Bosniak History - Nationalism

Nationalism

Bosnia and Herzegovina was occupied and administered by Austria-Hungary in 1878, and a number of Bosniaks left Bosnia and Herzegovina. Official Austro-Hungarian records show that 56,000 people mostly Bosniaks emigrated between 1883 and 1920, but the number of Bosniak emigrants is probably much larger, as the official record doesn't reflect emigration before 1883, nor include those who left without permits. Most of the emigrants probably fled in fear of retribution after the intercommunal violence of the 1875-1878 uprising. Many Serbs from Herzegovina left for America during the same period. One geographer estimates that there are 350,000 Bosniaks in Turkey today, although that figure includes the descendants of Muslim South Slavs who emigrated from the Sandžak region during the First Balkan War and later. Another wave of Bosniak emigration occurred after the end of the First World War, when Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, known after 1929 as Yugoslavia.

Urban Bosniaks were particularly proud of their cosmopolitan culture, especially in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, which was, until World War II, home to thriving Bosniak, Serb, Croat, and Jewish communities. After 1945, Sarajevo became one of the most ethnically mixed cities in the former Yugoslavia.

Members of the 19th century Illyrian movement, most notably Ivan Frano Jukić, emphasized Bosniaks (Bošnjaci) alongside Serbs and Croats as one of the "tribes" that constitutes the "Illyrian nation".

With the dawn of Illyrian movement, Bosniak intelligentsia gathered around magazine Bosnia in the 1860s which promoted the idea of a Bosniak nation. A member of this group was father of Safvet-beg Bašagić, a Bosnian poet. The Bosniak group would remain active for several decades, with the continuity of ideas and the use of the archaic Bosniak name. From 1891 until 1910, they published a magazine titled Bosniak. However, by the start of the 20th century, this group had all but died out, due to its most prominent members either dying or deciding for Croat identity.

The administration of Benjamin Kallay, the Austria-Hungarian governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, enforced the idea of a unitary Bosnian nation (Bosanci) that would include the Catholic and Orthodox Bosnians as well as Muslims. The idea was fiercely opposed by Croats and Serbs, but also by a number of Muslims. This policy further clouded the Bosnian ethnical issue and made the Bosniak group seem as pro-regime. After Kallays death in 1903, the official policy slowly drifted towards accepting the three-ethnical reality of Bosnia.

Muslim National Organization (MNO), a political party founded in 1906, was a major opponent of the regime and promoted the idea of Muslims as a separate entity from Serbs and Croats. A group of dissidents that, among other things, identified themselves with the Croat Muslim identity formed a party named Muslim Progressive Party (MNS), However, the party received little popular support and faded away over the next few years.

The first constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1910 explicitly mentioned Serbs, Croats and Muslims as the "native peoples". This was reflected in the elections held soon thereafter, when the electoral was divided into a Serb, Croat and Muslim ballot. MNO, Serb National Organization (SNO) and Croat National Community (HNZ) received almost unanimous support in their respective ballots, and their members formed the parliament, albeit this parliament had little power in the Austria-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina. All translations of the Constitution into native languages used lower-case M for Muslims as followers of Islam (This is because the proper nouns such as Muslim and Christian were and still are written in lowercase letters in Bosnian (Serbo-Croatian) language).