THE CONTINUITY BETWEEN THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND NATIONALISM: POLITICS AND HISTORICAL NARRATIVES OF THE CROATIAN NATIONAL REVIVAL By Vilim Pavlovic Submitted to Central European University History Department In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Supervisor: Professor László Kontler Second Reader: Professor Balázs Trencsényi CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2014 Statement of Copyright Copyright in the text of this thesis rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full or part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Central European Library. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author. CEU eTD Collection i Abstract This thesis provides a look the fundamental programmatic articles of the Croatian National Revival. It attempts to first contextualize the Croatian national movement within the context of the Habsburg Monarchy, and especially in regards to the relationship of Croatia and Hungary. Secondly, the thesis attempts to explore the possible continuity between the ideology of the Croatian National Revival and the Enlightenment. This is done using some of the fundamental documents of the national movement. Looking at the political program of the national movement, I attempt to identify the influences of the Enlightenment in both explicit and implicit level. Furthermore, as this thesis is on a fundamental level concerned with nationalism, I will explore the interaction between the political programs of the national movement and historical narratives as both are often found in the same text. Finally, I will attempt to contextualize my findings in the context of the Enlightenment and any other ideology preceding nationalism that might reveal itself. The result of this thesis is that we can now establish that on a fundamental level, the politicians and authors of political programs of the Croatian National Revival were to a degree influenced by the thought of the Enlightenment. Be that is it may, the political necessities directed the politics of the movement towards the defense of the municipal rights. The second part of the thesis is concerned precisely with that issue. From it, we can establish that even in historical narratives we can recognized the influence of previous ideologies, mainly ancient constitutionalism. CEU eTD Collection ii Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Theory ......................................................................................................................................... 3 Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 8 1. Historical context of the Croatian National Revival ................................................................. 14 1.2. Hungary and nationalism ................................................................................................... 17 1.3. The Croatian National Revival .......................................................................................... 30 2. Enlightenment and the Croatian National Revival ................................................................... 41 2.1. Language and politics intertwine ....................................................................................... 41 2.2. The Dissertation of Janko Drašković ................................................................................ 46 2.3. The political program of the Dissertation .......................................................................... 48 2.4. Ivan Derkos’ The Spirit of the Homeland.......................................................................... 61 2.5. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 70 3. Historical narratives of the Croatian National Revival ............................................................. 76 3.1. The municipal rights and the constitution .......................................................................... 76 3.2. Collecting the municipal rights .......................................................................................... 79 3.3. Drašković’s historical narrative ....................................................................................... 101 3.4. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 106 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 108 CEU eTD Collection Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 111 iii Introduction It is the aim of this thesis to explore the possible continuity and transfer of ideas from the Enlightenment to the early period of the Croatian national movement. Due to the significant role history played in the political activity of the Croatian National Revival in the 1830s and 1840s, I intend to limit my exploration to those documents which were politically fundamental to the development of the movement and at the same time contained historical arguments for the movement’s agenda. This should allow us to see what the fundamental ideological and political tendencies of the movement were and how the political tendencies interacted with historiography. Furthermore, I will attempt to show how the political project of the national movement directed the approach to history and historical research. Finally, the goal of this thesis is to show how these two elements, politics and history, and their interaction within the historical context, directed the development of the Croatian national movement. I will thus begin by contextualizing the Croatian National Revival in a broader context of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Hungary, and continue with an explanation of the ideological foundations of the national revival. The second chapter of this thesis will attempt to outline the political foundations of the movement and show how the political situation encouraged the interaction of politics and historiography. The third chapter will concentrate on the historical narratives themselves, showing how history was approached by the Croatian national movement. CEU eTD Collection The early period of the Croatian National Revival has mostly been written about within the national historiography. Already the historians that were part of the second generation of the national revival in the second half of the 19th century wrote history books about the founders of the movement. This tendency within the national historiography led to the works of 1 such historians as Tadija Smičiklas, Ferdo Šišić and Jaroslav Šidak. Being that they wrote within the national historiography, the value of such work in scholarly research is highly questionable and subject to the effects of later historiographical traditions. In addition, their treatment of the revival in the 1820s and 1830s was only superficial. They only used it as an introduction for the extensive writing on the revival in the 1840s when it was already a strong and established movement. Only Nikša Stančić, a contemporary historian and a current member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, significantly discussed the early, formative years of the national revival, but again only to better understand what happened in the years and centuries after it. In general, it seems that most historians that worked on this topic were more concerned with what the national revival led to, rather than what led to it. In addition, previous research of this period did not to a large extent deal with the continuity between the national movement and earlier ideologies nor with the direction possible continuity took within the political context of the period. It is true that the Croatian National Revival was a much stronger and directed movement in the 1840s then it was in the previous decade. It was during the 1840s and until the introduction of the so-called Bach’s absolutism after the 1848/1849 revolutions that the Croatian revival was at its strongest. That is the period when the cultural activity of the revival, as well as the political conflict with Hungary within the Croatian Diet was at its highest. When it comes to the understanding of what the foundations of the revival were in regards to how they were manifested in the following years, the existing research is relatively comprehensive. CEU eTD Collection However, the research concerning the origins of the fundamental political thought of the national movement, its contextual manifestation and consequently the interaction with 2 historical narratives, has not been done. This represent the narrow research gap within which I intend to place this thesis. Theory When approaching the Enlightenment, it is important to mention some of the contemporary debates revolving around the issue of a singular “the Enlightenment” as opposed to the duality and multiplicity of enlightenments that heavily depend on contextual influences. Conventionally, the Enlightenment is seen as a strictly French invention where the circle