Through Bosnia and the Herzegóvina on foot during the insurrection, August and September 1875

by Sir Arthur Evans

If this religious antagonism can once be overcome, there seem to be many hopeful elements left us even in Bosnia. The temperament of the Southern Sclaves is preëminently kindly and easy-going, and nothing but the interested wiles of the Osmanlì, to whom Bosnian union meant his own expulsion, could have checked the development of a spirit of toleration. We have in Bosnia a common language and a common national character born of the blood; and that national character, whatever may be said to the contrary, is not prone to revolution. It is slow, it is stubborn, it is not easily roused, and it possesses a fund of common sense which has led a keen French observer to compare the Serbian genius with the English.[143] The Bosniacs are of a temperament admirably fitted for parliamentary government, and what is more, owing to their still preserving the relics of the free institutions of the primitive Sclaves, they are familiar with its machinery. In their family-communities, in their village councils, the first principles of representative government are practised every day. Orderly government once established by the commanding influence which powerful neighbours could exercise for pacification if they chose, the development of the natural resources of the country would follow as a matter of course. I have elsewhere alluded to the fact that, besides supplying the Romans and the Ragusans in the Middle Ages with incalculable wealth of gold and silver, the Bosnian mountains are known to contain some of the richest veins of quicksilver in Europe; that iron and other ores are abundant, and that the valley of the principal river is one vast coal-bed. All these sources of wealth and prosperity, and consequent civilization, are at present, as I show elsewhere, inaccessible, owing simply to the corruption of Stamboul.

Besides such decentralizing reforms in the provincial constitution as connect themselves with the discontinuance of the direct government of the Osmanlì, it may be well to cite some of the more obvious measures necessary to secure the order and well being of Bosnia. The present insurrection, as I have been at some pains to point out, was in its origin mainly agrarian, and no reform can be satisfactory which does not secure the tiller of the soil a certain portion of it for himself. The intolerance of all classes of the Bosnian population is the natural offspring of the gross ignorance in which they are steeped, and it must be confessed that the want of education is largely due to the clerical character of the schools where they exist and to the malign teachings of odium theologicum. ‘The result of the present system,’ says a recent observer, ‘is evident and it is fatal. The Greek children under the Higumen, the Catholics under the Franciscan priest, the Mussulmans under the Ulema, go to school to learn to hate each other, and in fact this is the only lesson which as men they take care to remember.’[144] That a certain part of the revenues of the province should be set apart for education of a purely secular kind is a crying necessity, and the establishment of high schools at Serajevo, Travnik, Banjaluka, Mostar, and other large towns under the auspices of the University of Agram, but equally secular in their character, might be suggested as a good way of remedying the want of higher culture. For the moral, as well as the material, elevation of the rayahs of the Greek Church it is of the highest importance that they should be liberated from the corrupt rule of the Fanariote hierarchy, and it might be well to revive the national Sclavonic patriarchate, not at Ipek but at Serajevo. To foster the development of the great resources of the country, greater facilities for obtaining concessions of mines should be accorded to foreign capitalists; the completion of the Bosnian railway, and its junction with Roumelian and Serbian lines, should be secured; and measures should be taken to overcome the selfish financial policy of Austria, which shuts off Bosnia and Herzegovina from the only two seaports, the narrow enclaves of Klek and Sutorina, which still remain to them.

A few vigorous strokes like these levelled by the united strength of Europe at the ignorance, bigotry, and industrial depression of this unhappy land, could not long be without their result. It is a mistake to suppose that Islâm really opposes itself to culture; and were the means of obtaining a liberal education, free from the taint of Christian bigotry, placed within the reach of the Mahometan Begs and burghers, there is no reason to suppose that they would refuse their sons the benefit of it.

On the whole, however, it is safe to assume that the influx of Western civilization into Bosnia would tend to strengthen the Christian element. The fatalistic temper of the Mahometan dominant caste cripples their commercial energies. As the natural resources of the country were developed, wealth would fall more and more into the hands of the Christians, and the balance of political power would infallibly incline in their favour. In the course of a generation they might assume the reins of government, which, as I have pointed out, in spite of their numerical superiority, they are at present incapable of holding. The way would thus be paved for a closer union with the Christian border-provinces of kindred blood, Serbia and Montenegro, and Bosnia might ultimately form a province of a great South-Sclavonic confederation, extending from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, which should act as a constitutional bulwark against the encroaching despotism of the North.

To suppose that the freedom of the Sclaves of the South, of the Bosniacs, the Serbs of Old Serbia, and Bulgarians, will, when accomplished—and sooner or later there is no doubt that it must be accomplished—add to the strength of Russia, because in language they are somewhat similar, is as if anyone should have opposed the liberation and unity of Italy on the score that it would be aggrandizing France. If the French ever had designs on Rome they are infinitely less likely to arrive at them now than when an Austrian Archduke governed in Lombardy, and Bomba ruled at Naples. Granted that the Russians have designs on Constantinople, are they more likely to gain it from a decrepit Power which can scarcely hold its own provinces, or from a new Power or Powers endued with all the vigour of young nationality? To leave a country like Bosnia, isolated from the rest of Turkey, surrounded by free States, to perpetuate agitation within its borders, is only to weaken what remains of Turkey, and to play into the hands of Russia. Cousinship is not always a gage of amity; and the day, perhaps, is not far distant when the Sclavonic races of the Balkan Peninsula will look upon Russia as their most insidious foe.

BOSNIA AND THE HERZEGÓVINA.

CHAPTER I.
AGRAM AND THE CROATS.

Slovenization in Styria—Regrets of a Prussian—Agram—Her Sclavonic Features, Hero, Art, and Architecture—Flowers of the Market-place—Croatian Costume—Prehistoric Ornament and Influence of Oriental Art—South Sclavonic Crockery, Jewelry, and Musical Instruments—Heirlooms from Trajan or Heraclius?—Venice and Croatia—Croatian Gift of Tongues—Lost in the Forest—A Bulgarian Colony—On to Karlovac—The Welsh of Croatia—Croatian Characteristics—Karlovac Fair—On the Outposts of Christendom.

As the train from Vienna descends into the valley of the Drave a change becomes perceptible in the scattered cottages and hamlets that fly past us. The dark wooden chalets of the Semmering valleys, that recall Salzburg and Tyrol and more distant Scandinavia, give place to meaner huts, less roomy, lower, paler, more rectangular. Rich maroon-brown beams that seem to have grown up with the pines around, dark projecting eaves that overhang the time-stained fronts as the shadowy fir-branches the primeval trunks—all these give place to wattle and daub and chilling whitewash. The eaves are now less prominent; but if the houses are comparatively browless, there is a pair of window eyelets under the trilateral gable, and their physiognomy is recognised at once. These are the huts you have seen far away on the Sclavonic outskirts of Hungary. You have seen them dotted about Bohemia and the sandy plains of Prussia; you have seen them magnified and embellished into the old palaces of Prague. As we approach Marburg we are entering in truth on another world—a Sclavonic tongue begins to be heard around. Those mountain-chalets were the high water mark of the Germanic sea.