Bosnians

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Bosnians (Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian:Bosanci / Босанци; sing. Bosanac / Босанац) are people who live in, or come from, Bosnia and Herzegovina. By the modern state definition a Bosnian can be anyone who holds a citizenship in the state including members of constituent ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats and other minorities such as Roma, Albanians, Montenegrins, and others.

In addition, there is a sizable population in Bosnia and Herzegovina who believe that Bosnians are a nation holding a distinct collective cultural identity. By this usage, a Bosnian would be an individual who belonged to this culture. They assert that this collective identity is capable of diminishing or overcoming existing political and ethnic divisions [1].

1 History
2 Bosnians in respect to religion
3 Bosnians today
4 Note on use of term 'Bosnian-Herzegovinian'
5 Maps and demographic illustrations
6 See also
7 External links
8 References

[edit] History

About one hundred years ago, the term "Bosniak" had a similar meaning to the one "Bosnian" has today. Many of the people who lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina once called themselves "Bosniaks" including Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians.

During the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1878 to 1918, the administration of Benjamin Kallay, the Austro-Hungarian governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, enforced the idea of a unitary Bosnian nation (Bosanci) that would incorporate the Bosnian Catholics and Bosnian Orthodoxs as well as Muslim Bosnians. Kallay symbolized this nation with the introduction of the Bosnian flag, Bosnian language and coat of arms. In this way the Bosnian distinctiveness was underlined and distanced from Serbian and Croatian national emancipation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.^[1]

The idea was fiercely opposed by Croats and Serbs, but also by a number of Bosnian Muslims as it came at a time when neighboring Serbia and Croatia were reinforcing their national and ethnic identity in the process of building their own nation states. Unlike Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatian and Serbian understanding of nationhood in late 19th century was more deeply rooted in religion as in bringing people of same religion together into a single nation. This can explain their interests towards assimilating Catholic and Christian Orthodox population of Bosnia and Herzegovina into unified Croatian and Serbian national identity. This policy further clouded the Bosnian national issue and the official use of the name.

During the time when Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of Yugoslavia Bosnians were not recognized as a nation. Bosnians were listed under the category "regional affiliation" by the Yugoslavian statistics. This also applied to the last census in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1991. However, census format in former Yugoslavia was often subject of political manipulation. Bosnians were not allowed to declare themselves as Bosnians in former Yugoslavia even when they requested that option in the constitutional amendments of 1947 and 1973. Instead they had to declare themselves either as Serbs or Croats until 1963, "undecideds" or "Muslim in a national sense" (with lower case m) until 1973, and Muslims (with capital M) until 1993.

In 1992 a referendum was held for the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina which was to be founded on a principle of a single Bosnian nation (citizenry of Bosnia and Herzegovina) consisting of several constituent ethnic groups. The referendum was followed by a bloody ethnic war.

When in 1990 the name Bosniaks was re-introduced to replace the term Muslim it was too late for that term to be realistically accepted by non-Muslim Bosnians, as they were already naturalized into Serb and Croat nations and further radicalized by the ethnic animosities among all three ethnic groups.

This resulted in Bosniak, or even Muslim, as terms being (re)coined recently as a political compromise. Peculiarly enough, in the present day Bosnia it is practically impossible for a citizen to declare her/himself as Bosnian. It can be tedious to argue this point as one inevitably has to take a lot of flak from Croat, Serb, or even Bosniak nationalists in the process. It is often forgotten, or rather ignored, that the unfortunate division in Bosnia-Herzegovina along the ethnic lines has its origins in the 19th century, and that distinctive ethnic prefixes had little or no meaning before. Due to the wide-spread practice in the Ottoman empire the distinction (for taxation purposes, military service etc.) was made based on religion and this heritage only contributed to the ethnic chaos in the Balkans that followed in the wake of its retreat from Europe.

[edit] Bosnians in respect to religion

Bosnians are a multi-religious as much as multi-ethnic society but this is not to say that its component religions and ethnicities are homogeneous and independent from each other.

According to Tone Bringa, an author and anthropologist, in respect to Bosnia and Bosnians she states that "Neither Bosniak, nor Croat, nor Serb identities can be fully understood with reference only to Islam or Christianity respectively but have to be considered in a specific Bosnian context that has resulted in a shared history and locality among Bosnians of Islamic as well as Christian backgrounds." According to Bringa, in Bosnia there is a singular, “trans-ethnic culture” that encompassed each ethnicity and makes different faiths, including Christianity and Islam, “synergistically interdependent”. ^[2]

A common anthropological trait present among many Bosnians that resulted from influence of religion on history in Bosnia and Herzegovina and which was continually evident among some Bosnians even today is also a preference for mythological method of knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer was very much dependent on oral tradition given that early Bosnian Church was not well organised, and even where it was, there were not many written testaments left to the posterity to learn from. As a result collective memory of many historical events among Bosnians in absence of factual information have become the “facts” of collective memory which are not always in line with historical facts.

Still large numbers of Bosnians are secular which is a trend that has more profoundly found root in last 60 years in Bosnia and Herzegovina as they were part of the Communist system that rejected, but tolerated, religion.

[edit] Bosnians today

Recently, the denial of Bosnian nationhood, as a unifying trait of those who stem from Bosnia and Herzegovina, has generally been used by some political factions to drive the constituent ethnicities of Bosnia and Herzegovina further apart.

Because of this pressure and because of its complex history Bosnian national identity today remains a complex issue among its adherents. Variably members of the Bosnian nation, of various ethnic and religious backgrounds who live or stem from Bosnia and Herzegovina, define themselves Bosnians primarily as they feel they belong to the same geographical region which characterizes them with particular cultural and historical traits. However, many choose to declare themselves as Bosnian as a method for overcoming ethnic animosities aroused by the recent war. Due to more recent war and massive relocations of Bosnians they have experienced a significant internationalization of their identity with many considering themselves as having dual identity (one as Bosnians and another of the country where they currently live). As a result in diaspora Bosnians have shown tendencies towards more or less successful organizing into viable Bosnian communities.

Given heavy involvement of the European community in political integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian nationalization issue is viewed by some as a contemporary European experiment strikingly similar to modern Europeanism movement.

[edit] Note on use of term 'Bosnian-Herzegovinian'

The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

In terms of regional belonging and the use of the regional names, a Bosnian is not a Herzegovinian. However in international use since the word Bosnia is commonly used as an abbreviation to a correct name of the country Bosnia and Herzegovina, similar name convention is applied on both Bosnians and Herzegovinians. The abbreviation of the names is used because Herzegovina has historically been considered a region of Bosnia and due to the tongue-twisting nature of the appellation "Bosnian-Herzegovinian" in English. Hence in common discussion Herzegovinians often declare themselves also as Bosnians although it may not be their most desired choice. For this reasons many ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in particular Bosnian Croats from Herzegovina and Central Bosnia prefer to state their ethnic identity, Croats, over Bosnian one. This was also contributed by the fact that today's connotations of the word "Bosnian" and its meaning, is somewhat different from what it previously had meant prior to the Bosnian Muslim name change and due to the aggressive efforts of some Bosniaks to monopolize the word Bosnian to imply Bosniak.

In Bosnia (and Herzegovina), the politically correct way of referring to the country and the politically correct adjective(s) consists of both parts of the name, i.e. Bosnian-Herzegovinian Serbs, Croats or Bosniaks.