Ethnic Groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Encyclopedia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
belongs to one of its three constitutive ethnic groups: Bosniaks
Bosniaks
The Bosniaks or Bosniacs are a South Slavic ethnic group, living mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a smaller minority also present in other lands of the Balkan Peninsula especially in Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia...
, Serbs
Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina are people of Serb ethnicity inhabiting the Balkan regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or, since the establishment of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state in the 1990s, the Serbs who have its citizenship. The Serbs are one of the three constitutive nations of this...
and Croats
Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina form one of the three constitutive nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.There is no precise data regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina's population since the last war. Ethnic cleansing within Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s saw the vast majority of Croats move and take...
. The term constitutive refers to the fact that these three ethnic groups are explicitly mentioned in the constitution, and that none of them can be considered a minority
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...
or immigrant.
While each have their own standard language variant and a name for it, they speak mutually intelligible languages
Serbo-Croatian language
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
. On a dialectal level, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks speak a variety of Štokavian dialects: Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats "southern" neo-Štokavian; Croats and Bosniaks "western" neo-Štokavian and Bosniaks and Croats "eastern-Bosnian" old-Štokavian. These dialects are mutually intelligible, but have fixed phonetic, morphological and lexical differences. The question of standard language of Bosnia and Herzegovina is resolved in such a way that three constituent ethnic groups have their educational and cultural institutions in their respective native or mother tongue languages: Bosnian
Bosnian language
Bosnian is a South Slavic language, spoken by Bosniaks. As a standardized form of the Shtokavian dialect, it is one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina....
, Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
and Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
.
The most easily recognizable feature that distinguishes the three ethnic groups is their religion, with Bosniaks predominantly Muslim
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
, Serbs predominantly Orthodox Christians
Serbian Orthodox Church
The Serbian Orthodox Church is one of the autocephalous Orthodox Christian churches, ranking sixth in order of seniority after Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Russia...
, and Croats Catholic Christians
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
.
This has led some to believe that these ethnic groups emerged from religious groups in a process that occurred in 19th century. On the other hand, numerous historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
s, culturologists
Culturology
Culturology is the branch of Social Sciences concerned with the scientific understanding, description, analysis and prediction of cultural activities, cultural systems and culture broadly-construed.-History of the term in Russia:...
and ethnologists
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
consider that Croats and Serbs have merely completed their ethnic integration in the 19th century (like, for instance, Norwegians or Slovaks
Slovaks
The Slovaks, Slovak people, or Slovakians are a West Slavic people that primarily inhabit Slovakia and speak the Slovak language, which is closely related to the Czech language.Most Slovaks today live within the borders of the independent Slovakia...
), while Bosniaks crystallized into a separate ethnic group only at the end of the 20th century. A Y chromosome
Y chromosome
The Y chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes in most mammals, including humans. In mammals, it contains the gene SRY, which triggers testis development if present. The human Y chromosome is composed of about 60 million base pairs...
haplogroup
Haplogroup
In the study of molecular evolution, a haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor having the same single nucleotide polymorphism mutation in both haplotypes. Because a haplogroup consists of similar haplotypes, this is what makes it possible to predict a haplogroup...
s study published in 2005 found that "three main groups of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in spite of some quantitative differences, share a large fraction of the same ancient gene pool distinctive for the Balkan area".
Decision of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina
On 12 February 1998, Mr. Alija IzetbegovićAlija Izetbegovic
Alija Izetbegović was a Bosniak activist, lawyer, author, philosopher and politician, who, in 1990, became the first president of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He served in this role until 1996, when he became a member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, serving until 2000...
, at the time Chair of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, instituted proceedings before the Constitutional Court
Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a special court sui generis, whose main role is to be the interpreter and guardian of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as stated in Article VI, paragraph 3 of the Constitution , and it is considered to be the highest judicial...
for an evaluation of the consistency of the Constitution of the Republika Srpska and the Constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the highest legal document of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The current Constitution is the Annex 4 of The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement, signed in Paris on 14 December 1995...
. The request was supplemented on 30 March 1998 when the applicant specified which provisions of the Entities’ Constitutions he considered to be unconstitutional. The four partial decisions were made in a year 2000, by which many of articles of the constitutions of entities were found to be unconstitutional, which had a great impact on politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because there was a need to adjust the current state in the country with the decision of the Court. There was a narrow majority (5-4), in the favour of the applicant. In its decision, among other things, the Court stated:
The formal name of this item is U-5/98, but it is widely known as the "Decision on the constituency of peoples" , referring to the Court's interpretation of the significance of the phrase "constituent peoples" used in the Preamble of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The decision was also the basis for other notable cases that came before the court.
Ethnic background of Bosnia and Herzegovina
During the Bronze AgeBronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
, Bosnia was inhabited by people of supposed Indo-European
Indo-European
Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...
stock, commonly referred to by ancient Greeks
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
and later Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
by a single name, Illyrians
Illyria
In classical antiquity, Illyria was a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by the Illyrians....
. They were finally conquered by Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
in A.D. 10
10
Year 10 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, throughout Roman Empire, it was known as the year of the consulship of Dolabella and Silanus...
. Illyrians defended their homeland from various conquerors for hundreds of years, before they were finally subdued by Rome after the Augustus managed to crush the last Great Illyrian Revolt
Great Illyrian revolt
The Great Illyrian Revolt, was a major conflict between an alliance of indigenous communities from Illyricum and Roman forces that lasted for four years beginning in AD 6 and ending in AD 9.-The war:...
(Bellum Batonianum or Pannonian Revolt), organised and led by Bato
Bato
Bato can have different meanings, not related in Etymology, in various times, places and cultures:-People:Bato as an Illyrian male name may refer to:*Bato of Dalmatia, Illyrian tribal chief...
(n), the chieftain of the Daesitiates. Following this historical event that was carved deeply into the history of Rome, which suffered great losses in army, Illyrians were gradually Romanized and by the 4th century they spoke Latin language
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and their pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
religion was replaced by corresponding Roman myths
Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs and cult practices regarded by the Romans as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities...
and later they became Christians
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. However, numerous material remains indicate that a significant amount of Illyrian material culture not only survived the Roman era, but the subsequent Slavic invasions as well, as indicated in the traditional rituals, dance and singing, costumes, jewelry and tattoos in some parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (spiral and zig-zag decorations), identical to those of North Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
and Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
. Many scholars believe that ancient Illyrian language is a predecessor of modern Albanian
Albanian language
Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
, although this theory has its serious opponents.
The turmoil after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476
476
Year 476 was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Basiliscus and Armatus...
was followed by settlement of Slavs in the 7th century. Even though modern languages of this area are almost purely Slavic with very little Illyrian influence, it is believed that, genetically speaking, the present population of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a mixture of Slavs and Illyrians with influences of other ethnic groups such as Avars
Eurasian Avars
The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...
and Goths
Goths
The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
.
There are many theories regarding the ethnic structure of a medieval Bosnian state; however, evidence is inconclusive. Claims that medieval Bosnians declared themselves Croats or Serbs have been disputed: evidence shows many instances of them calling themselves Bosnians (Bošnjani); however, some historians believe that these indicate regional rather than ethnic identity.
Brief history of religions in Bosnia and Herzegovina
South Slavs were Christianized in 9th century. Until the OttomanOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
conquest of Bosnia, there is evidence of three Christian denominations in Bosnia: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and an indigenous church known as the Bosnian Church
Bosnian Church
The Bosnian Church is historically thought to be an indigenous branch of the Bogomils that existed in Bosnia during the Middle Ages. Adherents of the church called themselves simply Krstjani...
. Some scholars believe it was a dualist church related to the Bogomils of Bulgaria, while others dispute this claim, citing lack of historical evidence. Both Orthodox and Roman Catholic officials declared this church to be a heresy
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
. Apart from testimonies of inquisitors
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
and a few excerpts from allegedly apocryphal texts, we have very little knowledge of the Bosnian Church. Its connection with Bogomils is spurious, however. Discussion about how numerous each of these denominations was is impossible with the amount of historical documents presently available.
The arrival of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, an Islamic state, resulted in a thorough realignment of religious groups. The Bosnian Church vanished, apparently because its leaders were either killed or converted. Many members of all three denominations converted to Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. Other members of the Bosnian Church converted to either Catholicism or Orthodoxy. There are also evidence of big part of the Catholic population converting to Orthodoxy. The effect of the so-called devşirme
Devshirmeh
Devshirme was the practice by which...
or blood tax on the presence of Muslims in Bosnia is negligible. The presence of large Muslim population in contemporary Bosnia is due to many factors, with motives ranging from effective propaganda to religious persecution of Catholics in the 15th to 18th centuries (Catholics being viewed as a sort of "fifth column" of the Ottoman arch-enemy, the Habsburg Empire) and understandable motive to improve one's social standing in the theocratic Ottoman empire.
It is known that during the 16th and 17th century numerous Catholics left Bosnia. Much of the population of the coastal regions of Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
and the Adriatic islands has origins in Bosnia.
Transformation of ethnicity to religion, its cause and course
Originally, the Islamic Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
didn't have a concept of private ownership of land. Rights to till the land (tapija) were given to deserving military commanders (spahi), and after their death this right was delegated to another person. However, considering the special circumstances of the border-line province of Bosnia, the Ottoman sultan
Sultan
Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...
made an exception allowing for tapijas to be hereditary. This resulted in a de facto feudal system. Bosnian landlords (begs) quickly acquired more land than they could possibly till themselves, therefore they allowed Christian peasants to settle and till the land, giving a percentage (usually one third) to their beg.
This system worked reasonably well until mid-18th century when, following several major military defeats, general economic situation in Ottoman Empire declined. Impoverished begs and widows hired čifluk sahibijas, persons that had the authority to collect taxes on a certain part of a begs land while keeping a portion for themselves. Sahibijas didn't feel any obligation towards peasants and treated them badly, often enforcing taxes and confiscating property. This combined with growing taxes that the Empire required for itself and several bad years for crops resulted in a series of uprisings of Christian peasants in Bosnia, Serbia and other European provinces. In Bosnia this meant a very deep chasm between Muslims and Christians of both denominations.
In the times following the Ottoman conquest, the name «Bošnjanin» was turkified into «Bošnjak» (Bosh-nyak, Bosniak in English).During early Ottoman rule, the term «Bošnjak» was applied exclusively to the Christian population, while islamized natives were referred to as «Bosnalu». However, in following centuries (16th to 19th), this name, under various hyphenated forms («Bošnjak-milleti», «Bošnjak-taifesi») had acquired additional nuances of meaning: it became the common term for all the inhabitants of Bosnian Turkish pashaluk
Pashaluk
Pashaluk or Pashalik is a term for one type of the Subdivisions of the Ottoman Empire.It is the abstract word derived from pasha, denoting the quality, office or jurisdiction of a pasha or the territory administered by him....
/military province. However, it is just one regional reference. The bureaucracy of the theocratic Ottoman empire couldn't even imagine that Muslims and Christians in one of the provinces of the vast Islamic polity would constitute a separated, supradenominational community. Nor was it thinkable to the Bosnian Christians and Muslims.
This has left Bosnian Muslims in a sort of vacuum. When Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, Muslims saw it as their arch-enemy and many left Bosnia for territories still under Ottoman rule. Therefore, Austria-Hungarian project of a Bosnian nation was accepted only among Bosniak intellectual elite and a small number of Catholics. Serbs formed a resistance organization that grew into an opposition party named Serb Peoples1 Organization. A corresponding Muslim Peoples1 Organization was organized in 1906, and immediately entered into alliance with Serb Peoples1 Organization. These two parties combined with Croat Peoples1 Community won the 1910 elections by a large margin. This gave birth to the well-known concept of three natio-religions that we still see alive today.
The origins of the three nations now present in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be traced back to the period (ca. 1500. to ca. 1800.) of intense islamization when "triple" ethnic-denominational differentiation served as the focal point for growth of modern national individualities based on ancient ethnic loyalties: as Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
has said, people become what they already are - notwithstanding the fact that they may not yet be aware of it. Bosnian Croats and Serbs have definitely crystallized into modern nations during the 19th century, simultaneously retaining their regional Bosnian and Herzegovinian identities rooted in history and conjoining with their compatriots in Croatia and Serbia. Bosnian Muslims, on the other hand, have set out on the trek for self-identity. Feeling in their bones the unbridgeable separateness and distance from both Croats and Serbs, these "Turkey's abandoned children" found themselves in an uneasy position: being a cultural/denominational transplant from Asia Minor grafted onto South Slavic ethnicities whose nascent Croat and Serb identities melted away in the process of Islamization, they vacillated between a few national and semi-national individualities: Turkish, Croat, Serb, supranational Yugoslav and quasidenominational ethnic Muslim designation - Bosnian Muslims were officially recognized as a nation under the name of Muslims in the 1971 Yugoslav census. Finally, this identity crisis was resolved in an abrupt way: the Bosniak designation (a word meaning Bosnian Muslim) was adopted in 1993 as a sign of differentiating ethnic identity from denominational loyalties. Although circumstances of the procedure may look somewhat weird (it was unanimously accepted on September 28, 1993, at the 2nd Bosniak Congress - an institution of Bosnian Muslim intellectuals and ideologues), it seems that, in all likelihood, Bosnian Muslims have definitively reached the goal in their quest for national identity.
1 This word can also be translated as "National" or even "Ethnic".