia.
This distinction was one of the main issues in the fall of Yugoslavia. Croatians and Serbian peoples living in Bosnia both wished to gain either autonomy or accession to their respective nations, and when Yugoslavia fell apart, and both Croatia and Slovenia declared independence, and an aggressive and genocidal Serbia began to rise up, Bosnia became the battle ground between the opposing forces. Originally supported by Croatia, independent Bosnia soon fell out with their allies, and both sides began a long campaign of violence and genocide to try and ensure maximum territorial and political gain. The book ends at this time, before some of the most iconic scenes of the conflict, and much of the more heinous genocidal acts were committed within Bosnia. Malcolm does note, however, that massacres were taking place, the words "ethnic cleansing" were being toyed with by a foot-dragging United Nations, and so on.
Malcolm's account of Bosnia's history is fascinating. The many tales of conquest and annexation that Bosnia faced throughout its history is interesting. Malcolm does an excellent job comparing the various aspects of Bosnian history, and refuting the more ethnically charged contemporary myths about the nation. He goes into great detail, sometimes to his own detriment, about Bosnia's religious and ethnic composition himself, something he freely admits is difficult to understand due to the ravages of time and the difficulty of obtaining primary sources. Even so, Bosnia: A Short History is an interesting read about a nation that has experienced much trouble and much peace in its long and storied history, and continues to be an important centre for global affairs. Recommended for its concise nature and strong academic qualities, as well as the ease of reading and insight into the intricacies of Bosnian history.
August 30, 2023
”The years 1992 and 1993 will be remembered as the years in which a European country was destroyed. It was a land with a political and cultural history unlike that of any other country in Europe. The great religions and great powers of European history had overlapped and combined there: the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, and the faiths of Western Christianity, Eastern Christianity, Judaism and Islam».
There you go, in the paragraph above you'll find, in a nutshell, the reasons behind my fascination.
All of us interested in this country and this topic have a debt of gratitude towards Noel Malcolm for this outstanding historiographic/political piece that must have taken a titanic effort to write.
That said, I did take a star out, as I don't agree with the light, semi-condoning treatment that some Croatian actions get in the book. Nor do I think that the suffering of the almost 200.000 Serbs that were expelled from their homes in the Croatian krajina should be overlooked or labelled as anything other than "ethnic cleansing"; notwithstanding the genocide and barbaric crimes that Serb leaders were commiting against Muslims in neighbouring Bosnia.
Nevertheless, this book is an Illuminating and thorough account of Bosnian history. I would even say that reading this is key to dispel both the widespread misinformation about Bosnian identity that is sadly still common currency in the Balkans; and the ignorance and oblivion with which Western statesmen are slowly killing the (should-be) sovereign state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
There you go, in the paragraph above you'll find, in a nutshell, the reasons behind my fascination.
All of us interested in this country and this topic have a debt of gratitude towards Noel Malcolm for this outstanding historiographic/political piece that must have taken a titanic effort to write.
That said, I did take a star out, as I don't agree with the light, semi-condoning treatment that some Croatian actions get in the book. Nor do I think that the suffering of the almost 200.000 Serbs that were expelled from their homes in the Croatian krajina should be overlooked or labelled as anything other than "ethnic cleansing"; notwithstanding the genocide and barbaric crimes that Serb leaders were commiting against Muslims in neighbouring Bosnia.
Nevertheless, this book is an Illuminating and thorough account of Bosnian history. I would even say that reading this is key to dispel both the widespread misinformation about Bosnian identity that is sadly still common currency in the Balkans; and the ignorance and oblivion with which Western statesmen are slowly killing the (should-be) sovereign state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
July 1, 2019
A decent primer on Bosnian history, albeit one that felt a bit rushed to meet the needs of the early 1990s for a deeper understanding of the country. The most important point this book makes is about the historical reality of Bosnia as a nation. Bosnia is not like Syria or Iraq in the sense of being an "artificial" country with borders put together by foreign powers. It has existed with its traditional border at the Drina River for centuries. There is also no deterministic concept of the constituent peoples of Bosnia constantly being at odds with one another; in fact there have been long periods of harmony between them. Their divisions have been inflamed repeatedly by outside powers, for whom Bosnia has been either a prize or a pawn. If Bosnia breaks up in the coming decades it will mean the destruction of an established European nation, not the unraveling of a fictive colonial creation. At the very least people should pause before accepting such an outcome lightly.
August 22, 2011
This book is well nigh perfect in providing an accessible history of Bosnia which puts the war there into perspective for the general reader. Except for knowing some Bosnians, studying the Bogomils in the context of heresiology and mentions of the country within the context of more general histories of Yugoslavia and the Balkans, I hadn't known much of anything about Bosnia before reading this. Reading it, I now feel I have a foundation for further study and understanding.
July 21, 2025
A valuable book of intense and rich information about Bosnia. It goes from the Roman times, Charlemagne, the Ottomans and the Islamization, World War II, and into the genocidal civil war. A great book about the rich history of this beautiful country.
Most importantly the book was unbiased and gave the facts. Solid book.
Most importantly the book was unbiased and gave the facts. Solid book.
December 30, 2020
When he wrote that ancient tribe Dalmatians got their name from Albanian word delma (sheep) I needed to check biography of this guy. And what we can read- he is university professor of history!!! At the same time he is a president of some society for anglo-albanian friendship. That explains everything. What a shame for the trees which are destroyed for paper of this book.
November 11, 2011
This is one of the best books on the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina I came across. Superb scholarship and a fascinating and well balanced discussion of one of the most fascinating places in the world.
January 23, 2008
Much like KOSOVO: A SHORT HISTORY, this is required reading. It's impossible to properly understand the Balkans without at least having read these two books by Noel Malcolm.
September 6, 2022
It wasn't a misunderstanding.
It was their ever-present hypocrisy.
It was their ever-present hypocrisy.
February 26, 2022
Yugoslavia a massively confusing topic, big Noel was rather helpful. Bit of a flex quoting "what I said when it happened." Also overall angerey vibes but understandable. Bit on Bosnian genocide esp intriguing. I can't pronounce half the names though.
February 25, 2014
Ko prebereš 4 knjige o določenem zgodovinskem obdobju na določenem geografskem področju, pri petem avtorju praviloma ne pričakuješ nekih novih odkritij. Napaka! Malcolm sicer res ne postavlja nekih revolucionarnih teorij in ne piše zgodovine na povsem drugačen način, ampak čisto zares ponuja tako celovit pregled bosansko-hercegovske zgodovine, v katerem pokriva vse možne aspekte družbenega življenja, da sem se pri branju neprestano spraševala, kako to, da knjiga nima veeeliko več strani in kako mu je uspelo strniti toliko informacij, prigod, citatov in zanimivosti na 500 strani. In vseskozi ohraniti pozornost in zanimanje bralca, kot bi bral najbolj napeto kriminalko.
Že nekaj dni sem neverjetno očarana nad briljantnostjo njegovega doprinosa k (mojemu) razumevanju zgodovine Bosne in Hercegovine, o kateri se mi še pred nekaj meseci, priznam, ni niti sanjalo.
Že nekaj dni sem neverjetno očarana nad briljantnostjo njegovega doprinosa k (mojemu) razumevanju zgodovine Bosne in Hercegovine, o kateri se mi še pred nekaj meseci, priznam, ni niti sanjalo.
July 8, 2019
For a “short history”, this book was surprisingly comprehensive. Starting from prehistoric times and concluding with the aftermath of the conflict in the 90s, this work was an interesting political history but also included insightful commentary on the various misconceptions surrounding both modern and historical Bosnia. Through his commentary Malcolm demonstrates just how misunderstood Bosnia and its people truly are. While this lack of knowledge has manifested itself in relatively benign ways throughout history, such as historical European population surveys confusing Bosnian Muslims with ethnic Turks, it also had more severe consequences. By making ill advised assumptions about Bosnian history and culture such as believing that inter-ethnic tensions were part and parcel of Bosnian society from the beginning of time, the international community in the 90s spectacularly failed to prevent (and even contributed to) genocide and oppression of Bosnians. A recent trip to Bosnia brought to light just how unique the country and it’s people truly are. Ignorantly thinking it would be basically a “mini Turkey”, I was surprised to discover how multicultural/multi religious Sarajevo and other cities were. Although the Islamic heritage is definitely amazing, it is far from the only cultural attraction. Beyond this, Bosnia as a whole and Sarajevo specifically have a unique feel as a result of its war torn history. As other travelers to Sarajevo have remarked, the entire city feels like a gigantic museum. While it has exhibited great resilience and is undergoing much development, reminders of the war are everywhere. Whether it’s bullet holes on the sides of buildings, “Sarajevo roses” on sidewalks, or cab drivers who remember using the Tunnel of Hope (Tunel Spasa) to smuggle basic necessities into the city during the war, it is truly surreal to see how people go about their everyday lives in a city that was being shelled less than 30 years ago. Noel Malcolm’s work, found in nearly even book store in Sarajevo, is superb in terms of it its coverage of this conflict. However, the initial chapters could have benefited from more exploration of Bosnian culture itself. The people of Bosnia are as unique as it’s history and should be learned about as such. As Malcolm alludes to at multiple points in the book, it is sadly ironic that such a beautiful and hospitable people have such a painful history. I would add that the natural beauty of the country also contributes to this sad dichotomy. Just as wherever you look in Bosnia there are reminders of a vicious war, there too are beautiful mountains, lakes and valleys untouched by commercialization. Overall, “Bosnia: A Short History” does provide the reader with the facts and commentary necessary to begin to understand this fascinating place. However to truly understand Bosnia, one must interact with the people themselves. As Alija Ali Izetbegović, the first President of Bosnia and Hercegovina, once said “Once the analysis is made, and when the miracle of Bosnian resistance is solved from a historic distance, it will be found - and I am sure of that - that the secret was somewhere in the souls or character of the people.”.
March 23, 2018
It is a good and informing book. The author obviously did a lot of research and knows the area well. However, there are excerpts and chapters which are either superficial, biased or not researched enough.
One of them is the history of the vlachs, where the author definitely ablides too much to the Roeslerian theory that vlacho-romanian languages formed themselves in small pockets of Illyria to be then exported north of the Danube and by some very improbable ways took over and became spoken in a huge territory roughly today's Romania. This is a fringe theory pushed by 19th century scholars very much similar to the Terra Nullius of Australian colonists. The mainstream countertheory is not even mentioned.
Another sizeable downplay is the sizeable pecuniary incentives Bosniak peasants had in order to convert and become Muslim. We see similar patterns in Albania, Dobrudja and Kardzheli region of Bulgaria; this is a widespread phenomenon in Ottoman pashaliks. The underlying presence of the extinct Bosnian church is not a decisive factor, as suggested by the author. The conversion is widespread only in ares which were under direct Turkish rule, but not in Balkan lands with local rulers, such as Wallachia, Greece south of Thessaloniki and Northern Serbia.
Probably most dissapointing is the suggestion that the Bosnian war should have been allowed to continue in complete defeat for the Bosnian Serbs and the Dayton accords should not have existed. This is an immense fallacy which would have led to more bloodshed, revenge and recrimination. That would have really destroyed Bosnia. The vindication is here 23 years after when, even if it's an often disfunctioning state, Bosnia is at peace, aiming towards prosperity and for better of worse generations pass and wounds slowly heal. At the 2014 world cup, Bosnia aligned a team with players of all three ethnic groups and religions.
One of them is the history of the vlachs, where the author definitely ablides too much to the Roeslerian theory that vlacho-romanian languages formed themselves in small pockets of Illyria to be then exported north of the Danube and by some very improbable ways took over and became spoken in a huge territory roughly today's Romania. This is a fringe theory pushed by 19th century scholars very much similar to the Terra Nullius of Australian colonists. The mainstream countertheory is not even mentioned.
Another sizeable downplay is the sizeable pecuniary incentives Bosniak peasants had in order to convert and become Muslim. We see similar patterns in Albania, Dobrudja and Kardzheli region of Bulgaria; this is a widespread phenomenon in Ottoman pashaliks. The underlying presence of the extinct Bosnian church is not a decisive factor, as suggested by the author. The conversion is widespread only in ares which were under direct Turkish rule, but not in Balkan lands with local rulers, such as Wallachia, Greece south of Thessaloniki and Northern Serbia.
Probably most dissapointing is the suggestion that the Bosnian war should have been allowed to continue in complete defeat for the Bosnian Serbs and the Dayton accords should not have existed. This is an immense fallacy which would have led to more bloodshed, revenge and recrimination. That would have really destroyed Bosnia. The vindication is here 23 years after when, even if it's an often disfunctioning state, Bosnia is at peace, aiming towards prosperity and for better of worse generations pass and wounds slowly heal. At the 2014 world cup, Bosnia aligned a team with players of all three ethnic groups and religions.
July 1, 2023
A good overview of Bosnian history, published in the middle of the 1990s Bosnian War (the introduction ends with the sentence: "All I have wanted to do in this book is to set out some of the details of [Bosnia's] history before the country itself is utterly destroyed."). Covers both the medieval and Ottoman periods as well as the 19th and 20th century. Holds both Serbia and the West responsible for the conflict of the 1990s. Fortunately, Bosnia is better off today, in a regionally more peaceful environment, yet unfortunately, also remains a corrupt and hybrid (semi-authoritarian, semi-democratic) and divided country.
May 20, 2014
Amazing read and one of very few books in English that actually goes through the history of Bosnia from early times to medieval to modern day. However, it seems highly laced with a bias towards a unified Bosnia, which is not bad in and of itself, but in doing so, disregards nationalist appeals to Serbs and Croats from outside powers and perhaps 'forces' an acceptance of what an acceptable 'Bosnian' should look like, disregarding how people may have actually identified and why they chose to identify as such.
November 7, 2019
I really liked first few chapters about history of the Bosnia, it is really great insight in the herectical Church of Bosnia and islamisation, it changed the way I look at that part of Bosnian history. But I disliked latter parts of the book. Malcolm is clearly taking Bosniak side of the story and he liked Alia Izetbegovic the dumbest and most shortsided politician in the hard times of breakup of Yugoslavia. Malcolm is too onesided for my taste!
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January 29, 2014لتحميل الكتاب
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March 28, 2022
Clear, concise, and very, very sad.
August 11, 2024
Just got back from Bosnia. This book is intense but provided a good history lesson of the past which led up to the genocide. Hope more people visit Bosnia and learn of their past and see their resilience as they rebuilt their lives and their country.
December 16, 2024
Warning- this review is written from the Croatian point of view. And it is more about Bosnian history and identity then about Malcolm's book.
First- there was, from 1945, systematic de-Croatization of Bosnia & Herzegovina. This has been all too evident in school & university programs in Socialist Croatia, where, from elementary schools to universities & academy- everything Bosnian Croatian was either demonized or marginalized. While all Croatian politicians, historians, publicists .. before WW2 insisted that B & H was the central Croatian land- never mind that this was an exaggeration- during Socialist Yugoslavia, Croatdom was reduced to the republic of Croatia. This would have been astonishing & utterly embarrassing to leading Croatian political and cultural figures like Ljudevit Gaj, Ante Starčević, Fran Supilo, Tadija Smičiklas, Ivo Pilar, bishop Strossmayer, Stjepan Radić, Ferdo Šišić, Vjekoslav Klaić, Krunoslav Draganović, Milan Prelog, Eugen Kumičić, Dominik Mandić, …
So, during the 1945–1990, in Croatia national minimalism was groomed, some Croats, for instance otherwise notable historian Nada Klaić, participating in this nationally suicidal & rationally dishonest and unscientific endeavors, favored by Communist and all pro-Yugoslav forces, aiming at strengthening of the “oriental”, Serbian and partly Muslim cultural physiognomy formation & suppression of Croatian- read Western- cultural identity & geopolitical influence & goals.
Second- a historical excursus into Croatian integrative ideologies from the 19th C on. There have been two national ideologies, “pure” Croatian, essentially secular liberal nationalism, indifferent to religious identity & religiosity as such; another was, shall we say, Yugoslav Croatian ideology (I am not counting here Croatian Yugoslavs, whose primary loyalty was an imaginary, non-existing Yugoslavia & not Croatia). Frequently, those two integrative ideologies oscillated & individuals have been, as time & events had been passing, tossed between these two camps or trying to synthesize both world-views/ideologies (Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža, for instance). Roughly, “pure” Croat ideologues were soft on Muslims (Ante Starčević, Ivo Pilar, Milan Šufflay,..), while Yugoslav Croatian intellectuals were soft on Serbs (Strossmayer, Jagić, Rački, Ivan Broz) & others vacillated between these two positions (Supilo, Ferdo Šišić, Stjepan Radić). Interestingly enough, Franciscan friars & historians Krunoslav Draganović and Dominik Mandić belonged to “pure”, pan-Croatian ideology, trying to nationally assimilate Bosnian Muslims into Croatdom & simultaneously refusing to work on religious conversion of Muslims- a strange phenomenon, considering they were Catholic priests & monks. It seems that for them nationality was more important than religion- a walking contradiction.
Third – from the beginning of their national individuation (at the end of the 19th C), Bosnian Muslims, the majority of them, did not feel they belonged to either Croats or Serbs, simply because true nations cannot participate in two or more religious cultural civilizations. True, many Muslim intellectuals, from 1879 to 1945, identified either as Croats or Serbs, but they did not constitute more than 1-3% of Muslim population. The vast majority of Bosnian Muslims knew, in their heart of hearts, that they were not Croats or Serbs. A more serious Bosnian Muslim national individualization began during Socialist Yugoslavia, when they were finally recognized by Communist authorities as a separate nation, not just a shapeless ethnic group. The majority of Bosnian Muslims were rather secularized, but the identitarian core of that people was Ottoman-Islamic - not secular Turkish along reforms of Kemal Pasha Ataturk, nor Bosnian in their cultural-historical identifications, because the Ottoman conquest had destroyed historical memory of the old Bosnian kingdom, which remained, to a certain extent, only among Bosnian Catholic people (who are, from this vantage point, the only “true” Bosnians who had fused historical identity and collective memory, particularly among Franciscans), while among the Orthodox people in B & H there was no emotional connection with anything historically pre-Ottoman Bosnian, due to the Catholic character of most of the old Bosnian polity.
So, two “Bosnian” identities have remained, having virtually nothing to do with each other – one among Catholics, who saw themselves as true heirs of old Bosnia & wanted to get rid of Islam and “Turks” & have been trying to unify B & H with Catholic/Christian Europe, in this instance with their co-ethnics in Croatia; another “Bosnian” identity was that of Bosnian Muslims, who differentiated between themselves as “Bosnian Turks” possessing regional Bosnian identity & “real Turks” from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Needless to say, these two “Bosnian” identities did not interweave & had nothing in common re cultural-historical memory & political-economic goals. Serbs in B & H have been formed in the mold of Serbian Orthodoxy; they did not possess any recognizable “Bosnian” identity, their culture being primarily Serbian & Orthodox Christian, with Bosnian historical associations serving, sometimes, only as a regional catalyst for modern Serbian Orthodox national integration. As far as B & H Croats go, their pride as self-conscious inheritors of the glory of the old Bosnian polity sometimes decelarated, slowed & hindered their final crystallization and integration in the modern Croatian nation.
Fourth- recent history & politics. Before going into recent history, let's state some facts. More than 50%, say, of the current Croatian population in Croatia is of B & H origin. This phenomenon is due, mostly, to the Ottoman invasion, when historical Bosnians had been – except those who stayed or had converted- fleeing into Croatia and beyond, in Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and Italy. For instance, many prominent Croats are of Bosnian origin: Franjo Glavinić, a significant religious author in Istria is originally from Bosnia; Ivan Tomko Mrnavić from Šibenik in Dalmatia, too; .. even Yugoslav authoritarian leader Josip Broz Tito's ancestors had come to Hrvatsko Zagorje from Herzegovina in the 16th C, as genealogists have shown. Eminent Turkish historian Omer Lufti Barkan in his work Les Deportations ..., 1950, analyzing Ottoman censuses & other sources, has given religious- which in this context means proto- national- composition of the Ottoman Bosnia. It goes as follows:
1528/29:
Catholics–57%
Muslims–34%
Orthodox–9%
1624:
Catholics–22%
Muslims–67%
Orthodox–11%
Muslims remained a majority of ca. 60-70% until the mid-18th C when they’d been depopulated due to plague & constant warfare; Orthodox/Serbs became a plural majority of 40-44% & remained so until the census in 1971. Muslims have been the majority from the early to mid 1600s, following the first great wave of persecution & suppression of Catholics, who had been seen as the fifth column of Ottoman arch-enemies in Catholic Europe, especially Austria & Spain -while Venice was sort of “Ottoman whore” or frenemy, until the mid-18th C. There was no great pressure on the Orthodox because their spiritual head was located in Istanbul/Constantinople & was under the Ottoman supervision.
Bosnian Muslims suffered, later, disproportionately from various contagions because they had been mostly city-dwellers, while Orthodox & Catholics lived in sparsely populated villages & were frequently nomadic; also, Muslims were recruited for Ottoman wars against Russia & Persia, so they lost, demographically, a significant number of the population.
Uskoks from Senj, who waged a long warfare in the 16th C & the 17th C against the Ottoman empire and, later, against Venice, were predominantly Croats (exclusively Catholics) from Bosnia & Herzegovina:
Also, it is rather telling that the surname Bošnjak/Bosniak, which means “Bosnian” or “coming from Bosnia” is predominantly a Croatian one, while also present among Bosnian Muslims & Serbs. One can see this here: https://forebears.io/surnames/boC5%A1..., as well as the surname of ruling Bosnian dynasty Kotromanić, which was preserved in the form Kotromanović, Kotroman, Koštroman & some others:
https://forebears.io/surnames/kotroman https://forebears.io/surnames/kotroma...
From 1945 to 1990, as I have said, Croatian identity is B & H was, generally, suppressed & the republic was culturally, ideologically and politically Serbianized, step by step: Bosniak intellectual Alija Isaković has shown, analyzing during the 1970s the language of chief Bosnian daily “Oslobođenje”, that in 1945-1946, lexical content was more than 80% equal to Croatian; in 1971 it was less than 5% Croatian. Many Croats had, because Yugoslavia was not building factories & industry in mostly Croatian B & H areas, been migrating either to Croatia or, even more, to the US, Germany, Canada and Australia, the general effect being demographic prevalence of Bosnian Muslims over Croats in the core central Bosnia- while from the 19th C to the 1950s, Croats had been a relative majority in that area. Due to their demographic vitality & a relatively favorable status, stemming from Yugoslavia’s political position in the Non-aligned movement, with large Muslim populations- Muslims, under exactly that name, had been officially recognized as a separate Muslim nation & have become a relative majority in B & H in 1971, for the first time after perhaps two centuries. Serbs, although they were politically, economically and culturally dominant, lost their relative ethnic majority due to the attraction of Serbia- mostly Belgrade & rural parts of Serbian province Vojvodina, where they’d been moving to in decades after WW2.
Just considering the most influential political figures in B & H from 1945. to 1990, one can see a clear Serbian dominance until the early 1970s; then, Muslims were becoming more and more prominent, with Croats having only 2 to 4 political figures of any significance, mostly after the 1970s.
Fifth- Dissolution, war & political aims.
Without going into whys & hows, I’ll just sketch the dominant positions of three B & H peoples, as articulated through their elites (political, cultural, military, economic,…).
For Serbs, the entire B & H was a Serbian land & the goal was to occupy it all. What is crucial is this: since Slobodan Milošević’s (and virtually the entire Serbian elite) plan was not limited to B & H, it aimed primarily at amputation of ca. 70% of Croatia, following the JNA manoeuvres’ line from 1986 and, striking at five directions, to slice the Croatian territory in a few indefensible pockets, leaving Zagreb-Rijeka- Istria parts as some kind of reliquie reliquiarum and probably forcing Croatian leadership to capitulate completely, having achieved the goal of conquering the entire Croatia and B & H- these two countries were, militarily, one war-occupation zone. But, Serbian-Yugoslav plans were thwarted in all directions (Varaždin-Pakrac-Banja Luka, Šid-Vukovar-Vinkovci, Zadar-Šibenik- Knin- Drvar, Split-Mostar, Dubrovnik-Trebinje-Montenegro), so they were holding ca. 25% of Croatia’s territory at the end of 1991.
The dominant goal was all Serbs in one, Serbian state, with policy toward Croats oscillating from vandalism & ethnic pressures to outright ethnic cleansing and genocide. Their idea was to destroy Croatian nationhood wherever possible; to occupy ca. 3 million out of 4.5 million Croats and to get rid of the most by a combination of killing, cleansing, forced assimilation, encouraging Croatian regional identities as non- Croat (for instance, Croatian Bunjevci) & pressure to emigrate.
As regards Bosnian Muslims, it is not clear what the final goal was, so there was a difference between strategy & tactics. Judging from the actions of Serbian elite, they first tried to split so-called “natural alliance” between Croats & Muslims by offering Bosnian Muslim politicians like Adil Zulfikarpašić a “historical compromise” between Serbs and Muslims, which would result in incorporation of almost the entire B & H- with possible exception of tiny Croatian-majority parts- into extended Serbia, and theoretically guaranteeing Muslims some kind of autonomous existence without war, if they distance themselves from Croatia.
But, since the whole Serbian elite was radically against everything Catholic & Muslim as something utterly alien & non-Serbian (various conspiracy theories including the Vatican, pan-Islamism, Masons, European West etc.) - it is evident, judging both from Serbian mass media, torrent of pan-Serbian publications & historical books and pamphlets, that coexistence with Muslims was impossible in the long run.
In a nutshell, with just a few dissenting voices, the dominant Serbian discourse was that Catholic Croats and Bosniak Muslims were Serbian historical civilizational enemies and there was no room for clearly articulated Croatian and Bosniak/Muslim identity in a Serbian nation state.
Bosnian Muslims, later Bosniaks', attitudes have been more complex and sometimes contradictory. From the current vantage point, it seems they had been generally satisfied with their position in Yugoslavia & wanted this country to continue to exist as it had been during Tito's rule. They wanted national crystallization- but not completely. They were mostly content with the status of a recognized people without fully completed cultural-historical-national individuality (perhaps this has something to do with a nature of Islam, which puts religion first and isn't too conducive to European-style national emancipation).
Although they wanted to stay in Yugoslavia, it was not Yugoslavia according to Serbian ideas as articulated by Milošević and Serbian elites. Without Slovenia and Croatia- they knew it would be essentially extended Serbia. Also, being unarmed, they were terrified by images of destruction and war in Croatia in 1991, so they wanted to avoid JNA/Yugoslav Army aggression & mass killings. JNA had, after withdrawal from Slovenia, transferred & amassed military machinery (tanks, planes, armored cars, howitzers, helicopters, ammunition, rocket launchers, rifles, machine guns,…) to B & H; also, the JNA officer corps was almost completely Serbianized, Serbs and Montenegrins constituting over 98% of military personnel.
With first democratic elections, Bosnian Muslims gave the majority of their votes to SDA (Party of Democratic Action), a party with Islamist leadership, headed by ex-political convict Alija Izetbegović. Although SDA had , like all parties, a few fractions, the chief aims were to avoid JNA attack on Bosian Muslims and to retain B & H as a unitary republic, rejecting all proposals for internal reconstruction along national/ethnic lines, as well as to work on re-Islamization of rather secular Muslims. Izetbegović's famous statement „This is not our war“ reflected the majority Bosnian Muslim position re JNA-Serbia war aggression in Croatia. It was not just because of fear of the Serbianized JNA military might; it also showed genuine & prevalent Bosnian Muslims’ attitude that it was a war between Serbs and Croats – hence, Muslims had no stake in the game- but also the dominant Muslim „theory“ of false equivalence re two sides in the conflict, avoiding at all costs to name Serbian-JNA side as the aggressor. This policy enraged not only Croatia, but but even more Croats in B & H, who had been fighting in the defense of Croatia (for instance, during the Siege of Vukovar ca. 60-70% of Croatian units’ manpower consisted of Croats from B&H); also, Muslim leadership turned a blind eye on the JNA destruction of Croatian village Ravno in Herzegovina- which could be considered the real beginning of war in B&H, but Bosnian Muslims were looking the other way and, suspiciously, had failed to notice it, because there were no Muslims attacked.
Summarily, it could be said that the dominant Bosnian Muslim policy was dictated by fear of JNA military aggression (they saw what was happening in Croatia); that they wanted to preserve B & H as a state; that they opposed any internal reconfiguration of Bosnia and Herzegovina along national lines; that they wanted re-Islamization of their own people & had put all their trust in the international community, hoping it would prevent carnage in B & H (evidently- they didn't learn anything from the war in Croatia). Also, judging from works & deeds of Alija Izetbegović and some of his associates, it seems they hoped they would numerically prevail over Croats and Serbs, and thus dictate the lives of these two peoples by sheer majorization- becoming a clear majority from the relative one, 40-45%. This was combined with idealization of the Ottoman rule (the majority of inner SDA leadership consisted of descendants of Muslim landed gentry, beys/begovi), so that historical & proto-national Ottoman emotional & cultural reflexes were naturally present among both Bosnian Muslim leadership and population.
First- there was, from 1945, systematic de-Croatization of Bosnia & Herzegovina. This has been all too evident in school & university programs in Socialist Croatia, where, from elementary schools to universities & academy- everything Bosnian Croatian was either demonized or marginalized. While all Croatian politicians, historians, publicists .. before WW2 insisted that B & H was the central Croatian land- never mind that this was an exaggeration- during Socialist Yugoslavia, Croatdom was reduced to the republic of Croatia. This would have been astonishing & utterly embarrassing to leading Croatian political and cultural figures like Ljudevit Gaj, Ante Starčević, Fran Supilo, Tadija Smičiklas, Ivo Pilar, bishop Strossmayer, Stjepan Radić, Ferdo Šišić, Vjekoslav Klaić, Krunoslav Draganović, Milan Prelog, Eugen Kumičić, Dominik Mandić, …
So, during the 1945–1990, in Croatia national minimalism was groomed, some Croats, for instance otherwise notable historian Nada Klaić, participating in this nationally suicidal & rationally dishonest and unscientific endeavors, favored by Communist and all pro-Yugoslav forces, aiming at strengthening of the “oriental”, Serbian and partly Muslim cultural physiognomy formation & suppression of Croatian- read Western- cultural identity & geopolitical influence & goals.
Second- a historical excursus into Croatian integrative ideologies from the 19th C on. There have been two national ideologies, “pure” Croatian, essentially secular liberal nationalism, indifferent to religious identity & religiosity as such; another was, shall we say, Yugoslav Croatian ideology (I am not counting here Croatian Yugoslavs, whose primary loyalty was an imaginary, non-existing Yugoslavia & not Croatia). Frequently, those two integrative ideologies oscillated & individuals have been, as time & events had been passing, tossed between these two camps or trying to synthesize both world-views/ideologies (Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža, for instance). Roughly, “pure” Croat ideologues were soft on Muslims (Ante Starčević, Ivo Pilar, Milan Šufflay,..), while Yugoslav Croatian intellectuals were soft on Serbs (Strossmayer, Jagić, Rački, Ivan Broz) & others vacillated between these two positions (Supilo, Ferdo Šišić, Stjepan Radić). Interestingly enough, Franciscan friars & historians Krunoslav Draganović and Dominik Mandić belonged to “pure”, pan-Croatian ideology, trying to nationally assimilate Bosnian Muslims into Croatdom & simultaneously refusing to work on religious conversion of Muslims- a strange phenomenon, considering they were Catholic priests & monks. It seems that for them nationality was more important than religion- a walking contradiction.
Third – from the beginning of their national individuation (at the end of the 19th C), Bosnian Muslims, the majority of them, did not feel they belonged to either Croats or Serbs, simply because true nations cannot participate in two or more religious cultural civilizations. True, many Muslim intellectuals, from 1879 to 1945, identified either as Croats or Serbs, but they did not constitute more than 1-3% of Muslim population. The vast majority of Bosnian Muslims knew, in their heart of hearts, that they were not Croats or Serbs. A more serious Bosnian Muslim national individualization began during Socialist Yugoslavia, when they were finally recognized by Communist authorities as a separate nation, not just a shapeless ethnic group. The majority of Bosnian Muslims were rather secularized, but the identitarian core of that people was Ottoman-Islamic - not secular Turkish along reforms of Kemal Pasha Ataturk, nor Bosnian in their cultural-historical identifications, because the Ottoman conquest had destroyed historical memory of the old Bosnian kingdom, which remained, to a certain extent, only among Bosnian Catholic people (who are, from this vantage point, the only “true” Bosnians who had fused historical identity and collective memory, particularly among Franciscans), while among the Orthodox people in B & H there was no emotional connection with anything historically pre-Ottoman Bosnian, due to the Catholic character of most of the old Bosnian polity.
So, two “Bosnian” identities have remained, having virtually nothing to do with each other – one among Catholics, who saw themselves as true heirs of old Bosnia & wanted to get rid of Islam and “Turks” & have been trying to unify B & H with Catholic/Christian Europe, in this instance with their co-ethnics in Croatia; another “Bosnian” identity was that of Bosnian Muslims, who differentiated between themselves as “Bosnian Turks” possessing regional Bosnian identity & “real Turks” from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Needless to say, these two “Bosnian” identities did not interweave & had nothing in common re cultural-historical memory & political-economic goals. Serbs in B & H have been formed in the mold of Serbian Orthodoxy; they did not possess any recognizable “Bosnian” identity, their culture being primarily Serbian & Orthodox Christian, with Bosnian historical associations serving, sometimes, only as a regional catalyst for modern Serbian Orthodox national integration. As far as B & H Croats go, their pride as self-conscious inheritors of the glory of the old Bosnian polity sometimes decelarated, slowed & hindered their final crystallization and integration in the modern Croatian nation.
Fourth- recent history & politics. Before going into recent history, let's state some facts. More than 50%, say, of the current Croatian population in Croatia is of B & H origin. This phenomenon is due, mostly, to the Ottoman invasion, when historical Bosnians had been – except those who stayed or had converted- fleeing into Croatia and beyond, in Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and Italy. For instance, many prominent Croats are of Bosnian origin: Franjo Glavinić, a significant religious author in Istria is originally from Bosnia; Ivan Tomko Mrnavić from Šibenik in Dalmatia, too; .. even Yugoslav authoritarian leader Josip Broz Tito's ancestors had come to Hrvatsko Zagorje from Herzegovina in the 16th C, as genealogists have shown. Eminent Turkish historian Omer Lufti Barkan in his work Les Deportations ..., 1950, analyzing Ottoman censuses & other sources, has given religious- which in this context means proto- national- composition of the Ottoman Bosnia. It goes as follows:
1528/29:
Catholics–57%
Muslims–34%
Orthodox–9%
1624:
Catholics–22%
Muslims–67%
Orthodox–11%
Muslims remained a majority of ca. 60-70% until the mid-18th C when they’d been depopulated due to plague & constant warfare; Orthodox/Serbs became a plural majority of 40-44% & remained so until the census in 1971. Muslims have been the majority from the early to mid 1600s, following the first great wave of persecution & suppression of Catholics, who had been seen as the fifth column of Ottoman arch-enemies in Catholic Europe, especially Austria & Spain -while Venice was sort of “Ottoman whore” or frenemy, until the mid-18th C. There was no great pressure on the Orthodox because their spiritual head was located in Istanbul/Constantinople & was under the Ottoman supervision.
Bosnian Muslims suffered, later, disproportionately from various contagions because they had been mostly city-dwellers, while Orthodox & Catholics lived in sparsely populated villages & were frequently nomadic; also, Muslims were recruited for Ottoman wars against Russia & Persia, so they lost, demographically, a significant number of the population.
Uskoks from Senj, who waged a long warfare in the 16th C & the 17th C against the Ottoman empire and, later, against Venice, were predominantly Croats (exclusively Catholics) from Bosnia & Herzegovina:
Also, it is rather telling that the surname Bošnjak/Bosniak, which means “Bosnian” or “coming from Bosnia” is predominantly a Croatian one, while also present among Bosnian Muslims & Serbs. One can see this here: https://forebears.io/surnames/boC5%A1..., as well as the surname of ruling Bosnian dynasty Kotromanić, which was preserved in the form Kotromanović, Kotroman, Koštroman & some others:
https://forebears.io/surnames/kotroman https://forebears.io/surnames/kotroma...
From 1945 to 1990, as I have said, Croatian identity is B & H was, generally, suppressed & the republic was culturally, ideologically and politically Serbianized, step by step: Bosniak intellectual Alija Isaković has shown, analyzing during the 1970s the language of chief Bosnian daily “Oslobođenje”, that in 1945-1946, lexical content was more than 80% equal to Croatian; in 1971 it was less than 5% Croatian. Many Croats had, because Yugoslavia was not building factories & industry in mostly Croatian B & H areas, been migrating either to Croatia or, even more, to the US, Germany, Canada and Australia, the general effect being demographic prevalence of Bosnian Muslims over Croats in the core central Bosnia- while from the 19th C to the 1950s, Croats had been a relative majority in that area. Due to their demographic vitality & a relatively favorable status, stemming from Yugoslavia’s political position in the Non-aligned movement, with large Muslim populations- Muslims, under exactly that name, had been officially recognized as a separate Muslim nation & have become a relative majority in B & H in 1971, for the first time after perhaps two centuries. Serbs, although they were politically, economically and culturally dominant, lost their relative ethnic majority due to the attraction of Serbia- mostly Belgrade & rural parts of Serbian province Vojvodina, where they’d been moving to in decades after WW2.
Just considering the most influential political figures in B & H from 1945. to 1990, one can see a clear Serbian dominance until the early 1970s; then, Muslims were becoming more and more prominent, with Croats having only 2 to 4 political figures of any significance, mostly after the 1970s.
Fifth- Dissolution, war & political aims.
Without going into whys & hows, I’ll just sketch the dominant positions of three B & H peoples, as articulated through their elites (political, cultural, military, economic,…).
For Serbs, the entire B & H was a Serbian land & the goal was to occupy it all. What is crucial is this: since Slobodan Milošević’s (and virtually the entire Serbian elite) plan was not limited to B & H, it aimed primarily at amputation of ca. 70% of Croatia, following the JNA manoeuvres’ line from 1986 and, striking at five directions, to slice the Croatian territory in a few indefensible pockets, leaving Zagreb-Rijeka- Istria parts as some kind of reliquie reliquiarum and probably forcing Croatian leadership to capitulate completely, having achieved the goal of conquering the entire Croatia and B & H- these two countries were, militarily, one war-occupation zone. But, Serbian-Yugoslav plans were thwarted in all directions (Varaždin-Pakrac-Banja Luka, Šid-Vukovar-Vinkovci, Zadar-Šibenik- Knin- Drvar, Split-Mostar, Dubrovnik-Trebinje-Montenegro), so they were holding ca. 25% of Croatia’s territory at the end of 1991.
The dominant goal was all Serbs in one, Serbian state, with policy toward Croats oscillating from vandalism & ethnic pressures to outright ethnic cleansing and genocide. Their idea was to destroy Croatian nationhood wherever possible; to occupy ca. 3 million out of 4.5 million Croats and to get rid of the most by a combination of killing, cleansing, forced assimilation, encouraging Croatian regional identities as non- Croat (for instance, Croatian Bunjevci) & pressure to emigrate.
As regards Bosnian Muslims, it is not clear what the final goal was, so there was a difference between strategy & tactics. Judging from the actions of Serbian elite, they first tried to split so-called “natural alliance” between Croats & Muslims by offering Bosnian Muslim politicians like Adil Zulfikarpašić a “historical compromise” between Serbs and Muslims, which would result in incorporation of almost the entire B & H- with possible exception of tiny Croatian-majority parts- into extended Serbia, and theoretically guaranteeing Muslims some kind of autonomous existence without war, if they distance themselves from Croatia.
But, since the whole Serbian elite was radically against everything Catholic & Muslim as something utterly alien & non-Serbian (various conspiracy theories including the Vatican, pan-Islamism, Masons, European West etc.) - it is evident, judging both from Serbian mass media, torrent of pan-Serbian publications & historical books and pamphlets, that coexistence with Muslims was impossible in the long run.
In a nutshell, with just a few dissenting voices, the dominant Serbian discourse was that Catholic Croats and Bosniak Muslims were Serbian historical civilizational enemies and there was no room for clearly articulated Croatian and Bosniak/Muslim identity in a Serbian nation state.
Bosnian Muslims, later Bosniaks', attitudes have been more complex and sometimes contradictory. From the current vantage point, it seems they had been generally satisfied with their position in Yugoslavia & wanted this country to continue to exist as it had been during Tito's rule. They wanted national crystallization- but not completely. They were mostly content with the status of a recognized people without fully completed cultural-historical-national individuality (perhaps this has something to do with a nature of Islam, which puts religion first and isn't too conducive to European-style national emancipation).
Although they wanted to stay in Yugoslavia, it was not Yugoslavia according to Serbian ideas as articulated by Milošević and Serbian elites. Without Slovenia and Croatia- they knew it would be essentially extended Serbia. Also, being unarmed, they were terrified by images of destruction and war in Croatia in 1991, so they wanted to avoid JNA/Yugoslav Army aggression & mass killings. JNA had, after withdrawal from Slovenia, transferred & amassed military machinery (tanks, planes, armored cars, howitzers, helicopters, ammunition, rocket launchers, rifles, machine guns,…) to B & H; also, the JNA officer corps was almost completely Serbianized, Serbs and Montenegrins constituting over 98% of military personnel.
With first democratic elections, Bosnian Muslims gave the majority of their votes to SDA (Party of Democratic Action), a party with Islamist leadership, headed by ex-political convict Alija Izetbegović. Although SDA had , like all parties, a few fractions, the chief aims were to avoid JNA attack on Bosian Muslims and to retain B & H as a unitary republic, rejecting all proposals for internal reconstruction along national/ethnic lines, as well as to work on re-Islamization of rather secular Muslims. Izetbegović's famous statement „This is not our war“ reflected the majority Bosnian Muslim position re JNA-Serbia war aggression in Croatia. It was not just because of fear of the Serbianized JNA military might; it also showed genuine & prevalent Bosnian Muslims’ attitude that it was a war between Serbs and Croats – hence, Muslims had no stake in the game- but also the dominant Muslim „theory“ of false equivalence re two sides in the conflict, avoiding at all costs to name Serbian-JNA side as the aggressor. This policy enraged not only Croatia, but but even more Croats in B & H, who had been fighting in the defense of Croatia (for instance, during the Siege of Vukovar ca. 60-70% of Croatian units’ manpower consisted of Croats from B&H); also, Muslim leadership turned a blind eye on the JNA destruction of Croatian village Ravno in Herzegovina- which could be considered the real beginning of war in B&H, but Bosnian Muslims were looking the other way and, suspiciously, had failed to notice it, because there were no Muslims attacked.
Summarily, it could be said that the dominant Bosnian Muslim policy was dictated by fear of JNA military aggression (they saw what was happening in Croatia); that they wanted to preserve B & H as a state; that they opposed any internal reconfiguration of Bosnia and Herzegovina along national lines; that they wanted re-Islamization of their own people & had put all their trust in the international community, hoping it would prevent carnage in B & H (evidently- they didn't learn anything from the war in Croatia). Also, judging from works & deeds of Alija Izetbegović and some of his associates, it seems they hoped they would numerically prevail over Croats and Serbs, and thus dictate the lives of these two peoples by sheer majorization- becoming a clear majority from the relative one, 40-45%. This was combined with idealization of the Ottoman rule (the majority of inner SDA leadership consisted of descendants of Muslim landed gentry, beys/begovi), so that historical & proto-national Ottoman emotional & cultural reflexes were naturally present among both Bosnian Muslim leadership and population.
July 12, 2017
An excellent potted history of Bosnia, which came out just in time for the war in Bosnia. The information on the medieval period and before, is invaluable for anyone trying to get to grips with the complexities of Bosnian identity. However, as one approaches the present day, the author seems to be markedly pro-Izetbegović in his perspective. This is understandable to a certain extent, as Izetbegović managed to position himself as the face of the Bosnian Muslims, who were the underdogs until the final phase of the war; and because it is difficult if not impossible to apply the same objectivity in respect of current events as one can do in relation to the more distant past. All in all, an invaluable introduction to Bosnia up until the beginning of the war.
The role of the historian is always political, and the version of older history served up to us by the authorities is difficult to challenge because any evidence to the contrary has already been discredited or destroyed. As Orwell wrote, "Who controls the past, controls the future". But its time to challenge the notion that Izetbegović was any less of an evil than Milošević and Tuđman.
The role of the historian is always political, and the version of older history served up to us by the authorities is difficult to challenge because any evidence to the contrary has already been discredited or destroyed. As Orwell wrote, "Who controls the past, controls the future". But its time to challenge the notion that Izetbegović was any less of an evil than Milošević and Tuđman.
November 10, 2021
With its innumerable cultures, religions, and political systems, looking into Bosnia is an ideological mirror where the observer’s beliefs and frameworks of understanding are projected back to the observer. This makes writing an unbiased history of the country that doesn’t feed into the propaganda of the various entities that have attempted to dominate it an arduous task. Noel Malcolm makes a very commendable effort in Bosnia: A Short History as he briefly surveys the entire country’s complex history with its occupation by many different entities and the many different political and economic systems that have sprung from these entities, but it falls just short of being a perfect synopsis due to its poor summary of Bosnia under Tito’s Yugoslavia.
Malcolm’s surveying deserves credit for taking care to have a level examination of Bosnia that covers all the important spheres including economics, politics, culture, immigration, and so on. For example, Malcolm is keen to detail both the economic nuances of Bosnian serfs being forced to surrender a portion of what they produce to the Ottoman occupation and also the unique practice of centuries old Catholic tattooing. Malcolm deserves even more credit for his myth-busting approach in many chapters, whether it’s the medieval myth of Bogomils being in Bosnia or the modern Western one of “ancient hatreds” where different ethnic groups or religions in Bosnia have been in a state of perpetual war and hate. Malcolm also frequently cites statistics whenever possible to provide empirical support for all the most important claims he makes about Bosnia. Lastly, he covers the most sensational and complicated period of the country, the war of the 1990s, with great analytical care.
It’s surprising then for much of this great writing to be thrown out the window when Malcolm surveys the socialist and Titoist period of Yugoslavia. It’s mostly the omission of important facts rather than the claims he does make which is the problem. The Tito-Stalin Split, one of the most important events of the period, is too briefly mentioned and when it is Malcolm does not spend even a breath explaining why it occurred. There is no mention of workers' self-management with the exception of a passing critical quip, nor is there comprehensive enough mention of the highly unique detail that Yugoslavia and Bosnia under it did not feature a command economy like other communist countries but operated under open markets with access to Western goods. There is no mention of the development of universal healthcare, tuition-free college, accessible public housing and this resulting in the highest standard of living in all of Bosnian history. When Malcolm does rarely mention something on the topic he becomes critical in an unscholarly manner, making a silly reference to an eyewitness that the newly built post-WW2 roads were poor due to the bourgeoisie that were forced to work them and not because Yugoslavia’s industrialization and technology was behind Western countries. This leads the reader to believe that Malcolm may be a right-winger or anti-communist.
Despite this blunder of a chapter, the overwhelming majority of Malcolm’s synopsis is excellent and should be mandatory reading for any Westerner wishing to become more educated about arguably the most fascinating and historically complex country in Europe. Malcolm ends his book with a very persuasive conclusion that attaches even a moral importance to reading Bosnian history, which is that failing to be educated about the country’s history contributes to Bosnia’s uncertain future as it has before like with misguided Western policies during the most recent war.
Malcolm’s surveying deserves credit for taking care to have a level examination of Bosnia that covers all the important spheres including economics, politics, culture, immigration, and so on. For example, Malcolm is keen to detail both the economic nuances of Bosnian serfs being forced to surrender a portion of what they produce to the Ottoman occupation and also the unique practice of centuries old Catholic tattooing. Malcolm deserves even more credit for his myth-busting approach in many chapters, whether it’s the medieval myth of Bogomils being in Bosnia or the modern Western one of “ancient hatreds” where different ethnic groups or religions in Bosnia have been in a state of perpetual war and hate. Malcolm also frequently cites statistics whenever possible to provide empirical support for all the most important claims he makes about Bosnia. Lastly, he covers the most sensational and complicated period of the country, the war of the 1990s, with great analytical care.
It’s surprising then for much of this great writing to be thrown out the window when Malcolm surveys the socialist and Titoist period of Yugoslavia. It’s mostly the omission of important facts rather than the claims he does make which is the problem. The Tito-Stalin Split, one of the most important events of the period, is too briefly mentioned and when it is Malcolm does not spend even a breath explaining why it occurred. There is no mention of workers' self-management with the exception of a passing critical quip, nor is there comprehensive enough mention of the highly unique detail that Yugoslavia and Bosnia under it did not feature a command economy like other communist countries but operated under open markets with access to Western goods. There is no mention of the development of universal healthcare, tuition-free college, accessible public housing and this resulting in the highest standard of living in all of Bosnian history. When Malcolm does rarely mention something on the topic he becomes critical in an unscholarly manner, making a silly reference to an eyewitness that the newly built post-WW2 roads were poor due to the bourgeoisie that were forced to work them and not because Yugoslavia’s industrialization and technology was behind Western countries. This leads the reader to believe that Malcolm may be a right-winger or anti-communist.
Despite this blunder of a chapter, the overwhelming majority of Malcolm’s synopsis is excellent and should be mandatory reading for any Westerner wishing to become more educated about arguably the most fascinating and historically complex country in Europe. Malcolm ends his book with a very persuasive conclusion that attaches even a moral importance to reading Bosnian history, which is that failing to be educated about the country’s history contributes to Bosnia’s uncertain future as it has before like with misguided Western policies during the most recent war.
December 26, 2023
---The multiethnic and multilingual Bosnia and Hercegovina, with its Roman,
Byzantine, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Yugoslav heritage, is a country that
many history readers require further understanding. In particular, an explanation of
the 1992 and 1995 war between the Bosniaks, Serbians and Croatians of that
country. At the time, numerous Western observers and politicians commented that
the armed conflict had its roots in economic problems, the demise of the Soviet
Union and longstanding historical hostilities between the three communities.
However, can the mid-1990s war and Bosnia’s society be explained so easily?
---Historically, have the three communities always conflicted? Indeed, is there an
alternative narrative, based on academic sources, that can provide a more accurate
account of Bosnia’s history and its people? British academic and writer Noel
Malcolm’s book Bosnia–A Short History (1994 & 1996) attempts to readdress the
simplistic thinking about Bosnia’s history and politics. It looks at Bosnia in a balanced
and comprehensive way and sees the country like any other in Europe, with
moments of peaceful communal coexistence and domestic tensions.
---Malcolm’s analysis explains how ethnically diverse and pluralistic societies
are negatively impacted by an alliance between domestic (ultra-)nationalist actors
(and Serbian and Croatian paramilitaries) and foreign powers over-cautious in
ending the violence (the European Union and the United States governments) or
seeking to gain by causing division between different ethnic communities (Serbia,
Croatia, Russia). For these reasons, Malcolm’s book is an important and informative
introductory text for scholars and general readers.
---Bosnia: A Short History reviews the country's history from ancient times until
the mid-1990s disintegration of the former Yugoslavia (1918 to January 1992). Its
analysis ends with a bleak image of Bosnia circa 1995 and the Dayton Peace
Accords that ended the war in 1995. Vital to understanding the book, writes Malcolm,
is, firstly, to investigate the origins of the 1992 war, and, secondly, ‘is the need to
dispel some of the clouds of misunderstanding, deliberate myth-making and sheer
ignorance in which all discussion of Bosnia and its history has become shrouded’ (p.
xix). The author argues that studying Bosnia’s history ‘does not explain the origins of
this war’ (p. xix) because something more was at work: outside forces aggravated
ultra-nationalist groups in Bosnia and provided the ideological support, manpower
and armaments to enable the armed conflict to start and continue.
---Malcom acknowledges the uniqueness of Bosnia’s history and society, but
political actors ‘outside of Bosnia’s borders’ ‘made it the object of special ambitions
and interests’ (p. xix). These included majority-Orthodox Serbia, Russia, and
majority-Catholic Croatia. Historical animosities between Bosnia’s Muslim, Orthodox
and Catholic communities ‘were not absolute and unchanging’ (p. xxi) but the
‘products of history, and could change as history developed’ (p. xxi). Resentments
did exist between the Christian peasantry and the Ottoman Muslim landowners.
However, changes and reforms partially resolved these during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries (p. xxi). The argument continues, saying that after 1878
(the forced occupation of Bosnia by Austro-Hungarian rulers), ‘the different religious
or ethnic communities in Bosnia lived peacefully together’ (p. xxi); this was broken by
violence after the First World War and during the Second World War, however, in
both cases, Malcolm asserts both originated outside of Bosnia. Furthermore,
between 1945 and 1991, under the Yugoslav communists, society was generally
stable.
---Malcolm is clear and straight-talking in his condemnation of the violence in
Bosnia during the 1992 to 1995 period. Highlighting the violence directed against the
Muslim community by the Bosnian Serb and Serbian military, he mentions the latter’s
destruction of the state and university library in Sarajevo, the Oriental Institute, and many mosques and minarets across the Serb-held parts of Bosnia. He says, ‘I have
no doubt that the burden of responsibility for the destruction of Bosnia lies
predominately on one side, and I have tried to set out in the final chapters of this
book the reasons for thinking so’ (p. xxii). Malcolm states that the ultra-nationalist
Serbian leaders and those who supported the notion of ancient hatreds resurfacing
were incorrect, and the Serbian nationalists were – ‘waging a war against the history
of their country’ (p. xxiv).
---Sadly, Malcolm writes that the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in
Bosnia in 1995 might not prove sufficient in the long term to keep the peace and
allow Bosnia to develop into a viable state. The division of power in the country lends
itself to the Serbian autonomous region separating from Bosnia.1 The author argues
that Washington’s policy-making about ending the conflict: ‘succumbed to the false
analysis which had so poisoned European policy since the start of the war – an
analysis which saw “ancient ethnic hatreds” as the origin of the conflict, and
therefore favoured some kind of ethnic separation as a solution. By persisting in their
misunderstanding of Bosnia’s past, the Western statesmen…were helping to ensure
that Bosnia would have a much more troubled and uncertain future’ (p. 271).
---Historian and academic Malcolm uses many primary and secondary sources,
including news reports and statements; Slavic authors form part of the bibliography,
as do historical documents. The maps and glossary assist the reader and are
helpful.
---The book’s weakness is that its research ends during the mid-1990s, so it is
unable to explain post-war Bosnia, the genocide trials, and the recent Bosnian Serb
responses. Also, the book was written before the ethnic cleansing and war in Kosova
from 1998 to 1999. The book also does not mention the contemporary regional
significance of the Serbian military budget annually, which ‘...amounts to $1.43 billion
or 2% of gross domestic product (GDP)’.
Source: ‘Serbia buys Cypriot helicopter gunships to bolster air force’, Reuters.com, 23 November 2023,
(accessed 29 Nov 2023)
---It would have been interesting to have had a voice or two from Serbian
‘liberals’ resident in Bosnia or Belgrade circa the mid-1990s, those individuals or
groups tolerant of other cultures and Muslims, perhaps a creative or open-minded
Serb citizen. This would have shown that within Serbia, there were dissenting voices
to the perceived victimhood of Serb hardline nationalists and extremists. A voice of
an Orthodox Serb fighting in the Bosnian army – alongside Muslims – against Serb
forces during the mid-1990s would have added value to the analysis of the
multicultural nature of Bosnia.
---Also, a line or two about the Muslims from across the world who travelled to
Bosnia to deliver aid supplies or to protect the Bosnians and fight against the
Serbian forces would have added to the analysis. Lastly, the book is an excellent
political and socio-cultural history. However, it does not mention Ottoman cuisine or
music as things that all three communities in urban centres enjoyed.
---Malcolm’s Bosnia: A Short History is readable, well-researched, and the ideal
introductory text for college and university courses. It is a fair and sympathetic study
of the country's ethnic diversity and complexity. His main argument is honest and
brave, considering that, at the time, the conflict was dismissed in the West as a civil
war with ancient roots and an internal affair. Malcolm’s argument is made more
plausible by the sources presented; his skill is to clarify key points and events and
how external powers ignited the war and kept it going. It is recommended for
university history students, students and scholars of the following: Muslim
multiculturalism; European genocide studies; Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox
relations; Ottoman and Habsburg political and social history; Balkan minorities
studies; anti-racist and anti-fascist studies, and the general reader.
Byzantine, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Yugoslav heritage, is a country that
many history readers require further understanding. In particular, an explanation of
the 1992 and 1995 war between the Bosniaks, Serbians and Croatians of that
country. At the time, numerous Western observers and politicians commented that
the armed conflict had its roots in economic problems, the demise of the Soviet
Union and longstanding historical hostilities between the three communities.
However, can the mid-1990s war and Bosnia’s society be explained so easily?
---Historically, have the three communities always conflicted? Indeed, is there an
alternative narrative, based on academic sources, that can provide a more accurate
account of Bosnia’s history and its people? British academic and writer Noel
Malcolm’s book Bosnia–A Short History (1994 & 1996) attempts to readdress the
simplistic thinking about Bosnia’s history and politics. It looks at Bosnia in a balanced
and comprehensive way and sees the country like any other in Europe, with
moments of peaceful communal coexistence and domestic tensions.
---Malcolm’s analysis explains how ethnically diverse and pluralistic societies
are negatively impacted by an alliance between domestic (ultra-)nationalist actors
(and Serbian and Croatian paramilitaries) and foreign powers over-cautious in
ending the violence (the European Union and the United States governments) or
seeking to gain by causing division between different ethnic communities (Serbia,
Croatia, Russia). For these reasons, Malcolm’s book is an important and informative
introductory text for scholars and general readers.
---Bosnia: A Short History reviews the country's history from ancient times until
the mid-1990s disintegration of the former Yugoslavia (1918 to January 1992). Its
analysis ends with a bleak image of Bosnia circa 1995 and the Dayton Peace
Accords that ended the war in 1995. Vital to understanding the book, writes Malcolm,
is, firstly, to investigate the origins of the 1992 war, and, secondly, ‘is the need to
dispel some of the clouds of misunderstanding, deliberate myth-making and sheer
ignorance in which all discussion of Bosnia and its history has become shrouded’ (p.
xix). The author argues that studying Bosnia’s history ‘does not explain the origins of
this war’ (p. xix) because something more was at work: outside forces aggravated
ultra-nationalist groups in Bosnia and provided the ideological support, manpower
and armaments to enable the armed conflict to start and continue.
---Malcom acknowledges the uniqueness of Bosnia’s history and society, but
political actors ‘outside of Bosnia’s borders’ ‘made it the object of special ambitions
and interests’ (p. xix). These included majority-Orthodox Serbia, Russia, and
majority-Catholic Croatia. Historical animosities between Bosnia’s Muslim, Orthodox
and Catholic communities ‘were not absolute and unchanging’ (p. xxi) but the
‘products of history, and could change as history developed’ (p. xxi). Resentments
did exist between the Christian peasantry and the Ottoman Muslim landowners.
However, changes and reforms partially resolved these during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries (p. xxi). The argument continues, saying that after 1878
(the forced occupation of Bosnia by Austro-Hungarian rulers), ‘the different religious
or ethnic communities in Bosnia lived peacefully together’ (p. xxi); this was broken by
violence after the First World War and during the Second World War, however, in
both cases, Malcolm asserts both originated outside of Bosnia. Furthermore,
between 1945 and 1991, under the Yugoslav communists, society was generally
stable.
---Malcolm is clear and straight-talking in his condemnation of the violence in
Bosnia during the 1992 to 1995 period. Highlighting the violence directed against the
Muslim community by the Bosnian Serb and Serbian military, he mentions the latter’s
destruction of the state and university library in Sarajevo, the Oriental Institute, and many mosques and minarets across the Serb-held parts of Bosnia. He says, ‘I have
no doubt that the burden of responsibility for the destruction of Bosnia lies
predominately on one side, and I have tried to set out in the final chapters of this
book the reasons for thinking so’ (p. xxii). Malcolm states that the ultra-nationalist
Serbian leaders and those who supported the notion of ancient hatreds resurfacing
were incorrect, and the Serbian nationalists were – ‘waging a war against the history
of their country’ (p. xxiv).
---Sadly, Malcolm writes that the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in
Bosnia in 1995 might not prove sufficient in the long term to keep the peace and
allow Bosnia to develop into a viable state. The division of power in the country lends
itself to the Serbian autonomous region separating from Bosnia.1 The author argues
that Washington’s policy-making about ending the conflict: ‘succumbed to the false
analysis which had so poisoned European policy since the start of the war – an
analysis which saw “ancient ethnic hatreds” as the origin of the conflict, and
therefore favoured some kind of ethnic separation as a solution. By persisting in their
misunderstanding of Bosnia’s past, the Western statesmen…were helping to ensure
that Bosnia would have a much more troubled and uncertain future’ (p. 271).
---Historian and academic Malcolm uses many primary and secondary sources,
including news reports and statements; Slavic authors form part of the bibliography,
as do historical documents. The maps and glossary assist the reader and are
helpful.
---The book’s weakness is that its research ends during the mid-1990s, so it is
unable to explain post-war Bosnia, the genocide trials, and the recent Bosnian Serb
responses. Also, the book was written before the ethnic cleansing and war in Kosova
from 1998 to 1999. The book also does not mention the contemporary regional
significance of the Serbian military budget annually, which ‘...amounts to $1.43 billion
or 2% of gross domestic product (GDP)’.
Source: ‘Serbia buys Cypriot helicopter gunships to bolster air force’, Reuters.com, 23 November 2023,
(accessed 29 Nov 2023)
---It would have been interesting to have had a voice or two from Serbian
‘liberals’ resident in Bosnia or Belgrade circa the mid-1990s, those individuals or
groups tolerant of other cultures and Muslims, perhaps a creative or open-minded
Serb citizen. This would have shown that within Serbia, there were dissenting voices
to the perceived victimhood of Serb hardline nationalists and extremists. A voice of
an Orthodox Serb fighting in the Bosnian army – alongside Muslims – against Serb
forces during the mid-1990s would have added value to the analysis of the
multicultural nature of Bosnia.
---Also, a line or two about the Muslims from across the world who travelled to
Bosnia to deliver aid supplies or to protect the Bosnians and fight against the
Serbian forces would have added to the analysis. Lastly, the book is an excellent
political and socio-cultural history. However, it does not mention Ottoman cuisine or
music as things that all three communities in urban centres enjoyed.
---Malcolm’s Bosnia: A Short History is readable, well-researched, and the ideal
introductory text for college and university courses. It is a fair and sympathetic study
of the country's ethnic diversity and complexity. His main argument is honest and
brave, considering that, at the time, the conflict was dismissed in the West as a civil
war with ancient roots and an internal affair. Malcolm’s argument is made more
plausible by the sources presented; his skill is to clarify key points and events and
how external powers ignited the war and kept it going. It is recommended for
university history students, students and scholars of the following: Muslim
multiculturalism; European genocide studies; Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox
relations; Ottoman and Habsburg political and social history; Balkan minorities
studies; anti-racist and anti-fascist studies, and the general reader.
August 5, 2025
took me a while but finally did it lmao
August 11, 2017
Here's my take: Bosnia by Noel Malcolm – Book Review
'When remembering the tragedies of the Balkan war, amidst the wide scale destruction, ethnic cleansing, and numerous massacres that took place, the loss of Bosnia’s cultural heritage may not seem particularly pernicious; after all, who weeps for books or old buildings? But as any student of nationalism will tell you, nations are not destroyed by force of arms, but the loss of their memories. And the scale of destruction here was breathtaking: the demolition of the National Library in Sarajevo, and the regional archives in Mostar, national and local museums, the razing of Bosnia’s architecture exhibiting the influences of its knotted history, singling out places of worship to facilitate ethnic cleansing — all of them physical witnesses to Bosnia’s multiethnic cultural heritage. This was nothing else but a systematic effort to erase Bosnia’s distinct nationhood.
...'
'When remembering the tragedies of the Balkan war, amidst the wide scale destruction, ethnic cleansing, and numerous massacres that took place, the loss of Bosnia’s cultural heritage may not seem particularly pernicious; after all, who weeps for books or old buildings? But as any student of nationalism will tell you, nations are not destroyed by force of arms, but the loss of their memories. And the scale of destruction here was breathtaking: the demolition of the National Library in Sarajevo, and the regional archives in Mostar, national and local museums, the razing of Bosnia’s architecture exhibiting the influences of its knotted history, singling out places of worship to facilitate ethnic cleansing — all of them physical witnesses to Bosnia’s multiethnic cultural heritage. This was nothing else but a systematic effort to erase Bosnia’s distinct nationhood.
...'
October 9, 2013
I think the only people who could read this book without problems and constant consultation of maps and historical documents would be specialists in the region. The book, especially towards the end is packed with facts, yet somehow Noel Malcom manages to be overtly subjective and at times tells you what is the obvious truth.
April 7, 2012
Excellent introduction and overview. Noel Malcolm's book gives a great insight into the turbulent and often tragic history of Bosnia and its people, without falling into the trap of mythologizing the causes and reasons for conflicts and wars that have so deeply traumatized this beautiful country.
February 11, 2008
As with Malcolm's "Kosovo: A Short History", this is a must-read for Yugoslavophiles like myself. It is simply a brilliant encapsulation of a country with a long and complicated history.
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