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Minorities, Mother Countries, Majority on the Western Balkans

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Minorities, Mother Countries, Majority on the Western Balkans HAOL, Núm. 27 (Invierno, 2012), 83-101 ISSN 1696-2060 MINORITIES, MOTHER COUNTRIES, MAJORITY ON THE WESTERN BALKANS Andor Végh1 1University of Pécs & Center of the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkan Studies, Hungary, E-mail: [email protected] Recibido: 6 Agosto 2011 / Revisado: 18 Agosto 2011 / Aceptado: 23 Septiembre 2011 / Publicación Online: 15 Febrero 2012 Abstract: The most significant changes of At the same time the ethnic territories in Europe have happened on development/establishment of the ethnic core the Western Balkans. The majority of changes territories lagged behind the blossom of the are related to wars in former Yugoslavia national ideologies. The hiatus between the between 1991 and 1995, but processes that ideologies and the real ethnic spacial structure have started around the crisis are lasting ever in the mentioned one hundred and fifty years is since. We are trying to outline these changes mostly known via the „revolutional” (war and reveal some of the weak spots of the issue period) and not by the „evolutional” (peace using three categories of ethnic spaces: core period) ethnic spacial structure area of an ethnic territory, ethnically mixed transformations. In our opinion the system of territory, contact zones. Furthermore, the relations that join and unite or separate certain article gives a complex overview of the major groups or let them float in the state (identity) territorial rearrangements, and the causes of instability or multi affiliation till today are leading to them: the parallelly changing especially important in these processes. identities and ethnic territories. Keywords: West-Balkan, ethnicity, ethnical Of course, the real ethnic proportions based on core areas, ethnicaly mixed territory, contact data survey (e.g.: census) should be the basis zones, ethnic processes. of our examination, however, these data mean ______________________ significant problems of methodology at the examination of the Western Balkans. In case of INTRODUCTION Yugoslavia covering the area before 1991 unified statistical data survey and methodic he question of minority and majority is elaboration is available, at the same time mostly a system of relations along the Albania is unreliable due to its aloofness; this T legal frames determined by the state period does not reach even the category of borders and states. The state (and its borders) guesses. With the falling apart of Yugoslavia on the territory of the Western Balkans – after 1991, the states becoming independent similarly to their democratic system of legal developed their own data survey, data institutions – are much younger than the elaboration and statistical practice with various mental borders and the system of relations that periods, methodology, let alone Kosovo are rooted in the past and determine the without official census since 1981, and Bosnia relations of the single ethnic and regional and Herzegovina with similar condition of the identities. The national integration processes lack of statistics since 1991. As our analysis is that started and mostly completed also here not exact and uses comparative data, our aim is since the 19th century (depending on the not to display a perfect mapping, but to territory and the ethnic group on even such a examine the trends of ethnic changes from a small place with even one hundred – one certain territorial aspect. hundred and fifty years difference) made the concept of nation the basic element of the system of relations of minority and majority. © Historia Actual Online 2012 83 Minorities, Mother Countries, Majority Andor Végh 1. BASIC TYPES OF THE ETHNIC often altering, considering their neighbours as SPACIAL STRUCTURE, THE absolute extreme. In ethnography and cultural VIEWPOINT SYSTEM OF OUR anthropology often the contact surface between EXAMINATION the more or less segregated zones (on the level of the micro region but rather at least of a The ethnic geographical examinations often settlement) of the mixed ethnic territories is result in a regional division considering the called contact zone or sometimes the contact ethnic homogeneity and regional extension, at surfaces of the characteristics of such huge other times they trace or classify the cultural anthropological areas where a kind of development of the different genetic types of mix of characteristics of the neighbouring units the various ethnic groups (specially the occur. The concept of ethnic contact zone used minorities), or their historical-regional by us can be rather compared to this later development. Above all, the primary target for ethnographic category, with the difference that us is the first system of viewpoint, to set the the most important criteria for us is the change single regional types of quantity and of self-definition in the course of time (the homogeneity, where we mainly differentiate frequent change of the group identity). between three different territories: There are several divisions in addition to the Ethnic core territory – an ethnic region mostly above categories and are used in the ethnic homogeneous from ethnic viewpoint, at the geographical surveys but primarily we are same time regionally extended and coherent, tracing the development and changes of the which is usually the most important (often mentioned categories in the Western Balkans highlighted by the organization of the state) for in our study. a given ethnic group, nation (apart from some exceptions). There are ethnic groups that have 2. THE ETHNIC PROCESSES OF THE several such territories of similar importance, 19TH CENTURY IN THE WESTERN however, such a territory plays the role of the BALKANS primary (prime), while the others play the role of the secondary (minor) ethnic core territories. In case of the ethnic core territories the centers In the 19th century, in the area of the Western (capitals) cities, national centers, places of Balkans, two Great Powers – the Hapsburg emphasized status play important roles, which (later the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the are mostly missing from the secondary ethnic Ottoman Empire – could be found. The peripheries at the same time. continuous fragmentation of these two has formed the states and nations determining the Mixed ethnic territories – an extended territory current situation and positions which up to the that is ethnically inhabited by two or more present can create new spatial units (e.g., ethnic groups, nations where none of the Kosovo), partly as a result of internal ethnic- groups form absolute only relative majority. It political potentialsand partly due to the is (usually) typical for such territories that the influence of the external great powers. spacial, mental and cultural borders of the various ethnic groups are well separated, The two Great Powers lost their 19th century respectively certain segregation types occur positions and character of multiethnic (micro-regional, via settlements, within the European empires in different ways. The settlements, occupation-specifically.., etc.), as Ottoman Empire gradually lost out, its Western well as the development of certain contact and Eastern Balkan areas ceded to Europe zones. piece by piece, while theHapsburg Empire disintegrated in one, at the end of the long 19th Ethnic contact zones – primarily the territories century, following World War I (on the with mixed ethnic groups are called ethnic surface; internal processes had already contact zones, where the characteristics weakened the structure in its depths). separating the ethnic groups (language, religion, cultural traditions, common fate- In this still ongoing process, some of those consciousness, institutions and toolsystems of nations and ethnic groups which had enjoyed society organizations, etc.) prove to be some measure of preliminary sovereignty in partially penetrable and even within a short mediaeval times, before the Great Powers were period of time. Thus such groups may develop born (i.e., Croats and Serbs) were again given or transform, whose identity is of common set, sovereign states; therefore, their self- 84 © Historia Actual Online 2012 HAOL, Núm. 27 (Invierno, 2012), 83-101 ISSN 1696-2060 determination was not unprecedented. On the independence, primarily in the second part of other hand, new nations and states were also the century (NIEDERHAUSER 1972). The born whose independent positions were formation of the Bulgarian and Greek determined not so much by their precedents in kingdoms, not covered in this study, as well as the Middle Ages but their positions, difference, of the Serbian Kingdom, shaped such a regional or religious consciousness in the development process (JELAVICH 1996)1. Due empires (such as the Albanians, Bosniaks, to a fresh nationalism, these newly established Macedonians and Montenegrins). This of states immediately started to shape the ethnic course does not mean that the latter never had homogeneity of their independence-minded some preliminary state formations, but we do territories which were ethnically very believe (and not necessarily in agreement with heterogeneous almost everywhere (of course the self-conceptions of certain nations and there were also ethnically homogeneous peoples) that the occasional precedents were territories) and to dream of the present much less important than the later period of the realisation of the mediaeval great statehood. birth of regional and ethnic self-identity – and These ambitions promptly resulted in conflicts this took place in the system of Great Powers between each other as well as a significant mentioned
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