Since my arrival in Sarajevo I
have spent most of my time focused on learning about and engaging with the
current political climate in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The effects that the
conflicts of the 1990s had on the region continue to have such an impact on the
modern state-of-play in the political and social sphere that anything from
before 1992 can seem like ancient history. Even the 1984 Olympic Bobsled Track,
now overgrown and abandoned, stands as a ghost of a past that has little to do
with the present, a hangover of a story that was violently interrupted by the outbreak
of war. But of course, history is not that simple. Conflict does not occur in a
vacuum, but is shaped by the social circumstances preceding it. Its legacy is often
determined by the status quo that results from it. The story of Bosnia and
Herzegovina is one that began long before the fall of Yugoslavia and that will
continue long after we are gone. In order to understand where we are at we must
know where we came from, and so it is important to take a step back and look at
the past if you want to fully understand the present.
The National Museum of Bosnia and
Herzegovina is itself a historical landmark, a magnificent building constructed
between 1888 and 1913 in the Italian Renaissance Revival style which is in many
ways symbolic of the multicultural history of BiH. I visited on a smoggy late-October
day in 2017, over 130 years after František Topič took his camera around Bosnia and Herzegovina to capture the photographs that are now displayed in a temporary exhibition at
the museum: "Between Two Empires: Bosnia and Herzegovina 1885-1919". As
the exhibition makes clear, during this time period BiH was at the very centre
of the world, where the interests of colonial powers intersected. After 400
years of Ottoman Rule, the westernmost point of the ailing empire was ceded to
Austria-Hungary in 1878 and the influence of the east gave way to the modern domination
of the west.
Topič’s photographs document the
everyday lives of people during this time of great transition. It was, after
all, the farmers, the factory workers, and the merchants that shaped the future
of their little patch of land. There was also an image of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and his wife’s bodies as they were being laid to rest, a reminder of
the central part this region played in the world at the beginning of the 20th
century. Let us not forget that their assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was the son of
poor farmers and a member of the serf classes. Scholars usually focus on the
individual powerful people that supposedly shape history, but Topič’s
photographs demonstrate the reality of life in the Balkans during a watershed
moment in history that would catapult the world into the modern age. And the
Balkan people, from the conquerors to the conquered, the emperors to the
peasants, were central to this transition.
Transition and a push/pull
relationship with the great powers of the world has shaped this region since
the earliest days of civilisation. As the archaeological exhibition in the national
museum demonstrates, what is now BiH has long been torn between east and west,
with the local people co-opting certain parts of both but somehow maintaining a
unique local identity. The Kingdom of Illyria, which today makes up much of the
Western Balkans, is first mentioned in Greek records dating from the 4th
century BC, with the indigenous Illyrian peoples appearing as a force that
battled the Greeks throughout the Hellenistic Period. From the 2nd
century BC, the Illyrian population found themselves in conflict with the Roman
Republic, and by 168 BC Roman rule of the region had been established. This
period of rule resulted in much of the western influence that can still be seen
in the region today. However, when the Roman Empire split into the western
Roman Empire and the Byzantium Empire in the East in 395CE, the region once
again found itself at the centre of the two new powers, with the River Drina
(now on the border between BiH and Serbia) acting as the border between empires.
In this context, Serbia turned increasingly towards the east thanks to
influence from the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. Bosnia, on the other
hand, was still on the fringes of Rome’s sphere of influence.
In the 6th to 9th
Centuries the Balkans saw looter invasions from the Pannonian Avars, a nomad
population from Central Asia, and the Slavs, who brought with them the Slavic
languages that are spoken today. Between the 9th and 13th
centuries BiH was caught between the Hungarian and Byzantine Empires,
falling under the control of both throughout the 12th century and
picking up influences from each. The local population, becoming increasingly
diverse in terms of ethnic and religious affiliation, campaigned for
independence throughout this time and by 1377 BiH became an independent
kingdom. Nearly a century later, in 1463, BiH officially fell to the Ottoman
Empire, and remained under Ottoman rule until 1878, around the time where Topič’s
photography picks up.
Despite playing host to the
triggering event of the First World War, Bosnia and Herzegovina remained largely unscathed throughout
the conflict and in the aftermath was incorporated into the South Slav Kingdom
of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which would later become Yugoslavia. Attempts at
drawing political boundaries that avoided ethnic and historic lines proved
difficult to realise in the increasingly nationalistic fervour of the 1930s,
and, following the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, much of Bosnia came
under the rule of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state that
began to target Serbs, Roma and Jews, in addition to dissident Croats and
Slovenes, throughout the conflict. The Serb ‘Chetniks’ emerged as a fighting
force in response to the persecution of Serbs by the Croat Ustaša death squads.
However, in their attempt to form an ethnically homogenous Greater Serbian
state, the Chetniks were themselves responsible for much persecution and
violence against the Bosnian Muslim population, and many others. It was in this
context that Josip Tito’s multi-ethnic, communist resistance group, the
Partisans, emerged. Although they too were responsible for atrocities against
political opponents of all ethnicities, their military success prompted allied
support for their cause and by the end of the conflict the Partisans controlled
Sarajevo. This laid the groundwork for the emergence of Tito’s Yugoslavia,
which would survive until 1992, when its violent collapse would result in the
conflicts with which we are all familiar.
Throughout this entire history
remains one constant; the ordinary people of the region. With a culture steeped
in several different histories, the population of the Western Balkans boasts
some of the most diverse ethnic and religious identities of anywhere in the
world. A lot of the history of this area has been defined by violence, and that
obviously remains true today, but the legacy of cultural exchange between these
different peoples is the most enduring facet of the region. The Roman conquest
of two thousand years ago gave way to the gelato stands and European-style cafes of the
west-side of downtown today, the Ottoman rule of 500 years ago brought Islam
and Orthodox Christianity, Bosnian coffee and Old Town’s markets and bazaars.
Austria-Hungarian architecture can be seen throughout Sarajevo. Most people
here speak several languages; they learn English or German, sometimes they
learn Russian. A lot of the panels and conferences we have visited have touched
on the thorny issue of Bosnia’s desire to join the EU. In Ilidža there are
neighbourhoods being built with road and shop signs written in Arabic in order
to accommodate the increasing number of expats from Saudi Arabia, UAE and
Kuwait moving to Bosnia for the economic opportunities and beautiful scenery.
If you want to go anywhere in Old Town you have to fight your way through
hundreds and hundreds of tourists from all over the world, seemingly regardless
of the time of day. It really feels here like you are at the centre of the
earth.
What all this demonstrates, and
what Topič’s photography captures beautifully, is that whilst it is easy to get
lost in examining the big events of history, of focusing on the conqueror and
conquered, one must remember the day-to-day lives of ordinary people and at
least attempt to understand their experience in order to fully explain history.
Those ordinary people might one day become Gavrilo Princip, or Josep Tito, who
also came from a farmers’ background and became interested in politics after
joining a labour union whilst working as an apprentice locksmith. But even
those that do not go down in history shaped the circumstances and contexts in
which these people operate, influence them and steer them in ways that might
never be recorded in history books but are nevertheless hugely important.
I took a detour on the way home
from the museum to go and stand on the Latin Bridge, where
Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28th June
1914. Being one of the oldest bridges still standing in the city, with its
wooden predecessor standing from at least 1541, it was already a historical
landmark at the time of the assassination that would change the world forever. In
Topič’s photographs of Sarajevo’s skyline circa 1908 it can be seen, looking
exactly as it does now. In his picture you can just about make out the shapes
of people going about their lives in the city, and it makes you wonder. What
were their thoughts on the Austria-Hungarian occupation of their country? Were they
engaged politically in what was going on? Would they agree or disagree with
what would happen there in just a few years time? Maybe 100 years from now
someone will look at a picture of me standing on that bridge, or of anybody
else, and wonder the same things.
And that is the thing about
history. It was not just something we should learn about, or that we remember.
It is something we are living. And, regardless of whether we go down in the
history books or not, we are shaping it in our own little way. This region in
particular has got to where it is today through the actions of the local
population in response to the influence of outside factors from all sides. It
is multicultural and multiethnic as a result, and this has proven to cause tension
and conflict, but also a unique environment of growth and a meeting of peoples
that I would argue is not seen to this extent anywhere else in the world. At
the root of it all are the people that make up not just this region but the
whole of our globalised world. If history is still being written, what we need
to ask ourselves is how do we want our chapter to end?
