Ottoman-Habsburg Forced Migration and the Near Eastern Crisis
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Empire Displaced: Ottoman-Habsburg Forced Migration and the Near Eastern Crisis, 1875-1878 Jared Manasek Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 ©2013 Jared Manasek All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Empire Displaced: Ottoman-Habsburg Forced Migration and the Near Eastern Crisis, 1875-1878 Jared Manasek This dissertation examines the case of 250-300,000 largely Orthodox Christian refugees who fled Ottoman Bosnia and Hercegovina for the Habsburg Empire during the uprisings of 1875-1878. The violence during this period started out as a peasant uprising, but over the course of three years cascaded into revolts and violence across the Ottoman Balkans and led to a major European diplomatic crisis. The Treaty of Berlin of 1878, which ended the violence, reconfigured the political geography of the Balkans, making the former Ottoman provinces of Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia independent; giving a sweeping autonomy to Bulgaria, and handing over to Austria-Hungary the administration of a nominally Ottoman Bosnia and Hercegovina. Refugees played an under-appreciated role in the international and domestic politics of the period, and this dissertation argues that forced migration was in fact one of the key considerations of Great Power diplomacy. Forced migration offered a means to measure degree of violence, and control over population movement offered a way for empires to lay claims to legitimacy. In a similar manner, philanthropists and international humanitarians used forced migration to build and advocate for their own civic spheres. The dissertation argues that during this period, the modern category of “refugee” was defined as states developed processes to manage refugees domestically and to create international policies for refugee aid and return. Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter One State-sponsored Refugee Aid: The Tensions of a Regime 63 Chapter Two Humanitarian Violence: Civic Aid, International Support, and the Meaning of Humanitarian Need 110 Chapter Three Diplomacy, Implementation, and the Failure of the Spring Repatriation Effort, 1876 157 Chapter Four Refugee Diplomacy and the Creation of a Habsburg Bosnia and Hercegovina 223 Conclusion 281 Works Cited 289 i List of Illustrations Figure A, “Herzegovinian Refugees at Ragusa” 14 Figure B, Herzegovinian Refugees in the Dinaric Alps 14 Figure C, Muslim Refugees Arriving in Istanbul 14 ii Acknowledgments Custom has it the acknowledgements appear first; practice demands they be written last. I have spent many years researching, writing, and thinking about this dissertation, and have incurred new debts right up to the very end of the process. My advisor, Mark Mazower, has supported my work through even the darkest hours and unswervingly helped me find my path back into the light. On my committee, Volker Berghahn, Peter Holquist, Sam Moyn, and Christine Philliou not only read my dissertation, but offered thoughtful and incisive comments on it. Thanks are also due to Adam McKeown, Elizabeth Blackmar, and to Brad Abrams, who convinced me to become a historian in the first place. My research has taken me from Vienna to Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Istanbul—all of which would not have been possible without grants and fellowships from Fulbright-Hays, the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the International Research & Exchanges Board, and the Harriman Institute at Columbia. Many people have helped make work and life on the road both possible and enjoyable. In Vienna, Sonya Yee and Roland Schlager opened their home to me so many times my name is on their spare key. Gernot and Renata Heiss welcomed me into their family. At the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Gerhard Gonsa and Ernst Petritsch shared their knowledge and time. Thank you also to Maria Mesner at the Kreisky-Archiv. In Zagreb, staff at the Croatian State Archives, the State Archives in Zagreb, Croatian iii Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the National and University of Library was always generous with its time and knowledge; at the State Archives, Boris Suljagić deserves particular thanks. Iskra Iveljić offered feedback; Vjeran Pavlaković opened and re- opened his home and Gordana Šeler always welcomed me. In Sarajevo Edin Radušić talked nineteenth-century diplomacy with me. The staff at the Archives of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and at the National and University Library helped me dig through what remains of their collections. It is hard to put down roots and even harder to tear them up, but new friends and colleagues in Istanbul welcomed me, worked with me, laughed with me and helped make the city my own. Bayram Şen and Bahar Bilgen Şen became dear friends. Members of the Balkan Colloquium—Yıldırım Ağanoğlu, Bülent Bilmez, and Mehmet Hacısalihoğlu were generous interlocutors. Thanks, too, to the staff at the Prime Ministry archives as well as to the ever-helpful Sinan Kuneralp. Without my language teachers, both formal and informal, this work would not exist. Radmila Gorup, Sibel and Etem Erol, Nader Sohrabi, Wheeler Thackston, George Dedes, Ergün Özsoy, and Züleyha Çolak all gave their time, energy, and patience. Peter Gatrell, Edin Hajdarpašić, Daniel Cohen, and many others have given valuable input on various elements of this project. Aimee Genell deserves a paragraph of her own as both colleague and friend. Other members of the Columbia diaspora have helped me along in various ways, including Ana Antić, Dean Vuletić, Ali Wick, Dahlia Gubara, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Claire Edington, and especially Rebekah Klein-Pejšová. Jesse Howell is a dear hemşehri. iv I am deeply grateful for the love and support I have received from my parents, all four of them, who made this project feasible even before I thought to begin it. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to my family. Carey Kasten’s presence made anywhere home, her absence left me lonely but never alone, and her love and unfailing support made all of this work possible. Felix Manasek has made it all worthwhile. More than I can possibly express, to them I owe so much. v Introduction Over the course of the summer and fall of 1875, a series of small skirmishes between Orthodox Christian peasants and their Muslims landlords in the southern reaches of Ottoman Hercegovina gradually coalesced, strengthened, and expanded into an organized insurgency that quickly extended across Hercegovina, and then, by mid-August, spread to Bosnia. In the following three years, the insurgency in Bosnia and Hercegovina fluctuated in strength and influence, but failed—despite the efforts of numerous activists and the interventions of neighboring states and empires—to develop a coherent ideology or unified nationalist agenda. What began as a peasant uprising protesting high taxes, bureaucratic venality and perceived injustice made worse by a bad harvest never entirely lost the disarray of its humble beginnings.1 Various leaders and groups never fully agreed on basic questions over the legitimacy of Ottoman rule, the position of the Muslim elite and landowners, or the role and influence of neighboring Serbia, Montenegro, or Austria- Hungary. The uprisings also triggered a series of larger, more violent events in the Ottoman Balkans: April 1876 saw a Bulgarian nationalist uprising in the Ottoman Danube province, followed by the so-called Bulgarian Horrors; in July 1876 war broke out 1 Milorad Ekmečić, Ustanak u Bosni 1875-1878 (Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1960). 1 between Serbia, Montenegro, and the Ottoman Empire; and in April 1877 the Russian Empire declared war against the Ottomans. When the final peace was settled in 1878, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro all won true independence, Bulgaria a near- independent autonomy, and Bosnia and Hercegovina were placed under Austro- Hungarian administration while the Sultan retained nominal sovereignty.2 The Berlin Treaty of 1878 discarded the post-Crimean War commitment to non-intervention in Ottoman domestic affairs and the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, replacing those principles with the recognition of successor states, military occupation, and European administration of Ottoman territories. Although the Ottoman flag still flew in large parts of the Balkans, after the Berlin Treaty the majority of the Ottoman Balkans— ”Turkey in Europe”—ceased to exist. The violence that remapped the peninsula’s political geography also fundamentally altered its demographics. Forced population displacement and the death of non- combatants reached a level unprecedented in modern European history. Forced migration began with the early days of the violence in Hercegovina, and over the three years, some 250,000 mainly Orthodox Christians took flight from Bosnia and Hercegovina— amounting to about one fifth of the provinces’ total population and nearly one half of the Orthodox population. Tens of thousands of these refugees went to Serbia and Montenegro; in Montenegro especially refugees from Hercegovina took part in the war 2 Montenegro, while part of the Ottoman Empire, had never really been incorporated into it. Romania and Serbia had been under Ottoman suzerainty since the 1860s. Serbia paid tribute to the Sultan, but the last Ottoman garrison withdrew from the Belgrade fortress of Kalemegdan in early 1867. Leften Stavros Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453 (New York: Rinehart & Company, 1958). 257. 2 against the Ottoman Empire.3 The vast majority of the refugees from