“The Turk” in the Czech Imagination (1870s–1923) <UN> Studia Imagologica amsterdam studies on cultural identity Series Editors Hugo Dyserinck (rwth Aachen University) Joep Leerssen (University of Amsterdam) volume 26 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/imag <UN><UN> “The Turk” in the Czech Imagination (1870s–1923) By Jitka Malečková leiden | boston <UN> This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (reg. no.: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000 734) implemented at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecom mons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. Cover illustration: Detail from the painting “Zajatkyně” (Captives – The Captive Montenegrin Women) by Jaroslav Čermák, from 1870, by permission of the National Gallery, Prague. Photograph © National Gallery Prague 2020. LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2020033731 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill typeface. ISSN 0927-4065 ISBN 978-90-04-44077-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-44079-1 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Jitka Malečková and Charles University, Faculty of Arts. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. <UN> Contents Acknowledgments VII List of Figures IX Introduction: Why Czechs and Turks? 1 1 The Return of the “Terrible Turk” 26 1 The Turkish Wars and Czech Variations on the Turkish Theme 32 2 “The Turk” as a Proxy 39 3 The Oppressors of Our Slavic Brethren 50 4 The Turkish Race 57 5 The Longevity of Stereotypes 62 6 Conclusion 68 2 Czechs Abroad 70 1 Getting Ready to Travel 77 2 Entering the Orient 83 3 Backward or Exotic? 88 4 Turkish Men (To Say Nothing of the Dogs) 96 5 Women 104 6 The Turks and Others 110 7 Conclusion 115 3 Civilizing the Slavic Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina 118 1 What’s in a Name? 125 2 The Orient at One’s Doorstep (Safe Even for Ladies) 133 3 Occupation as Liberation 144 4 Czech Colonial Ambitions 150 5 Conclusion 155 4 “Our Mission in Oriental Studies” 159 1 The Founding Fathers of Czech Oriental Studies 165 2 Oriental Studies “as Translation” 170 3 Finding a Voice of Their Own 180 4 Scholars and Czech Society 190 5 Conclusion 195 <UN> vi Contents Conclusion: The New Republics 199 Bibliography 211 Index 236 <UN> Acknowledgments The idea for this book first emerged more than ten years ago in a conversation with my friend Amy Singer, but for a long time it remained a mere diversion from other research and teaching. I am deeply grateful to the European Univer- sity Institute in Florence, where I spent the fall of 2016 as a Fernand Braudel Fellow, for allowing me to finally turn the idea into the first pages of a manu- script. Further support in Prague was provided by the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts and by Pavel Sládek, chair of the department. I am indebted to Belinda Davis, Pieter Judson, Petr Kučera, Christoph Neumann, and Michal Pullmann for their valuable advice on the conception of the book and their comments on some of its chapters. I would also like to thank the staff of the National Library in Prague and Jakub Rumpl, Librarian of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the Faculty of Arts in Prague, for their professional help, Martina Kutková for editorial as- sistance, and Robin Cassling for her patient and inspired editing of the manu- script. Finally, I owe enormous thanks to my son Abraham for bearing with me while I was working on the book instead of cooking or going out with him. <UN> Figures 1 “Únos Černohorky” (Kidnapping of a Montenegrin Woman). Replica of a painting by Jaroslav Čermák from 1865, by permission of the National Gallery, Prague. Pho- tograph © National Gallery Prague 2020 42 2 Artist unknown. Illustration from Turek z Kamenýho mostu (The Turk from the Stone Bridge), a book by Josef Heřman Zefi (Prague: Tiskem a nákladem Jul. Janů, n.d.). The book is in the collection of the National Library of the Czech Republic 65 3 “Sarajevo: Z turecké čtvrti” (Sarajevo: From the Turkish Neighborhood). Photo- graph from Průvodce Bosnou a Hercegovinou (A Guide to Bosnia and Herzegovi- na), a book by Ferdinand Velc (Prague: Klub českých turistů, 1907). The book is in the collection of the National Library of the Czech Republic 137 4 “Mohamedánka” (A Muslim Woman). Photograph from Dalmacie s Terstem, Istrií, s pobřežím chorvatským a výletem do Cetyně a Bosna s Hercegovinou (Dalmatia and Terst, Istria, the Croatian Coastline and a Trip to Cetinje and Bosnia and Herze- govina), a guidebook published by Čeněk Šulc (Prague: Čeněk Šulc, ca. 1913). The book is in the collection of the National Library of the Czech Republic 138 5 “Na Bendbaši v Sarajevě” (Bendbaši in Sarajevo). Photograph from Ku břehům Ad- rie (Toward the Coasts of Adria), a book by Jan Třeštík (Prague: J. Otto, 1897) 147 <UN> Introduction Why Czechs and Turks? “Do you like the Turks? Do you like those heathen dogs? You don’t, do you?” the Good Soldier Švejk says to Palivec, the innkeeper, in Jaroslav Hašek’s famous novel. Palivec replies: “One customer is as good as another, never mind a Turk. For tradesmen like us politics doesn’t enter into it. Pay your beer, sit down in my pub and jabber what you like. That’s my principle. It’s all the same to me whether our Ferdinand was done in by a Serb or Turk, Catholic or Moslem, anarchist or Young Czech.”1 The views that Švejk and Palivec express here are reflective of the ways many Czechs felt about the Turks in the first decades of the 20th century. But Švejk’s words are particularly significant because, love him or hate him, the amiable, servile “idiot” Švejk is Czech literature’s most emblematic figure and for many the embodiment of the Czech national char- acter. That Hašek even mentions the Turks in his brilliant anti-war novel and has Švejk voice strong anti-Turkish sentiments therefore demands an explana- tion. And that is what this book tries to do: explain why the Turks remained a persistent and often quite prominent image in early-20th-century Czech soci- ety, which for generations had had little direct contact with the Ottoman Em- pire and its inhabitants. For although it was not only in times and places of conflict that Europeans turned their attention to the Turks, direct contact with the Ottoman Empire naturally increased the level of interest in Turkish themes. Between the 14th and 17th centuries the battlefields on which European armies clashed with the usually victorious Ottomans moved from Southeast- ern Europe to the regions controlled by the Italian states, and from there to Central Europe and further East. In the aftermath of these conflicts large areas of Southern, Eastern and Central Europe came under Ottoman rule. The Otto- man army was still able to threaten Vienna in 1683, but Ottoman power then started to recede, and only the Southeast of Europe remained in Ottoman hands. Another important watershed in Europeans’ relations with the Otto- man Empire and their interest in the Middle East was Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. By the early 19th century, the Ottoman army was no longer a threat to the modern states of Europe, and despite the Ottoman Empire’s at- tempts to reform itself, the balance of power between the former rivals shifted to Europe’s advantage. The Ottoman army continued to wage war, but its major 1 Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War, trans. Cecil Parrott (London: Penguin Books, 1973), 9. © JITKA MALEČKOVÁ AND CHARLES UNIVERSITY, FACULTY OF ARTS, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440791_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. <UN> 2 Introduction rival was now Russia, and in the mid-19th century Western states went so far as to support the Ottoman Empire militarily in a war against Russia. In the de- cades that followed, the Ottoman army was involved in further armed con- flicts, including the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878, the war with Italy over Tripoli in 1911–1912 and the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913. Even when not at war, the government had to face rebellions and protests from discontented segments of the population in the empire, sometimes instigated or supported from the out- side, especially by Russia, often exploited by European statesmen, and always closely followed and debated by the European public. At the same time, the Ottoman Empire grew closer to Europe in areas of the economy, trade, diplo- macy, and culture, and in the way of life among the elites in Istanbul.