Since the nineteenth century, nationalist historians have stared into this closed system trying to perceive the fates of their proto-countrymen under Ottoman rule. As late as the terrible Bosnian War of the early 1990s, these topics had a sickening relevance as Bosnian Muslims were accused of being Ottoman quislings, not real Europeans and so on. In nationalist terms the stakes have therefore always been very high. The gradual liberation of these areas by Habsburg forces (often working with Imperial or Polish allies) was meant to rescue from bondage populations who would spring back upright
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