Edin Hajdarpasic

This dissertation focuses on the political motivations that drove various movements to demand reform in Bosnia during the late Ottoman period, an era that is usually described as the awakening of Balkan nations. It contends that during this formative period, most people in Bosnia were not consumed by nationalist zeal; instead, they were intensely searching for new political solutions that would address their most pressing problems, such as agrarian reform, lack of educational opportunities, and fair representation of ethno-confessional communities in emerging local political institutions. The project analyzes these complex struggles over the meanings of social reform and justice through a close examination of archival sources gathered during multi–sited research on Southeast Europe.

This project analyzes the politics of nation-formation in Bosnia-Herzegovina from the 1840s to 1914, a crucial yet understudied period that witnessed the rise of several South Slavic national movements in the Ottoman and Habsburg Balkan provinces. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, this study emphasizes the local contestations among national activists and imperial reformers whose work intersected in unpredictable ways as these actors developed new political agendas. The resulting alliances and confrontations brought about profound changes that paved the way for a sense of abiding Serbian-Croatian unity as well as troubling division. Indeed, this project argues that the long-term successes and the failures of Yugoslav political relations stem from the formative interactions of these movements over the question of Bosnia’s “proper” national belonging.