Pasha openly professed himself a loyal subject, but secretly sent reinforcements to the rebel aristocracy. The Turks proved everywhere successful. After a cordial reception by their commander Omer or Omar Pasha, Ali was imprisoned; he was shortly afterwards assassinated, lest his lavish bribery of Turkish officials should restore him to favour, and bring disgrace on his captor (March 1851).
The downfall of the Moslem aristocracy resulted in an important
administrative change: Serajevo, which had long been the
commercial centre of the country, and the jealously
guarded stronghold of the nobles, superseded Travnik
as the official capital, and the residence of the vali.
Condition of
the serfs.
A variety of other reforms, including the reorganization
of Moslem education, were introduced by Omer Pasha, who
governed the country until 1860. But as the administration
grew stronger, the position of the peasantry became worse.
They had now to satisfy the imperial tax-farmers and excisemen,
as well as their feudal lords. The begs and agas continued to
exact their forced labour and one-third of their produce; the
central government imposed a tithe which had become an
eighth by 1875. Three kinds of cattle-tax, the tax for exemption
from military service, levied on every newborn male, forced
labour on the roads, forced loan of horses, a heavy excise on
grapes and tobacco, and a variety of lesser taxes combined to
burden the Christian serfs; but even more galling than the
amount was the manner in which these dues were exacted—the
extortionate assessments of tax-farmers and excisemen, the
brutal licence of the soldiery who were quartered on recalcitrant
villagers. A crisis was precipitated by the example of Servian
independence, the hope of Austrian intervention, and the public
bankruptcy of Turkey.
Sporadic insurrections had already broken out among the
Bosnian Christians, and on the 1st of July 1875 the villagers
of Nevesinje, which gives its name to a mountain
range east of Mostar, rose against the Turks. Within
Christian rising
of 1875.
a few weeks the whole country was involved. The
Herzegovinians, under their leaders Peko Pavlović,
Socica, Ljubibratić, and others, held out for a year against all
the forces that Turkey could despatch against them.[1] In July
1876 Servia and Montenegro joined the struggle, and in April
1877 Russia declared war on the sultan.
The Austro-Hungarian occupation, authorized on the 13th of
July 1878 by the treaty of Berlin (arts. 23 and 26), was not
easily effected; and, owing to the difficulty of military
operations among the mountains, it was necessary to
employ a force of 200,000 men. Haji Loja, the
Austro-Hungarian occupation,
1878–1908.
native leader, was supported by a body of Albanians
and mutinous Turkish troops, while the whole Moslem
population bitterly resented the proposed change. The
losses on both sides were very heavy, and, besides those
who fell in battle, many of the insurgents were executed under
martial law. But after a series of stubbornly contested engagements,
the Austrian general, Philippovic, entered Serajevo on
the 19th of August, and ended the campaign on the 20th of
September, by the capture of Bihac in the north-west, and of
Klobuk in Herzegovina. The government of the country was
then handed over to the imperial ministry of finance; but the
bureaucratic methods of the finance ministers, Baron von
Hoffmann and Joseph de Szlávy, resulted only in the insurrection
of 1881-82. Order was restored in June 1882, when the
administration was entrusted to Benjamin von Kállay (q.v.),
as imperial minister of finance. Kállay retained this position
until his death on the 13th of July 1903, when he was succeeded
by Baron Stephan Burian de Rajecz. During this period life
and property were rendered secure, and great progress was
achieved, on the lines already indicated, in creating an efficient
civil service, harmonizing Moslem law with new enactments,
promoting commerce, carrying out important public works,
and reorganizing the fiscal and educational systems. All classes
and creeds were treated impartially; and, although the
administration has been reproached alike for undue harshness and
undue leniency, neither accusation can be sustained. Critics
have also urged that Kállay fostered the desire for material
welfare at the cost of every other national ideal; that, despite
his own popularity, he never secured the goodwill of the people
for Austria-Hungary; that he left the agrarian difficulty
unsolved, and the hostile religious factions unreconciled. These
charges are not wholly unfounded; but the chief social and
political evils in Bosnia and Herzegovina may be traced to
historical causes operative long before the Austro-Hungarian
occupation, and above all to the political ambition of the rival
churches. Justly to estimate the work done by Kállay, it is
only necessary to point to the contrast between Bosnia in 1882
and Bosnia in 1903; for in 21 years the anarchy and ruin
entailed by four centuries of misrule were transformed into
a condition of prosperity unsurpassed in south-eastern Europe.
It was no doubt natural that Austrian statesmen should wish to end the anomalous situation created by the treaty of Berlin, by incorporating Bosnia and Herzegovina into the Dual Monarchy. The treaty had contemplated the evacuation of the occupied provinces after the restoration Austrian annexation. of order and prosperity; and this had been expressly stipulated in an agreement signed by the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman plenipotentiaries at Berlin, as a condition of Turkish assent to the provisions of the treaty. But the Turkish reform movement of 1908 seemed to promise a revival of Ottoman power, which might in time have enabled the Turks to demand the promised evacuation, and thus to reap all the ultimate benefits of the Austrian administration. The reforms in Turkey certainly encouraged the Serb and Moslem inhabitants of the occupied territory to petition the emperor for the grant of a constitution similar to that in force in the provinces of Austria proper. But the Austro-Hungarian government, profiting by the weakness of Russia after the war with Japan, and aware that the proclamation of Bulgarian independence was imminent, had already decided to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina, in spite of the pledges given at Berlin, and although the proposal was unpopular in Hungary. Its decision, after being communicated to the sovereigns of the powers signatory to the treaty of Berlin, in a series of autograph letters from the emperor Francis Joseph, was made known to Bosnia and Herzegovina in an imperial rescript published on the 7th of October 1908. The Serb and Moslem delegates, who had started on the same day for Budapest, to present their petition to the emperor, learned from the rescript that the government intended to concede to their compatriots “a share in the legislation and administration of provincial affairs, and equal protection for all religious beliefs, languages and racial distinctions.” The separate administration was, however, to be maintained, and the rescript did not promise that the new provincial diet would be more than a consultative assembly, elected on a strictly limited franchise.
Bibliography.—G. Capus, A travers la Bosnie et l’Herzégovine (Paris, 1896) contains a detailed and fully illustrated account of the combined provinces, their resources and population. J. Asbóth, An Official Tour through Bosnia and Herzegovina (London, 1890) is valuable for details of local history, antiquities and topography: A. Bordeaux, La Bosnie populaire (Paris, 1904) for social life and mining. Much information is also contained in the works by Lamouche, Miller, Thomson, Joanne, Cambon, Millet, Hamard and Laveleye, cited under the heading Balkan Peninsula. See also B. Nikašinović, Bosnien und die Herzegovina unter der Verwaltung der österreich-ungarischen Monarchie (Berlin, 1901, &c.), and M. Oransz, Auf dem Rade durch Kroatien und Bosnien (Vienna, 1903). The best map is that of the Austrian General Staff. See also for geology, J. Cvijic, Morphologische und glaciale Studien aus Bosnien (Vienna, 1900); F. Katzer, Geologischer Führer durch Bosnien und Herzegovina (Serajevo, 1903); P. Ballif, Wasserbauten in Bosnien und Herzegovina (Vienna, 1896). Sport: “Snaffle,” In the Land of the Bora (London, 1897). Agriculture and Commerce: annual British consular reports, and the official Ergebnisse der Viehzahlungen (1879 and 1895), and Landwirtschaft in Bosnien und Herzegovina (1899). The chief official publications are in German. For antiquities, see R. Munro, Through Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia (Edinburgh, 1900); A. J. Evans, Illyrian Letters (London, 1878); W. Radimský, Die
- ↑ For the Christian rebellion and its causes, see A. J. Evans, Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot (London, 1876); and W. J. Stillman, Herzegovina and the Late Uprising (London, 1877).
