I. Introduction

Many authors in recent years have written their version of the cause(s) of the wars of Yugoslav succession.[2] However, the issue of ethnic cleavage formation within the region has seemingly been avoided. This essay is an attempt to fill this gap. It poses the following question: Why are the politically relevant cleavages within the racially and (for all intents and purposes) linguistically homogeneous population of Bosnia-Herzegovina religious in nature? It is too deterministic to assume that individuals of different faiths will necessarily be divided, even if we admit that religion is an important cleavage point. An excellent case which goes against the deterministic view is the Albanian nation which explicitly set aside its religious differences and focused, instead, on its language as the fundamental characteristic defining the Albanian 'nation'.[3] Rather than simply assuming that the divisions necessarily had to be religious, this essay will problematize this issue by focusing on the question why these ethnic cleavages.

If one examines the history of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the most important historical event is its nearly four-hundred year occupation by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman impact is felt throughout the region as well. As Maria Todorova states, it is not enough to simply look "for an Ottoman legacy in the Balkans" because the "Balkans are the Ottoman legacy;" that is, the Ottoman occupation defines the region.[4] As Dennison Rusinow and others have argued, the "Ottoman legacies" or the "consequences of the long Ottoman chapter in the region's history, are essential to understanding why, where, and how the conflicts that led to the [Bosnian] civil war...occurred."[5] This is not to 'blame' the Ottoman legacy for the current conflict. Such a position would be too close to the 'ancient hatreds' thesis that ignores the destructive actions of ethnic elites on all sides. By drawing a line straight from the Ottoman period to the collapse of Bosnia, one loses the critical and proximate causal factors which led to the events of 1991-95. However, by arguing that the Ottoman occupation laid down certain conditions for the nature of the conflict -- that is, the nature of the cleavages -- one avoids this problem.

David D. Laitin's theory of hegemonic control is aptly suited to explain the location of ethnic cleavages by introducing the hegemonic state as a causal factor. Developed from his investigation into the Yoruba in Nigeria, whose intranational cleavages are based upon membership in certain 'ancestral cities' despite the existence of a potentially more salient Christian-Muslim division, Laitin argues that the prior pattern of political control by a hegemonic state establishes certain cleavages as politically and ethnically relevant. In the case of the Yoruba in Nigeria, the British colonial administration's choice to rule indirectly through the kings of the region's ancestral cities and to reject any claims based upon religion framed the political and ethnic debate in Yorubaland and established a legacy that persists into the post-colonial period. In the case of Bosnia, it will be argued that the Ottoman decision to rule its territories through the institution of the millet system -- the indirect rule of its population through the hierarchy of religious leaders and the grouping of individuals according to their religion -- is the direct cause of the ethnic cleavages in Bosnia-Herzegovina between Bosniacs (Muslim), Croats (Catholic), and Serbs (Orthodox), all of which fundamentally define themselves in religious terms. Again, this is not to say that the millet system caused the recent events in Bosnia. Rather, this essay argues that the millet system created the cleavages which became politically relevant later.

This essay will be broken down into four further parts. Section II examines Laitin's theory of hegemonic control in more detail and operationalizes it. Section III examines the historical background of Ottoman control in the Balkans generally, and in Bosnia specifically, and details the origins, nature, and functioning of the Ottoman millet system. Section IV argues for the direct effects of the millet system on the ethnic cleavages in Bosnia and the region. Section V focuses on the Muslims as both the direct descendants of the Ottoman occupation and the most obvious manifestation of the millet system. Section VI will provide some conclusions about the nature of ethnicity in Bosnia and the applicability of Laitin's theory to situations of this type.

II. Laitin's Theory of Hegemonic Control

David Laitin's article that lays out his theory is appropriately included in the edited volume Bringing the State Back In, since the state plays a large role in the formation of ethnic identities.[6] This section will work backwards from the way Laitin presents his argument: it will start with the theory and then move to the application in Yorubaland.

Laitin rejects both the neo-Benthamite and rational choice theory of culture -- both of which argue that "the politicization of social cleavages is...the rational pursuit of goals by value-maximizing individuals" -- because it is clear that individuals do not easily alter their identities and cultures do not easily change their internal cleavages; Laitin calls this 'the problem of persistence'.[7] In other words, identities do not easily shift as the result of means-ends calculations but instead are usually stubborn and not inclined to change. Furthermore, rational choice or neo-Benthamite theorists fail to explain why any particular cleavage solidifies into a politicially relevant one. These theorists argue that individuals will mobilize along the cleavage that is the most efficient to achieve the ends of the group. However, this is not always the case. Neither rational choice nor neo-Benthamite theories can resolve the problem of why some cleavages with significant social infrastructures are not successfully mobilized in the political arena.

On the other hand, the primordialist view of ethnic identities can not account for the change that actually does occur within cultures; e.g., when the 'defining' element of an ethnic group changes. Once such case is that of the Irish who originally defined themselves as Gaelic-speakers but found little difficulty in dropping Gaelic for English after independence. Furthermore, primodialists have serious problems explaining periods in a region's history in which identities appear more fluid than others.

Laitin suggests that the concept of 'hegemony', found in the work of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, is a better way of viewing the formation of identities. The term hegemony is defined as follows: "the political forging -- whether through coercion or elite bargaining -- and institutionalization of a pattern of group activity in a society and the concurrent idealization of that schema into a dominant symbolic framework that reigns as common sense."[8] In other words, politically relevant cleavages do not develop automatically but instead are formed by political processes. These identities or cleavages become intrinsic to the political culture of the region and frame the political debate by shaping the dividing lines between groups. The 'hegemon' can be defined as either an external force or a powerful political elite that possesses both the capacity and the motivation "to structure the pattern of political group formation in society."[9] It should be made clear that the hegemon or the state "is not completely free to forge identities; instead, there must be "a real basis in the symbolic repertoire of the society for such a pattern of cleavage."[10] In other words, the hegemon can not simply create lines of cleavage out of thin air. The hegemon must exploit preexisting potential cleavages in order to structure society around them. Once formed, however, these cleavages become ingrained into the culture and are therefore difficult to alter even when the identity-forming hegemony is lifted. As Laitin explains, any attempt to challenge the legacy of the hegemonic power "must then attempt...to delegitimate what their own society sees as obviously and eternally legitimate."[11] Despite their artificial creation, these state-induced cleavages, once they are institutionalized, act as if they were primordial cleavages: unmalleable, tenacious, and resistent to 'usurper' characteristics.

The context that gave rise to the theory of hegemonic control was an interesting anomaly of the Yoruba in southwestern Nigeria who have organized themselves in terms of their membership in and lineage from a number of 'ancestral cities' throughout Yorubaland. While these ancestral cities do provide some goods and services to their members, the ancestral city actually plays a small role in the everyday life of the Yoruba people and there is very little sociocultural differentiation between Yoruba from different ancestral cities. The problematic of the Yoruba case is the existence of an even split within the population between Muslims (40 percent) and Christians (40 percent). While Laitin has been rightfully accused of some degree of ethnocentrism by starting from his own culture in which "religion is often associated with political conflict" and assuming that "the same relationship should exist in all societies,"[12] his critics fail to recognize that the religious differences, in fact, "account for discernible differences in socioeconomic opportunities."[13] A 'relative deprivation' theory of ethnic mobilization and conflict would predict that religion would be the main cleavage within the Yoruba people (more as a proxy for economic differences than an issue in and of itself). However, Laitin's fieldwork points to the fact that "religious adherence had no bearing whatsoever on political alignments in Yorubaland" despite the differences in socioeconomic position and opportunities and the conception of "authority relations, responsibility, and the meaning of [political] participation" within the population.[14] Attempts to mobilize the Yoruba along religious lines have failed miserably and such a route is no longer "part of the calculus of Yoruba political entrepreneurs."[15] As Laitin argues, "although external observers have often interpreted Yoruba politics in a religious frame, Yorubas themselves never have."[16]

Laitin asks the question, 'Why has religion not become the focus for political identification in Yorubaland?' His answer is that the nature of the British colonial administration was successful in co-opting the (political weak) kings of the ancestral cities and imposing a political regime which functioned "as if ancestral cities where the only real form of political attachment in Yorubaland."[17] While the choice to rule indirectly through the ancestral city kings was a reactionary one (since their power had been slipping for some time), the British were able to structure politics within the colony so that "the only 'legitimate' claims that [could be made]...within the colonial political system were ones based on [the] traditional and historical rights" of the ancestral cities; "claims based on religious identity were expunged from the political arena."[18] The British strategy in Yorubaland was to suppress religious differences but exacerbate antagonisms between the ancestral cities in order to effectively rule the territory. In sum, the "British...politicized one cleavage and depoliticized another."[19]

In order to apply Laitin's theory of hegemonic control to a wider range of cases in general and specifically to the case of Bosnia, it is necessary to first identify a period of hegemonic control by an external power and to argue that this period of control produced a significant legacy upon the population. Then, one must examine the nature of the hegemon's administration of the territory in question and determine whether it matches the current politically relevant cleavages. Lastly, one must fill-in the temporal space between the period of hegemonic control and the present by showing how the nature of the hegemon's rule actually exploited preexisting cleavages in order to establish politically relevant cleavages. In other words, it is necessary to illustrate how the pattern of administration solidified some cleavages over others, rather than simply showing a correlation between occupation and today.

With this overview of Laitin's theory complete, we now turn our attention to the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans and its lasting legacy.

III. The Nature of Ottoman Rule in the Balkans

The greatest conquest of the quickly growing Ottoman Empire was the capture of Constantinople on 29 May 1453. This marked the Ottomans' final victory over the Orthodox Christian empire of Byzantium. Prior to the fall of Constantinople, however, Ottoman armies had already advanced deep into the area now known as the Balkans. In June 1389, an army of Serbs, Bosnians, and Albanians met the Ottoman forces at the field of Kosovo Polje (Field of Blackbirds) and were defeated. This ended the Serbian medieval kingdoms and opened the northern Balkans to the Ottomans.[20] Despite this victory, Ottoman forces did not assume control of Bosnia until 1463 and Herzegovina in 1482.

Success came easily to the Ottomans because of divisions within the West (both the Reformation and the French v. Habsburg conflicts) and the aversion of the Catholic Church in Rome to come to the aid of its eastern rival.[21] The Balkans were politically divided at the time of the Ottoman invasions and local lords did not have the support of their subjects.[22] Furthermore, there were few ethnically pure people and even fewer ethnically pure regions from which a coherent resistance could be rallied.

Likewise, religion could not be used to defend Bosnia against Ottoman incursions. To put it simply, neither of the three pre-Ottoman Bosnian churches -- Catholic, Orthodox, and Bosnian[23] -- had a firm foothold within the area because of their near total lack of territorial organization and plain lack of personnel. In fact, according to two leading Balkan scholars, the pre-Ottoman Bosnians "had never been strong Christians."[24] This lack of strong religious feeling facilitated the gradual, voluntary, and often welcomed conversion of members from all three Christian sects to Islam. Other conversions occurred from Catholicism and Bosnian to Orthodoxy (because the latter were treated better under the Ottoman system). Furthermore, many Catholics fled Bosnia for still unconquered Croatia-proper.

The nature of the Ottoman rule of Bosnia can only be understood in the larger context of the Ottoman system itself and the Ottoman worldview. Although being 'Ottoman' was more than simply a religious designation, the Ottoman state was built upon the concepts of a 'Holy War' with the West and the need to both extend and defend the political reach of Islam.[25] This did not mean that it was necessary to forcibly convert or exterminate all non-Muslims. Rather, it was sufficient to simply control territories to the advantage of Islam. Individuals were divided into two religious categories: Muslims and non-Muslims. While the Ottomans used the uniform term dhimmi to refer to all non-Muslims, they recognized some differentiation within this broad category which was formally expressed by the creation of the millets.[26]

The Ottomans organized their society in two ways, horizontally and vertically: according to socioeconomic function within society ('social estates') and religion ('millets'), respectively. The social estates "cut across ethnic and religious affiliations and regrouped the subjects in accordance with their occupation and function, such as military, administrative, religious, cultural, trade and crafts, and food production."[27] The rank of the various groups were essentially determined by their proximity to the ruler. At the very top were the central administrators of the state, who could legitimately be called the 'Ottomans'. In traditional Ottoman society, there were three prerequisites to becoming an 'Ottoman': loyalty to the sultan, accept Islam, and know and act in the 'Ottoman Way'. Thus, the distinction 'Ottoman' was political, religious, and social; though service and loyalty to the state was the most important. Those who did not belong to the Ottoman ruling class were members of the 'subject classes' called rayahs (or rayas). "Persons in the rayah class could rise into the Ottoman class by acquiring [the above] attributes and persons in the Ottoman class could become rayahs by losing or failing to practice them."[28] Although there was some sense in which the 'estates' acted as 'classes' (i.e., with a degree of consciousness of their status and interests) they were far less coherent than the millets. In fact, although one would nominally believe that the estates allowed Muslims and non-Muslims to reach across the religious divide, the non-Muslims "were never able to mix freely in Muslim society."[29] The formal cross-millet potential of the estates was not realized in practice.

The most important organizational form in the Ottoman Empire, therefore, was the millet system. In order to facilitate the control of the Ottoman's vast non-Muslim population, it was necessary to use the preexisting infrastructure to reduce both transaction and observation costs and to ease principle-agent relations. In return, the millet system "allow[ed] the non-Muslim peoples to maintain their own laws, customs, and traditions under the rule of a Muslim dynasty."[30] In whatever territory they conquered, the Ottomans systematically eliminated the indigenous political institutions or greatly reorganized the power and position of those that could be coopted. In most cases, the only institutions to survive were religious.[31] The religious institutions were exceptionally suited for indirect rule because they possessed a centralized system which nominally reached down to the local levels. Thus, immediately after the conquest of Constantinople the existing Orthodox Church was reorganized and placed within the Ottoman ruling system. Mehmed the Conqueror, in 1454, selected a respected scholar and anti-Catholic George Scholarios (who later took the name Gennadios) to be the head (millet basi ) of the Orthodox millet (Rum millet).

Rather than weakening the power of the Orthodox Church by transforming it into a millet, the Ottomans actually strengthened it. Previously, the head patriarch of the Orthodox Church, based in Constantinople, was only the first among equals of the other three patriarchs: Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. More importantly, however, the patriarch's position as the highest state official after the emperor did not prevent the former from serving only as "the humble servant" of the latter.[32] With the arrival of the Ottomans, the Constantinople Patriarchate became the sole representative of the Orthodox Church and dominated the other patriarchs and autocelphalous churches (Bulgarian at Ohrid and Serbian at Pe_).[33] The patriarch "enjoyed personal inviolability, security from disposition, tax exemption, freedom of movement, and the right to transmit these privileges to his successors."[34] He became "a recognized and respected member of the sultan's bureaucracy" and enjoyed "full jurisdiction over his followers."[35] Some of these jurisdictions included: church organization, schools, the legal and court systems (for matters such as wills, divorces and marriages, and civil matters when all parties were within the same millet), administering the church's properties (which yielded significant economic power to the church), and, in some circumstances, playing a judicial role in criminal cases where no Muslims were involved.[36] The millet also possessed certain police powers which, among other things, included a patriarchal jail in Istanbul.[37] For the most part, the Sultan did not interfere in the internal functioning of the millet unless there was a serious state interest to do so. Thus, the Orthodox patriarch became both "the millet bashi (head of the millet) and ethnarch (secular ruler) of the Orthodox population."[38] Or to put it a different way, "[f]or all practical purposes the new powers conferred on it by Mahmed II made the church a state within a state."[39]

For these privileges and powers, the Patriarch had to return two important services to the Sultan. First and foremost, he had to keep his flock orderly by preventing rebellions against the state by millet members. When the full-scale Greek rebellion started in 1821, the Patriarchate had to face the wrath of the Sultan and the Ottoman leadership for "fail[ing] in their primary duty...of ensuring the fidelity and obedience of the Orthodox community to the sultan."[40] The patriarch's second responsibility was the collection of taxes from millet members. These taxes included special levies placed only on non-Muslims.

The non-Orthodox Christians were also organized into millets, though there was a clear bias in favor of the Orthodox patriarch and their powers were never as extensive. In 1461 the Armenian patriarchate was formed and served as the nominal head of all non-Orthodox Christians in the empire.[41] However, "particular local Catholic communities, including the Catholics of Bosnia, received charters legalizing their status" and in the case of Bosnia "remained a legally recognized community under the administration of the Franciscans [of central Bosnia]."[42] Catholics were also granted certain privileges and protections by Mehmet II on 28 May 1463.[43] A Jewish millet was also formed and internally divided to represent the diversity of the Jewish population.[44] It seems obvious that "the Muslims formed a millet of their own," despite some debate regarding the existence of a 'Muslim millet'.[45]

With this brief discussion of the nature of Ottoman rule in the Balkans generally, a few comments must be made in regard to Bosnia in particular. Bosnia-Herzegovina was not an atypical province within the empire with the following exceptions: first, the existence of an indigenous group which converted to Islam and ruled the region in the name of the Ottomans (though not without tensions with Istanbul); second, the existence of a rather substantial number of Catholics and a de facto Catholic millet in Bosnia; third, the status of Bosnia as a border province in a hostile part of the empire. Despite these exceptions, however, Bosnia's experience with the Ottoman occupation closely matches what has been said of the Ottoman Empire in this section. We now turn our attention to the impact of the millet system on creating the coherent ethnic cleavages that were the focus of the Third Balkan War in the former Yugoslavia.

IV. Effects of the Millet System

The millet system imposed by the Ottoman Empire was indeed 'hegemonic' in the way that Laitin describes the term: it was a centralized administrative structure which possessed the power and will to structure the pattern of political group formation in society. When the Ottomans occupied an area, they were very careful to fully eliminate or coopt all local institutions. This was done through simply killing local landlords and nobility, converting them, or through forced population transfers.[46] This had the effect of eliminating "the indigenous political institutions denoting national identity" or those that could eventually be the basis for a nationality.[47] For example, the Balkan medieval kingdoms that could have potentialy commanded the loyalty of the Balkan peoples (including the medieval state of Bosnia), were destroyed and replaced by the millets and the Ottoman administrative system.[48] Of those that actually converted, few to no pre-Ottoman elites or rulers retained their lands in Bosnia. Instead, they were given imperial administrative positions outside of the province. Other converts -- that is, those that did not rule Bosnia prior to the Ottoman occupation -- were transformed into the new Bosnian elites.[49] The Ottoman Empire could not replace all elites from the highest to the most local levels and so they turned to the one institution that survived: the church. As one author put it: "Since the church hierarchy usually remained [after occupation], the custom of using the leaders of the religious communities for government functions was established early."[50] There was also a strong incentive for non-Muslims to enter and support the millet system because the only substantive mobility within Ottoman society for non-Muslims was within the religious establishments. When the Ottoman Empire finally fell, "there was almost no continuity of political elites in the Balkans, at least of elites that had participated in the Ottoman political process."[51] All that remained were those elites involved in the millet system.[52] Thus, the only non-Ottoman (i.e., imperial) administrative structure in the Balkans were the millets.

An important element reinforcing the millet system in the Balkans was the strict isolation of the members of one millet from the others. Although there was some interaction within the 'social estates', even these structures were largely segregated. In fact, each millet existed as "a relatively self-contained and internally autonomous community."[53] Services were provided for millet members by millet officials and the day-to-day functioning of society was essentially millet-based. Individuals had little incentive to go outside of their millet to satisfy their needs. In fact, going outside of one's millet was discouraged both because of the interests of those running the millets and of society as a whole.[54] As one author put it: "It was at the very basis of the millet system that persons of different religions...be separated from one another as much as possible to prevent contact and possible conflict."[55] In fact, this separation was so absolute that there was "no mutual influence or real cultural intercourse between millets."[56] The consequence of which was cultural and ideological stagnation which ended only after the millets formally collapsed.[57] By "emphasiz[ing] the universality of the faith and supersed[ing] ethnic and linguistic differences without destroying them," the millet system prevented non-religious institutions from arising.

This is not to say that the effects of the millet system are wholly negative. First and foremost, the church played a critical role in preserving the heritage of the Balkan people.[58] Furthermore, the non-Muslim peoples of the Empire were able, through the millet institutions, to "maintain their own laws, customs, and traditions under the rule of a Muslim dynasty."[59] In addition, the millets provided a useful means by which individuals could group together in a communal structure and prevent the atomization of society.[60] In other words, the millet system preserved one basis of the pre-occupation social infrastructure within a religiously hostile empire.

The separate millets also provided nearly all goods and services to its citizens. This reinforced both the exclusivity of the millets themselves and the loyalty of individuals to this institution. Since the Ottoman administrative system did not attempt to deal with individuals directly, the only elites that most people interacted with were the millet elites.[61] In the previous section, the powers and role of the millet organization were outlined. To briefly summarize from the previous section, the millet leaders were responsible for "collecting taxes and supervising the distribution of state lands to cultivators. They represented the community in its day-to-day dealings with the Ottoman administration and were responsible for order, security, collection of taxes, etc., in the community."[62] Each millet "provided its own schools, welfare system, courts, and other structures that in the West are usually provided by the government."[63] In addition, the local limbs of the millets served as the depositary for academic knowledge, traditions, customs, and culture. Thus, from both a political culture and a public goods perspective, the millets had a crucial impact in structuring Balkan society.

The millet system functioned rather well for centuries but eventually began to decay. There are two main reasons for this. First, the Orthodox millet began to lose its multiethnic nature through increasingly aggressive Helenization. Although Greeks nominally controlled the millet since its inception, Greek hegemony over the Orthodox millet was consolidated during the mid-1700s when the Serbian Patriarchate of Pe_ (1766) and the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid (1767) were disbanded.[64] Prior to this period, there was little antagonism between the sub-millet linguistic groups. Once the Greeks attempted to impose the Greek language, alphabet, and culture upon the heterogenous millet, there was a strong anti-Greek reaction which alienated non-Greeks from their millet.[65]

[T]he spiritual supremacy of the Patriarchate of Istanbul and the unity of the Orthodox millet remained safeguarded as long as the see upheld the primacy of faith over ethnic and linguistic peculiarities. The Helenization drive broke this unity by making language the distinguishing mark of an ethnic group and implicitly gave language and ethnicity a higher political priority than religion.[66]

Language-based French nationalism, introduced through increased trade with the West furthered this trend.[67] These divisions culminated in the collapse the Orthodox millet by the end of the 1800s when the non-Greek Orthodox formed their own churches.[68] This had a negative effect on the other millets since the Orthodox millet was the cornerstone of the entire system.

The second cause of the millet system's decay were changes in the world economy. Increased trade with the West and the rise of modern capitalism in the late 1700s created stratification within society along ethno-religious lines. Prior to these changes, there were some degree of cross-cutting cleavages along ethno-religious (vertical) and socioeconomic (horizontal) lines (except at the very highest levels which were largely reserved from Muslims). In other words, each of the vertical divisions within society contained a nearly full range of socioeconomic divisions within them. Although Muslims were disproportionally better-off than their non-Muslim counterparts, they were not superior in an absolute sense. However, this quickly changed in the 18th and 19th centuries:

...in the era of transition to a semi-capitalist economy, the Ottoman government prevented its own Turkish and Muslim subjects from participating in the new economic ventures while allowing the Christian population to do so relatively freely; eventually, this assured...[the latter's] economic and political independence.[69]

As non-Muslims developed economically, they began to demand corresponding changes in their political status and the empire's political system. Increasing contacts with the West in the late 1700s introduced the ideology of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution into the non-Muslim population. This led to the rise of a Christian intelligentsia who were willing to develop and exploit indigenous ethnic divisions for nationalistic purposes: "the socio-economic differentiation and the educational developments among the Christian population in the Balkans had given them a qualitative edge, manifest in social mobilization and political consciousness."[70]

Muslims reacted to the increasing socioeconomic gap between themselves and their non-Muslim counterparts and the emergence of non-Muslim, national elites with alarm. Despite the relative autonomy of the millets and the instrumental way that Islam was used to justify the Sultan's rule, many Muslims believed that the Ottoman Empire was their empire. Increasingly, Muslims began to identify themselves and their interests with the central government.[71] In order to strengthen the central government and to protect their own interests, the Ottoman (read Muslim) elites introduced a non-millet citizenship policy in the mid-1800s otensibly done in order to foster the development of a general 'Ottoman' national consciousness. The first immediate effect of this new form of citizenship was the creation of "a series of rights and obligations...above and beyond the membership in the millet."[72] This was a serious blow to the strength of the millet leaders to control their respective constituents. More importantly, however, these changes created a 'majority-minority' division within society. A horizontal division arose with non-Muslims clearly taking the lower political position in the Muslim empire as the ruled. At this point, all non-Muslims were referred to as the raya (rayah) class and Muslims were excluded from this distinction.[73] This precipitated political tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The rise of a non-Muslim entrepreneurial and intelligentsia class not only affected relations with the Muslim rulers of the empire, but also damaged relations between the millet elites and their supposed 'flocks'. Given the strict conservatism of the churches (especially the Orthodox), the interests between the millet and its flock began to diverge because the former saw the West as repugnant and the latter saw it was something to be emulated.[74] Economic changes also caused a significant migration of non-Muslims into the cities. These new urban dwellers soon shed their traditional values and were therefore less tied to their respective millets.[75]

The legacy of the millet system continues to this day in the form of ethnic identities. This point is most clearly shown in the fact that the primary axis of ethnic identity is religion. This runs counter to the argument that language is the primary element of an ethnic group; i.e., unless a community speaks the same language, a cohesive ethnic identity can not exist. In the Balkans, however, one's religion determines who they are. Take, for example, the population transfers of the interwar period between Greece and Turkey. At one level, it is possible to view this as a repatriation of Turks from Greece to Turkey and Greeks from Turkey to Greece. However, this was not the case. As one author argues, this population transfer was "not an exchange of Greeks and Turks but rather an exchange of Greek Orthodox Christians and Ottoman Muslims....This was no repatriation at all, but two deportations into exile; of Christian Turks to Greece and of Muslim Greeks to Turkey."[76] Religion, not language, ethnic origin, or race was the primary factor determining their ethnic identity. The term 'Greek Muslim' or 'Christian Turk' would sound "paradoxical" in the Balkans and "would be rejected in the light of overwhelming historical experience and contemporary actuality."[77] When language and traditional religious affiliation do not coincide, "language is no criterion of nationality" in the Balkans.[78]

Language does, however, play a large role in determining one's ethnic identity, but only as a subset of religion. Although Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks are all Eastern Orthodox, they are not considered the same ethnic group. I have already discussed how the attempted Helenization of the Orthodox millet precipitated the use of language as a critical characteristic separating one group from another under the Ottoman millet system. Language is not irrelevant, but it is clearly secondary to religion. Once the religious boundary is crossed, an individual is usually no longer considered a member of their pre-conversion ethnic group.[79]

The clearest example of this phenomenon is Bosnia-Herzegovina. As is well known, Bosnia contains three main ethnic groups: Serbs, Muslims (also known now as Bosniacs), and Croats. Serbs are Orthodox Christians and write in the Cyrillic alphabet. Muslims are followers of Islam and write in the Latin alphabet (though during the Ottoman occupation, they also wrote in the Arabic script of the Turks at that time).[80] Lastly, the Croats are Catholic and write in the Latin alphabet. Despite these religious differences, all three groups are of the same racial stock and speak practically the same language: Serbo-Croatian.[81] There has been attempts by both Serbs and Croats to 'claim' the Bosnian Muslims as their own (i.e., Muslim Croats or Muslim Serbs), but these have all failed. As the next section illustrates, the millet-based designation still holds.

V. The Bosnian Muslims qua Millet

The most lasting legacy of the Ottoman occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina is the creation of a new national group: the Bosnian Muslims (or Bosniacs). This section will briefly trace the progression of the Muslims from their creation to the present day, focusing on the development of the Muslim national consciousness. The Bosnian Muslims see themselves and are perceived by others in millet terms (even the name 'Muslim' is clearly millet-based), thus providing further evidence of the impact of Ottoman hegemonic control in Bosnia.

The origins of the Bosnian Muslims -- that is, those individuals of the South Slav racial stock who converted to Islam -- has been mentioned above and, to recount briefly, has succumbed to an incorrect conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom follows these lines: the pre-Islamic Middle Ages produced the dualistic Bogomil heretics who were both anti-Catholic and anti-Orthodox; when the Ottomans invaded, the Bogomils converted en masse to Islam and served the Ottoman Empire as indigenous imperial overlords; the national consciousness of this group developed during the Austro-Hungarian occupation and came to full fruition during the Communist period. Although this account is clearly useful in providing a historical basis to the separate existence of a Bosnian Muslim proto-nation, it has been discredited on a number of levels. Nevertheless, like all myths of national origin, this one has been persistent.

The origins of a separate Bosnian Muslim identity are to be found during the Ottoman period. The ancestors of the current day Bosnian Muslims used two terms to differentiate themselves from the Ottoman Turks: they either used the term Turci, as opposed to Turku_e (Turks from Asia Minor), or simply Bo_njaci (Bosnian).[82] Although the Bosnian Muslims were the de facto rulers of Bosnia, their interests were not always coterminous with the Ottoman leadership in Istanbul. In fact, Bosnian Muslim elites often found themselves directly opposing their imperial masters. Bosnian Muslim elites strongly disliked the Ottoman reforms of the late 1700s to early 1800s which: attempted to reform the basis of citizenship and courts to treat Muslims and non-Muslims as equals under the law; attempted to tighten central control over more autonomous provinces of the Empire (namely, Bosnia-Herzegovina); and replaced tax-farming with a modern system of taxation to prevent local elites from skimming off the top.[83] In short, the Bosnian Muslims saw these reforms as undermining their special status and powers in Bosnia.[84] Tensions between the Ottomans and the Bosnian Muslim elites eventually erupted into a number of Muslim-led rebellions against the Ottomans from the 1830s to the 1850s.[85] Nevertheless, the Bosnian Muslim leadership generally supported the empire (but with strong provincial self-rule) and feared a collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkans because they would likely fall under the rule of a non-Muslim empire.

When the Austro-Hungarian Empire assumed control of Bosnia-Herzegovina after the Conference of Berlin in 1878, the Bosnian Muslims were forced to adjust both to a general lack of autonomy and power and to life under non-Muslim rulers. More importantly for our purposes, the Bosnian Muslims had to go through a period of identity formation in order to differentiate themselves from their Serb and Croat counterparts. Both Serbs and Croats claimed the Bosnian Muslims as their own: there existed a "Serb-Croat rivalry over Bosnian Muslim ƒthat is, the attempts to convince the Muslims that they did not constitute a separate national group and that it was 'progressive' to choose between the Serb and Croat national identities."[86] This rivalry existed for quite some time prior to the Austro-Hungarian occupation and originally was based on the 'ethnogenetic' links between the Bosnian Muslims and the Serbs. Croatian claims began to emerge in the 1700s but gained strength after the Conference of Berlin.[87] While they often felt themselves closer to the Croatians, the Bosnian Muslims avoided taking one side over the other for fear of undermining Muslim unity and to preserve their own separate identity. In sum, "their flirtation with both Croatian and Serbian national movements never dulled their consciousness of their distinctive religio-cultural heritage."[88]

One of the primary difficulties the Bosnian Muslims had in establishing their own identity was the lack of a significant national genesis myth.[89] The other groups "could look back to a golden age in history and had a national language, so that politicians, publicists, and others could find a basis for the creation of a national culture, literature, and church. ... The Bosnian Muslims had no such institution or period in their collective memory."[90] As a result, the Bosnian Muslims had tremendous difficulty in developing a "national consciousness which transcended the feeling of religious community."[91]

The rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire also had legitimate interests in establishing a 'Bosnian' identity separate from either the Serbs or the Croats in order to block attempts, especially amongst Serbs, to organize a South Slav union. Unfortunately for the Austrian administrators, the notion never took hold because of "the absence of any common basis in real historical experience of any of the groups in Bosnia."[92] Although some sort of a separate 'Bosnian' identity existed (far more regional than national or ethnic) in both the medieval and Ottoman periods, this was not enough to establish a coherent national group in the age of modern nationalism. Part of the reason why this was so, as this paper has shown, is because of the way in which Bosnia was administered during the Ottoman period: according to confessional criteria. The attempts to create a non-religious national identity always succumbed to these religious pressures and identities.

The beginnings of Bosnian Muslim political and national consciousness can be traced to the Austro-Hungarian occupation; e.g., the first Bosnian Muslim political party, the Muslim National Organization, was established in December 1906. However, the flowering of Bosnian Muslim identity really occurred after the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed in 1918 and culminated in 1968 when the Bosnian Muslims were officially recognized by communist Yugoslavia as a 'nation'. Wolfgang Höpken, in his discussion of the Yugoslav Communists' views of the Bosnian Muslims, separates this fifty year period into four stages: denial of a special 'national' status to the Muslims (1919-1935); acceptance of the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina but a split between those who deny the Muslims' identity and those that are beginning to accept it (1935-1945); the unionist concept of the eventual formation of a religiously-neutral Serbo-Croat (Yugoslav) nation and the eventual identification of the Muslims with this nation (1945 to early-1960s); and finally the beginnings of the national recognition of the Muslims (early-1960s to 1968).[93] It is beyond the scope of this essay to recount, in detail, the events in each of these steps. Instead, we will simply discuss the general themes with special emphasis placed on the final stage.

An important element blocking the recognition of the Bosnian Muslims by the Yugoslav communists as a separate nation was the fact that the distinguishing ethnic chacteristic of the Bosnian Muslims was religion. In the interwar period, Bosnian Muslim political consciousness was not seen as an emerging "confessional nation," but rather as simply a religious category of either Serbs or Croats.[94] In fact, the Yugoslav Muslim Organization, which was the most powerful political force among the Muslims, agreed with the position and called for 'Yugoslavism'ƒthat is, the eventual merging of the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and Bosnian Muslims into one 'Yugoslav' (South Slav) nation. This position, however, was not universally held in the Muslim community as the following passage by an early advocate of Bosnian Muslim national identity shows:

We have a healthy basis for a specific national thought just as much as the Serbs and Croats, and what appear to be national communities are, in reality, both in form and in ideological content, both foreign and inaccessible, because they actually represent their own religious communities.[95]

Once the Second World War began, Bosnian Muslim and Yugoslav Communist positions on this issue were ambigious. It became clear, however, that "although there were signs throughout the war which seemed to point to acceptance of the Muslims as a national unit, at the end of the war the Muslims were recognized only as a population with special cultural and religious characteristics, but not as a nation."[96] Since the Communist Party of Yugoslavia "was oriented completely along Stalinist theoretical lines and accepted the Stalinist definition of nations," it was thought unlikely that the Bosnian Muslims would ever achieve 'national' status given that national questions would loose their significance once the imminent victory of socialism was achived. Therefore, "[r]ecognizing a 'new' nation would...be an anachronism."[97] Nevertheless, during the discussions of the first postwar constitution (January 1946), one party leader commented that the Bosnian Muslims remained "in large part [an] as yet nationally undetermined Slavic ethnic group," which seemingly left open the possibility that they might become 'nationally determined'.[98]

Through the early 1960s, Bosnian Muslims were pressured to declare themselves either Serbs or Croats. This began to change as the Yugoslav government became more willing to recognize the separate existence of the Bosnian Muslims. This is evidenced by the 1961 census which allowed Bosnian Muslims to declare themselves "Muslims in the ethnic sense."[99] In 1963, the Bosnian Muslims were accorded rights equal to those of the Croats and Serbs in the preamble of the constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but the official label of 'nation' was avoided. Two years later, the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina gave its formal approval to the designation of the Bosnian Muslims as "a special nation."[100] By 1968, the Bosnian Muslims were recognized as a 'nation' throughout Yugoslavia as a whole.

The recognition of the Bosnian Muslims as a legitimate 'nation' was an interesting dilemma for the communist regime: essentially, a group of avowed atheists recognized a group as a nation whose name and distinguishing characteristic was based on confessional affiliation. Furthermore, Marxist ideology argued that the bourgeois theory of nationality, which overemphasizes the linguistic, religious, and cultural components of ethnic identity, is wrong and should be mostly replaced by a materialist argument based on the division of labor. In the case of the Bosnian Muslims, it was religion and culture, and not their position in the division of labor, which was their chief distinguishing feature.[101] In order to counter the first problem, the Yugoslav leaders insisted that a secular Muslim culture exists in Bosnia-Herzegovina which permitted the separation of religion from the national identity. Although this was the official line, others scoffed at this notion and noted that religion was the critical element in not only the Bosnian Muslim identity, but most identities in the Balkans, as sociologist Ru_a Petrovic stated in a 1968 article:

Religion was a factor for ethnic differentiation not merely in the case of the Muslims, but also among our other nationalities. And not merely in the past but even today for a large number of people, especially those living in ethnically and religiously heterogeneous districts, religion is a synonym for nationality.[102]

Some leaders of communist Yugoslavia soon regretted their decision to recognize the Bosnian Muslims as a nation. Despite their claims that culture and not religion was the critical factor in Bosnian Muslim national identity, religion took a prominent role in the newly invigorated Bosnian Muslim community, leading to the well publicized trial of 13 Muslim 'counterrevolutionaries' and promoters of 'clero-nationalism' in the summer of 1983 -- most prominent among them, Alija Izetbegovic, president of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina -- which featured the Islamic Declaration, written by Izetbegovic, as the main piece of evidence. The main argument in the Islamic Declaration is that since the Bosnian Muslim national identity is defined by Islam, the Bosnian Muslim nation cannot be restricted from only embracing the 'cultural' aspects of Islam but rather must embrace the whole of Islam.[103]

The Bosnian Muslims have emerged as a coherent national group in the late twentieth century. The defining characteristic of this group was and remains religion, as defined by the Ottoman millet system. There has been some movement to disavow the use of the term 'Muslim' to denote the Bosnian Muslims and replace it was the term 'Bosniac'.[104] While this shift in terminology may indicate the final collapse of the millet legacy, it should be remembered that the Croats and Serbs are not called Catholics and Orthodox. The move from Muslim to Bosniac most likely indicates the full flowering of the Bosnian Muslims from simply being a separate millet to a true 'nation' no longer defined purely in millet terms. Nevertheless, the shift in terminology can not escape the fact that it was Ottoman millet system which shaped the Muslim national identity and continues to underlie that very identity.

VI. Conclusion

The evidence presented in this essay confirms Laitin's theory of hegemonic control in the genesis of ethnic identities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is clear that the Ottoman Empire was a hegemonic state that had both the power and the will to reorganize existing social structures to fit its needs. The nature of the millet system superimposed a religious identity upon the peoples of the Balkans which shapes present day ethnic identity. Religion remains the primary characteristic dividing the different ethnic groups from each other and supersedes all other characteristics. If we conceive of ethnic identities in terms of ethnic 'boundaries', confessional affiliation is the elementary and irreversible cause for 'expulsion' from a group. Although language may differentiate within religious groups, religion is clearly primary.

Laitin's paradigm can be explored from both political culture and public goods standpoints. In the case of Bosnia, all potentially national institutions were either eliminated or subsumed under the millet. Ottoman rule restructured society so that the only substantive bases of identification were religious. Even after the millets collapsed and the social structure was transformed into one with majorities and minorities (rather than relatively equal religious 'pillars'), the terms of the debate were Muslims v. non-Muslims. It can also be argued that the millets were the repositories for the loyalties of their constituents because of the goods and services provided by these institutions. Since the Ottomans clearly had a bias in favor of indirect rule, the day-to-day functioning of society was fulfilled by the millet structures which, until they began to break down, commanded the loyalties of the people. Even when they disintegrated, the resulting social structures came from within the millets rather than across them.[105]

The most obvious legacy of the Ottoman occupation of Bosnia is the existence of the Bosnian Muslims. Founded by the conversions of Christians to the religion of their conquerors and reinforced by the millet system, the Bosnian Muslims added a third distinct national group to the racially homogeneous, Serbo-Croatian speaking South Slavs. The religious differences between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims precluded the creation of a 'Yugoslav' national identity despite serious attempts by the Titoist government in Belgrade.[106] Despite claims by both Croats and Serbs that the Bosnian Muslims are really one or the other, it is obvious that there can be no Muslim Croatians or Muslim Serbs; the differences of religion are simply too strong. The recent development of the Bosnian Muslims into Bosniacs is not a rejection of the Islamic foundation to their identity, but rather a shift from purely millet to clero-national terms just as the Serbs and Croats had done previously.

Speaking of ethnicity in Bosnia in the most general terms, it would be improper to blame the Ottoman millet system for the recent Bosnian war. Modern day elites with specific interests are the ones who utilized the preexisting lines of cleavage to produce a bloody outcome. While the Ottoman millet system caused those lines to be there, the 'ancient hatreds' thesis is simply incorrect: the people of Bosnia have lived in relative interethnic peace for quite some time. Despite this peace, however, the three largest ethnic groups perceived themselves and were perceived as different from each other. The idea that the prior peace proves the existence of an overarching Bosnian identity, however, is as false as the ancient hatred thesis. This is not to say that a 'Bosnian' identity never existed. There is some indication that many individuals did indeed possess a geographic identity. However, this identity was both prior to the rise of nationalism as an ideology and clearly not 'ethnic' or 'national' as the terms are used today. It is possible that the Bosnian Church could have served as a 'national' institution, but it did not. It is also possible that the pre-Ottoman Bosnian elites could have used their ties to form a non-religious Bosnian identity, but they did not. Instead, the millet system of the Ottoman Empire stymied all attempts to create a separate Bosnian identity. Given that the revamped Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina perpetuates the differences between Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, it is unlikely that a truly 'Bosnian' identity will ever overcome the religious differences in the country.

The quote by Wayne S. Vucinich that began this essay has been confirmed by the evidence presented in this essay: "The Ottoman legacy in the contemporary Balkans is many-sided, and its roots are deep and ramified." Possibly the greatest Ottoman legacy in the Balkans is the structure of ethnic identities. By eliminating all indigenous institutions but one, the Ottoman millet system's impact has been profound.

VII. Endnotes

1. Wayne S. Vucinich, "Some Aspects of the Ottoman Legacy," The Balkans in Transition, eds. Charles and Barbara Jelavich (USA: Archon Books, 1974), 85.

2. For an excellent review article on the current literature on the Yugoslav wars, see: Gale Stokes, et al., "Instant History: Understanding the Wars of Yugoslav Succession," Slavic Review 55, 1 (Spring 1996): 136-160.

3. The reason why the Albanians were able to transcend their confessional differences is due to a process that is somewhat similar to the argument of this essay: the Ottoman millet system was responsible for the defining characteristic of the Albanians. However, in the Albanian case, the Greek (i.e., Orthodox millet leadership's) insistence on the total Helenization of all Albanians, regardless of confessional affiliationƒthrough the forcing of the Greek language upon themƒcaused a reaction by the Albanians in which the defense of the language became the rallying cry for Albanian nationalists. Thus, the Albanian national identity is a negative, rather than a positive, product of the millet system. Stavro Skendi, "The Millet System and Its Contribution to the Blurring of Orthodox National Identity in Albania," Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 243-257.

4. Maria Todorova, "The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans," Imperial Legacy, ed. L. Carl Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 46.

5. Dennison Rusinow, "The Ottoman Legacy in Yugoslavia's Disintegration and Civil War," Imperial Legacy, ed. L. Carl Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 79.

6. David D. Laitin, "Hegemony and Religious Conflict: British Control and Political Cleavages in Yorubaland," Bringing the State Back In: 284-316.

A book-length treatment of the ideas expressed in this chapter can be found in David D. Laitin, Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986). While this book is obviously longer than the article, the theory of 'hegemony' is essentially the same and much more concise in the shorter version. As a result, this essay will rely on the chapter rather than the book except where explicitly stated.

7. Laitin, 300.

8. Laitin, 287.

9. Laitin, 287.

10. Laitin, Hegemony and Culture, 168.

11. Laitin, Hegemony and Culture, 168-9.

12. Seth Leacock, "Hegemony and Culture (Book Review)," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, no.492 (July 1987): 207.

13. Laitin, 286.

14. Laitin, 286, 285.

15. Laitin, 286.

16. Laitin, 295.

17. Laitin, 287.

18. Laitin, 305.

19. Laitin, 306.

20. Barbara Jelavich, The History of the Balkans v.1 (USA: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 31.

21. At the Council of Florence in 1439, Byzantine Emperor John VII (1425-48) agreed to reunify the two churches under Roman control in order to gain Catholic support against the Ottomans. Most Orthodox followers were against this proposal and the Ottoman reorganization of the Orthodox church following the fall of Constantinople prevented any reunification. Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804, 45.

22. The latter is due primarily to two reasons. First, the Balkan rulers had difficulty motivating their subjects because of the seemingly arbitrary nature of the feudal system instituted in the region, which differed both from the feudal society in the West and the more coherent social structure of the Ottomans (which placed individuals in a fixed place with rights and duties). Second, these Balkan states were not 'national' in the modern sense but rather were autocratic and feudal and only appeared to serve the interests of the ruling elite. Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims, 29-30; Jelavich, The History of the Balkans, 26-7.

23. There is much debate over the exact nature of the Bosnian Church. The conventional wisdom is that the Bosnian Church was really a front for the Bogomil heretics. who later converted en masse to Islam. This myth has been promoted most fiercely by Bosnian Muslim nationalists who use it to support their argument for the separate origins of the Bosnian Muslims. This has the effect of providing them with a sense of legitimacy as a nation prior to the Ottoman occupation. However, this article of conventional wisdom has come under fire. Instead, the Bosnian Church is seen as a local institution that broke from the Catholic Church on ritualistic grounds. Thus, the Bosnian Church is seen as "an indigenous separatist and schismatic" sect rather than outright heretical. Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims, 13. John V.A. Fine Jr., The Bosnian Church, A New Interpretation (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1975).

24. Robert J. Donia and John V. A. Fine Jr., Bosnia and Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994): 43.

25. Much of the Islamic rhetoric was simply used as a political tool to legitimate the rule of the Ottoman class and the Sultans; "Muslims...appeared not as a dominate group but as a millet no different from the other ethnic and religious groups" -- at least initially. This changed under pressure from the influx of nationalist ideology into the empire. The Ottomans reacted by identifying the state more closely with Islam and introducing the concept of majority-minority groups rather than simply rulers-ruled. Karpat, An Inquiry Into the Social Foundations of Nationalism in the Ottoman State, 38, 84-92.

26. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire v.1, eds. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York and London: Holmes and Meier, ): 149.

27. Karpat, An Inquiry Into the Social Foundations of Nationalism in the Ottoman State: From Social Estates to Classes, From Millets to Nations, Research Monograph no.39 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973): 7.

28. Stanford J. Shaw, "The Ottoman View of the Balkans," The Balkans in Transition, eds. Charles and Barbara Jelavich (USA: Archon Books, 1974): 58.

29. Wayne S. Vucinich, "The Nature of Balkan Society Under Ottoman Rule," The Balkans in Transition, eds. Charles and Barbara Jelavich (USA: Archon Books, 1974): 606.

30. Stanford J. Shaw, "The Aims and Achievements of Ottoman Rule in the Balkans," 617.

31. Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims: Denial of a Nation (USA: Westview, 1996): 31; Jelavich, 49.

32. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 145.

33. These were restored in the 1500s for a brief time but were later dissolved in the 1700s when Greek hegemony over the Orthodox millet was consolidated. Richard Clogg, "The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire," 187; Jelavich, 49.

34. Karpat, An Inquiry, 50.

35. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 145.

36. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 145; Jelavich, 50.

37. Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804 (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1977): 46.

38. Jelavich, 50.

39. Sugar, 47.

40. Richard Clogg, "The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire," Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire v.1, eds. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York and London: Holmes and Meier, ): 192-3.

41. For example, Georgians, Catholics, Monophysites, Nestorians, and Jacobites. Trian Stoianovic, "Factors in the Decline of Ottoman Society in the Balkans," 624-5.

42. Donia and Fine Jr., 64-5.

43. Despite the benefits that the Catholics received due to their quasi-millet status, the Catholics were consistently seen as a potential fifth column -- especially the Fransicians in Bosnia -- because the head of the Catholic Church remained outside of the Ottomans' grasp. The Orthodox Church, on the other hand, was easily controlled by the Sultan because of both its location in Istanbul and its dependence on the Empire for its vast powers. The anti-Catholic feeling of the Ottomans was reinforced when the Pope launched a crusade in 1443-44 and Pope Pius II (1458-64) was unsuccessful in his attempt to get one launched at the time of Bosnia's conquest. In addition, the Ottomans were keen to exploit the differences between the two churches and the natural anti-Catholic feelings of the Orthodox Church. Donia and Fine, 39; Rusinov, 89.

44. Karpat, An Inquiry, 35.

45. Karpat, An Inquiry, 39.

46. Friedman, 30.

47. Friedman, 31.

48. Vucinich, "The Nature of Balkan Society Under Ottoman Rule," 601.

49. Donia and Fine Jr., 41.

50. Jelavich, 49.

51. Maria Todorova, "The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans," 56.

52. The pattern was a bit different in Bosnia where the Bosnian Muslims decided to stay in the areas that they had administered in the name of the Ottomans. Nevertheless, the Bosnian Muslims perceived themselves and were perceived in terms closer to the millet structure rather than as a modern nation. Maria Todorova, "The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans," 57.

53. Shaw, "The Ottoman View of the Balkans," 61.

54. Vicinich, "The Nature of Balkan Society Under Ottoman Rule," 602-3.

55. Shaw, "The Aims and Achievements of Ottoman Rule in the Balkans," Slavic Review 21 (December 1962): 619. [italics added]

56. Wayne S. Vucinch, "Reply," Slavic Review 21 (December 1962): 635.

57. Jelavich, 52; Vucinich, "The Nature of Balkan Society Under Ottoman Rule, 610-11.

58. Vucinich, 608.

59. Stanford J. Shaw, "The Aims and Achievements of Ottoman Rule in the Balkans," Slavic Review 21 (December 1962): 618.

60. Shaw, "The Aims and Achievements of Ottoman Rule in the Balkans," 618.

61. Jelavich, 48.

62. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 142-3.

63. Justin McCarthy, "Ottoman Bosnia, 1800 to 1878," The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, ed. Mark Pinson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univeristy Press, 1993): 58.

64. Clogg, "The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire," 187.

65. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 159-61.

66. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 161.

67. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 159.

68. Clogg, 194.

69. Karpat, An Inquiry, 47.

70. Karpat, An Inquiry, 60.

71. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 154.

72. Karpat, An Inquiry, 87.

73. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 149-50.

74. Karpat, An Inquiry, 61.

75. Karpat, "Millets and Nationality," 155.

76. qtd. in Karpat, An Inquiry, 1.

77. George G. Arnakis, "The Role of Religion in the Development of Balkan Nationalsm," The Balkans in Transition, eds. Charles and Barbara Jelavich (USA: Archon Books, 1974): 118.

78. Arnakis, 119.

Albanians are the exception to this rule for reasons identified above.

79. This situation is somewhat similar to Russell Hardin's concept of 'norms of exclusion'. In the Balkans, religion is the ultimate cause for exclusion. Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

80. Ivo Banac, "Bosnian Muslims: From Religious Community to Socialist Nationhood and Postcommunist Statehood, 1918-1992," The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, ed. Mark Pinson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univeristy Press, 1993): 133.

81. There has been an attempt in recent yearsƒmostly caused by the warƒto distance the languages of the three groups from each other. For example, in the constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, both 'Bosniak' and 'Croatian' are listed as the official languages of that quasi-state. However, these distinctions are much more politically motivated than linguistic reality.

82. Ivo Banac, 133.

83. Friedman, 34.

84. From the Ottoman perspective, however, these reforms were desperately needed because the Bosnian Muslims had become increasingly autonomous from imperial control -- due, in part, to Bosnia's geography -- and local leaders began to abuse their powers in Bosnia during the 1700s. It was feared that reckless local leaders would spark Serbian rebellions and thus precipitate European intervention in the province. This fear was confirmed in the aftermath of the 1875 Serbian rebellion. Justin McCathy, "Ottoman Bosnia, 1800 to 1878," The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 71-9.

85. McCarthy, 75.

86. Banac, 134.

This line of reasoning directly contradicts the main thesis of this essay: that the primary axis of ethnic identity formation in the Balkans is religion. The claim that the Bosnian Muslims and Croats are only Muslim Serbs and Catholic Serbs (as some have argued) is a direct challenge to the very foundation of this essay. However, it should be noted that those who argue this position fall into the 'primordialist' camp on the question of the foundation of ethnicity. Given this starting position, it is clear that they would have to argue that the Bosnian Muslims are really part of group 'x' because they deny that new nationality groups may arise as a result of ethnic mixing or other processes. Thus, since there can never be a new nation arising from the mix of South Slav Serbo-Croatian speakers, it is necessary to determine what the Bosnian Muslims are 'ethnogenetically'.

This essay and Laitin's paradigm are clearly not in the primordialist camp and lean closer to the 'instrumentalists'. Unfortunately it is beyond the scope of this essay to argue the merits and flaws of the two sides of this argument. However, as Sabrina P. Ramet correctly notes, "in addressing the complex question of ethnicity of the Bosnian Muslims and the modernity of that ethnicity, scholars must recognize the fact that the people of Bosnia themselves are divided (i.e., some are Serbs, some are Croats, and some are ethnic Muslims), and, hence, that any 'exclusivist' [i.e., primordialist or tribalist] theory must first of all either repudiate the subjective self-perceptions of some of the group members, or construe these avowals as self-serving lies made under duress." In other words, despite the claims of some primordialists on either the Serb or Croat side, it is clear that the individuals in Bosnia see each other as different.

87. Sabrina P. Ramet, "Primordial Ethnicity or Modern Nationalism: The Case of Yugoslavia's Muslims, Reconsidered" Muslim Communities Reemerge, eds. Andreas Kappeler, et al. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994): 116-9.

88. Ramet, 127.

89. Pinson, "The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina Under Austro-Hungarian Rule, 1878-1918," The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, ed. Mark Pinson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univeristy Press, 1993): 89-90.

90. Pinson, 90.

91. Wolfgang Höpken, "Yugoslavia's Communists and the Bosnian Muslims," Muslim Communities Reemerge, eds. Andreas Kappeler, et al. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994): 217.

92. Pinson, 103.

93. Höpken, 219-238.

94. Höpken, 120.

95. qtd. in Ramet, 120. [emphasis added]

96. Höpken, 228.

97. Höpken, 230.

98. qtd. in Ramet, 120.

99. qtd. in Höpken, 231.

100. qtd. in Höpken, 232.

101. Ramet, 128.

102. qtd. in Ramet, 120. [emphasis added]

103. Ramet, 130.

104. In the Constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the word 'Muslim' is not used. Rather, Bosniac (or Bosniak) was put in its place. This replacement became a part of common parlance and on many occasions political actors in the region, including former prime minister Silajdzic and president Izetbegovic, have used it to refer to the Bosnian Muslims. See: Vecernji List, reproduced as "Silajdzic Comments Reported," in FBIS-EEU, 31 March 1994, p. 19; Radio Bosnia-Herzegovina, reproduced as "Izetbegovic on Talks," in FBIS-EEU, 11 May 1994, p. 21.

105. As stated before, Albanian national identity is a special case. However, it too can be explained as a negative reaction to the attempted Helenization of the Albanians by the Orthodox millet.

106. See: Paul S. Shoup, Communism and the Yugoslav National Question (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1968).

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