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Post by sarmat on Jul 17, 2009 8:49:45 GMT 3
Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians etc and later Yugoslavia were essentially Serbian dominated empires and Communist Yugoslavia only worked as long as Tito was alive. May be it was Serbian dominated the same as Austro-Hungary was Germano-Hungarian dominated. But the point is that both Austro-Hungary and Yugoslavia were trying to create a coherent "one, unified" identity of Southern Slavs. two official languages for a multi-ethnic emprie is good enough. how many official languages did the Soviet Union have? Well. I don't think USSR is the best example to compare. But officially every republic within the USSR had its own official language. In any case, ethnic minorities are usually unhappy when their language is oppressed and doesn't have official status. besides it's not recommendable to have so many official languages, just look at India, there needs to be some sort of overall lingua franca to easen communication on the federal level. I actually like very much Indian example. Everybody doesn't feel '"descriminated" and English and Hindi are becoming linguas franca naturally, not because of some violent enforcement but of natural necessity. well there is a difference between prisoners of war and deserters. Czechs etc were the latter, while Russia indeed took over a million Austro-Hungarian prisoners afetr the battle of Lemberg and the siege of Przemysl, the K.u.K. Army from then on was more stabilized and was mostly on the advance thereafter and numbers of subsequent PoWs low. By 1917 Russia had 2 million POWs mostly Austro-Hungarians. And Romanian, Ukrainians and Italians were deserters as well.
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Post by Temüjin on Jul 17, 2009 16:52:24 GMT 3
May be it was Serbian dominated the same as Austro-Hungary was Germano-Hungarian dominated. But the point is that both Austro-Hungary and Yugoslavia were trying to create a coherent "one, unified" identity of Southern Slavs. no i don't think so, in Austria-Hungary Croatians and Bosnians were treated differently and respected, but Serbia disliked Croatia and vice versa and Bosnia was considdered Muslim Serbia at all. the difference is that Serbia was a dominating factor while Austria-Hungary there was a Habsburg, not German, dominated Empire. you'll see that in most modern countries. Britiain was English/Anglo-Saxon dominated, with Welsh, Scottish etc as subordinates. France was Frankish dominated with Burgundians, Goths, Bretons etc subordinate. Germany developed differently, it were many tribes but they all were equal, there was no one domianting, that's the basis of a federal system. we can see the same in the US, Brazil, Mexico, modern Austria and India. essentially there are only two types of empires, those dominated by a certain group and those were all groups are equal, the latter one exampel is very rare but it existed from time to time. for example the Achaemenid Empire, the Mahratti Confederacy/Empire in 18th century India, most Steppe Empires. all those had a specific ruling elite and dynasty, true, but they didn't assimilated nor forced the minorities they controlled into secondary status to their native group. the Rheinbund (Rhine Confederacy) even though effectively a French vassal and not a real country with a single overall ruler falls into that category as well.
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Post by hjernespiser on Jul 17, 2009 19:42:15 GMT 3
I actually like very much Indian example. Everybody doesn't feel '"descriminated" and English and Hindi are becoming linguas franca naturally, not because of some violent enforcement but of natural necessity. And "natural necessity" tends to be a much more effective tool of linguistic assimilation than violent enforcement. I'll note that English is only a de facto language of the US. The US has no official language.
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Post by sarmat on Jul 17, 2009 22:24:34 GMT 3
no i don't think so, in Austria-Hungary Croatians and Bosnians were treated differently and respected, but Serbia disliked Croatia and vice versa and Bosnia was considdered Muslim Serbia at all. the difference is that Serbia was a dominating factor while Austria-Hungary there was a Habsburg, not German, dominated Empire. Well. I think we all agree that Austo-Hungary was German-Hungarian dominated. And many ethnicities including Slovaks, Czechs, Italians, Romanians, Serbs etc. were not happy with that. Also, Habsburgs always favored Catholics over other confessions. About the Austrian rule in Bosnia. staff.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/lect12.htmConclusions As we look at the period of Habsburg rule in Bosnia, the results are disappointing from both economic and political perspectives. Austria-Hungary took control of the region for two reasons: first, to assure military control over a sensitive border area, and second, to improve the deplorable socio-economic conditions there. As the events of 1914 showed, the latter goal had the potential for profound effects on the former. Because the Habsburg regime failed to reform Bosnia's economy or society, political turmoil only increased, and eventually led the empire into the fatal war of 1914. Sadly, the failure to meet reform goals was a result of greed, jealousy and petty politics, not inadequate national resources. Too few railroads were built, too few industries founded and too few peasants rescued from serfdom, largely because political and economic leaders in Austria-Hungary chose to serve their own needs first. As we later consider the origins of the Bosnian Serb assassins of 1914, keep the failures of the Habsburg occupation in mind. No outside power, no Turkish pasha dictated this course to Austro-Hungarian leaders. They themselves made the decisions which sustained discontent in Bosnia, and eventually they paid dearly for their choice. www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/fallstudie/RDonia1.pdfConclusion Bosnia-Herzegovina was familiar territory to Habsburg imperial rulers when, in 1878, they commenced rule under their mandate to »occupy and administer« the land. With the benefits of proximity and the overlap of major population groups, Austro-Hungary’s colonial administrators had a better understanding of the colony’s history, traditions, and culture than officials of European lands who governed more distant colonies. But familiarity did not translate into benefits for the inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Proximity deepened the rift between colony and colonizers, as those in the colony became pawns in power struggles that engulfed the monarchy in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Every major decision faced by imperial administrators had ramifications for political life in the monarchy. Even administrators with bold vision and considerable autonomy, such as Kállay, exercised greater circumspection in making decisions than might have been the case in an overseas colony. Their regard for the monarchy’s dominant political groups reinforced their own conservative instincts. Despite promoting many of the outward manifestations of modernization and liberalization, the monarchy increasingly exploited Bosnia-Herzegovina and intensified its colonial situation in the early 20th century. The proximate colony became a hyper-colony, increasingly dependent upon the colonial parent, while many of its inhabitants voiced their resentment by protesting the colonizers’ authority over them. About the attempts to create a "unifying Bosnian identity" which was very similar to "Yugoslavian idenity" promoted by the republic of Yugoslavia: "The authorities held high hopes that Bošnjak would overcome the nascent Serbian Orthodox loyalty to the Serb national identity and the loyalty of Catholics to Croat national ideals. But the idea of a single Bosnian national identity never gained support beyond the small circle of youthful proregime Muslim intellectuals. To the dismay of imperial administrators, adherents of Serbian Orthodoxy in Bosnia-Herzegovina increasingly came to identify themselves as Serbs by nationality, and Catholics gradually adopted Croatian national identity. »Bosnians«, it turned out, would not settle for cosmetic cultural innovations; many instead adopted identities being promoted from neighboring lands."
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Post by Temüjin on Jul 18, 2009 21:41:18 GMT 3
Well. I think we all agree that Austo-Hungary was German-Hungarian dominated. And many ethnicities including Slovaks, Czechs, Italians, Romanians, Serbs etc. were not happy with that. Also, Habsburgs always favored Catholics over other confessions. well first, it as only Hungarian-dominated after 1848, secondly it was not German dominated at all, as i noted before the majority of infantry was Czech in the Nap Wars and the very creator of the modern Austrian Army was an Italian-originated general. all nobles of the empire had equal chances of becoming a high-ranking commander and all soldiers no matter where they were from were treated equally. Austria-Hungary was similar to the Ottoman Empire in that it was ruled by a dynasty and not by an ethncity. if you observe the wars of confessions you'll see that the Habsburgs used Croatians to raid German towns and that their own German Protestant minorities were persecuted and expulsed. it's a falacity to believe that the German origin of the Habsburgs meant that the Empire was German dominated at all beyond the obvious German administration inherent through the fact that the Habsburgs were Germans. the Habsburgs rueld their territories not as conquerors because idneed, almost their whole empire was acquired through marriage (including Austria itself!) and countries like Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia were not ruled by the Emperor of Austria but the King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, which happened to be the Habsburg Emperor in personal-union. the problem here is that this system didn't worked in the 19th and 20th century anymore because of nationalism. but this is wrong, the Emprie didn't collapsed from within but from the outside, the assassination was committed by Serbian nationalists on behalf of Serbia, those are external factors. during all of ww1 you'll not fidn a single uprising or mutiny within Austria-Hungary (unlike Socialists in Germany for example). that speaks a lot about the situation of the Empire. Bosnia was part of Austria-Hungary since the 1870s but only annexed to it in 1908, up until 1914, thats an awfully short time to modernize a backward province into one of the most developed of all Europe, as this article apparently wants to suggest. and there's nothing wrong with the creation of a Bosnian identity because obviously that's what Bosnians want themselves and they refused, like even Montenegro nowadays, a Serbian dominated fake Yugoslavian identity.
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Post by sarmat on Jul 18, 2009 22:36:19 GMT 3
I made the point about "Bosnian identity," as a counter argument to you critics of the "Yugoslavian identity." I mean, you were criticizing Yugoslavian ethnic policies and the attempts to create "Yugoslavian identity" while giving high esteem to the Austrian rule in Bosnia, while the fact is that "Yugoslavian identity" was an experiment based on the original Austiran experiment to forge "Bosnian identiy."
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Post by Temüjin on Jul 20, 2009 21:38:56 GMT 3
yeah but that's not comparable, Bosnian identity was something real, something that they accepted themselves, Yugoslavian was completely artificial, like greater "Austro-Hungarian" identity.
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Post by sarmat on Jul 21, 2009 20:54:00 GMT 3
yeah but that's not comparable, Bosnian identity was something real, something that they accepted themselves, Yugoslavian was completely artificial, like greater "Austro-Hungarian" identity. No. Bosnian Catholics remained "Croats", Bosnian Orthodox remained "Serbs." The article clearly pointed that out. So, it was complitely as artificial as Yugislavian identity. As about "Austro-Hungarian identiry" it was much more artificial than the former. At least Croats, Sebs, Bosnians have very similar languages and culture, while Austro-Hungary was a conglomerate of different people.
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