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.Turkish his-toriography postulated that, among the variety of factors accounting for the Ottomansuccess, the size of the Turkish masses arriving from Anatolia was decisive.In thisview, the history of the Ottoman Empire can be reinterpreted as the history of mi-grations of great masses who had numerical superiority over the indigenous popula-tion, and the conscious and planned colonization of the Balkans on the part of thesultan s government held a central place.In contrast, Balkan historiography has madeconsiderable efforts to refute the essential significance of Ottoman colonization inexplaining both the success of the Ottoman conquest and the significant size ofMuslims by the last centuries of Ottoman rule.This attempt has centered on theprocess of conversions to Islam as chiefly responsible for Muslim growth.The out-come of the debate between the two contending interpretations need not necessarilyserve either one of the political causes they can be used to legitimize.The issue inboth cases is the attempt to prove the blood-kinship of the contested groups to thelarger nations in the area.The fact that the Islamization thesis can be scholarly sup-ported far better than the colonization one by no means gives support to any of the Realia Qu est-ce qu il y a de hors-texte? 175anti-Muslim or anti-Turkish manifestations, which at one time or another have beenpursued in different parts of the Balkans.The substantial population shifts during the nineteenth century, for which thereare aggregate numbers, were due mainly to political events, most prominently thesecession of the Balkan nation-states.More than one million Muslims left the Balkansduring the last three decades of the nineteenth century and relocated to Istanbul, theremaining European possession of the Porte, and to Anatolia.In the same period, onemillion Christian inhabitants changed their residence with the outgoing Muslims.Even more drastic were the migrations in the long war decade, 1912 1922 (the twoBalkan wars, World War I, and the Greek-Turkish war).Close to two-and-a-half mil-lion people were affected by dislocations (among them close to one-and-a-half mil-lion Greeks from Asia Minor, around one-half million Muslims who left the Balkansfor Turkey, one-quarter million Bulgarian refugees, and so on).34 Such massive emi-grations were untypical for the rest of Europe, to be surpassed only by the events ofWorld War II.Despite these drastic population shifts, not a single Balkan country achieved thecherished ideal characteristics of the European nation-state: ethnic and religious ho-mogeneity.In this respect, the Balkans share with the rest of Eastern Europe a com-mon predicament.Ever since the fifteenth century (and in the case of England muchearlier), Western Europe has embarked on a huge homogenization drive with variousdegrees of success (the Spanish reconquista, England s expulsion of the Jews in thetwelfth century, the religious wars in France and Germany) which, in conjunctionwith the strong dynastic states, had laid the foundations of the futurenation-states.The argument that the West s intrinsic value lay in the deepest roots ofa democratic way of organizing society.with autonomous cities, corporate free-doms, the system of Estates and a series of other structural characteristics which aredifficult to depict visually, 35 all of which allowed it to arrive teleologically at de-mocracy, can be effectively revisited.In fact, democracy as a political form becamean attribute of the West European nation-states only in the twentieth century (and forGermany only after World War II), after they had achieved in the previous centuriesa remarkable, although not absolute, degree of ethnic and religious homogeneity anddisciplined society, at an often questionable human and moral price.Greece and Albania came closest to monoethnic states but they, too, had tohandle minority problems: Greece that of its so-called Slavic-speaking and Muslimminorities; Albania its tiny Greek minority.Bulgaria was left with over 13% minori-ties (Turks, Pomaks, Gypsies, Tatars, Armenians, Jews, Russians, and so on), Yugosla-via had close to 15% (Germans, Magyars, Albanians, Romanians, Turks, and so on),but its national majority of 85% itself was composed of three recognized constitu-ents (Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs, including the separately unrecognizedMacedonians as well as the Serbo-Croatian-speaking Bosnian Muslims).Romaniahad the largest minority of about 27% (Magyars, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, Rus-sians, Bulgarians, Turks, Tatars, Gypsies, and so on).Turkey itself, which emergedfrom the Ottoman Empire reduced and revolving around an ethnic nucleus afterthe expulsion of the Greeks and the Armenian massacres, had to deal with substan-tial minorities, such as the Kurds, to mention but the largest group. 176 Imagining the BalkansMost complex was the situation in the so-called contact zones: Macedonia, Bosnia,Dobrudzha, Kossovo, Vojvodina, Transylvania, and Istanbul itself.Just their enumera-tion shows that some of them were contact zones within the Austro-Hungarian empire.This suggests that the question of the Ottoman legacy in thedemographic sphere has to be approached on a higher level of generalization: theproblem of imperial legacies in a nation-state context.If compared to the other multi-or supranational imperial European legacies of the time, the Austrian and the Rus-sian, the Ottoman legacy displays some essential differences.Apart from the obviousfact of being a Muslim empire, the crucial distinction was that, at a time of burgeon-ing nationalist ideas, the dominant groups in the Austrian and Russian Empires werecomposed of the ethnic elements with the highest degree of national consciousness,whereas in the Ottoman Empire the case was reverse.The Turks, from a Balkan (butnot from a Middle Eastern) perspective, were the last group to develop their ownTurkish nationalism.When this began in the latter decades of the nineteenth century,the greater part of the Balkans was already outside the Ottoman sphere and was notdirectly affected by it, except for Macedonia and Albania [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Turkish his-toriography postulated that, among the variety of factors accounting for the Ottomansuccess, the size of the Turkish masses arriving from Anatolia was decisive.In thisview, the history of the Ottoman Empire can be reinterpreted as the history of mi-grations of great masses who had numerical superiority over the indigenous popula-tion, and the conscious and planned colonization of the Balkans on the part of thesultan s government held a central place.In contrast, Balkan historiography has madeconsiderable efforts to refute the essential significance of Ottoman colonization inexplaining both the success of the Ottoman conquest and the significant size ofMuslims by the last centuries of Ottoman rule.This attempt has centered on theprocess of conversions to Islam as chiefly responsible for Muslim growth.The out-come of the debate between the two contending interpretations need not necessarilyserve either one of the political causes they can be used to legitimize.The issue inboth cases is the attempt to prove the blood-kinship of the contested groups to thelarger nations in the area.The fact that the Islamization thesis can be scholarly sup-ported far better than the colonization one by no means gives support to any of the Realia Qu est-ce qu il y a de hors-texte? 175anti-Muslim or anti-Turkish manifestations, which at one time or another have beenpursued in different parts of the Balkans.The substantial population shifts during the nineteenth century, for which thereare aggregate numbers, were due mainly to political events, most prominently thesecession of the Balkan nation-states.More than one million Muslims left the Balkansduring the last three decades of the nineteenth century and relocated to Istanbul, theremaining European possession of the Porte, and to Anatolia.In the same period, onemillion Christian inhabitants changed their residence with the outgoing Muslims.Even more drastic were the migrations in the long war decade, 1912 1922 (the twoBalkan wars, World War I, and the Greek-Turkish war).Close to two-and-a-half mil-lion people were affected by dislocations (among them close to one-and-a-half mil-lion Greeks from Asia Minor, around one-half million Muslims who left the Balkansfor Turkey, one-quarter million Bulgarian refugees, and so on).34 Such massive emi-grations were untypical for the rest of Europe, to be surpassed only by the events ofWorld War II.Despite these drastic population shifts, not a single Balkan country achieved thecherished ideal characteristics of the European nation-state: ethnic and religious ho-mogeneity.In this respect, the Balkans share with the rest of Eastern Europe a com-mon predicament.Ever since the fifteenth century (and in the case of England muchearlier), Western Europe has embarked on a huge homogenization drive with variousdegrees of success (the Spanish reconquista, England s expulsion of the Jews in thetwelfth century, the religious wars in France and Germany) which, in conjunctionwith the strong dynastic states, had laid the foundations of the futurenation-states.The argument that the West s intrinsic value lay in the deepest roots ofa democratic way of organizing society.with autonomous cities, corporate free-doms, the system of Estates and a series of other structural characteristics which aredifficult to depict visually, 35 all of which allowed it to arrive teleologically at de-mocracy, can be effectively revisited.In fact, democracy as a political form becamean attribute of the West European nation-states only in the twentieth century (and forGermany only after World War II), after they had achieved in the previous centuriesa remarkable, although not absolute, degree of ethnic and religious homogeneity anddisciplined society, at an often questionable human and moral price.Greece and Albania came closest to monoethnic states but they, too, had tohandle minority problems: Greece that of its so-called Slavic-speaking and Muslimminorities; Albania its tiny Greek minority.Bulgaria was left with over 13% minori-ties (Turks, Pomaks, Gypsies, Tatars, Armenians, Jews, Russians, and so on), Yugosla-via had close to 15% (Germans, Magyars, Albanians, Romanians, Turks, and so on),but its national majority of 85% itself was composed of three recognized constitu-ents (Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs, including the separately unrecognizedMacedonians as well as the Serbo-Croatian-speaking Bosnian Muslims).Romaniahad the largest minority of about 27% (Magyars, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, Rus-sians, Bulgarians, Turks, Tatars, Gypsies, and so on).Turkey itself, which emergedfrom the Ottoman Empire reduced and revolving around an ethnic nucleus afterthe expulsion of the Greeks and the Armenian massacres, had to deal with substan-tial minorities, such as the Kurds, to mention but the largest group. 176 Imagining the BalkansMost complex was the situation in the so-called contact zones: Macedonia, Bosnia,Dobrudzha, Kossovo, Vojvodina, Transylvania, and Istanbul itself.Just their enumera-tion shows that some of them were contact zones within the Austro-Hungarian empire.This suggests that the question of the Ottoman legacy in thedemographic sphere has to be approached on a higher level of generalization: theproblem of imperial legacies in a nation-state context.If compared to the other multi-or supranational imperial European legacies of the time, the Austrian and the Rus-sian, the Ottoman legacy displays some essential differences.Apart from the obviousfact of being a Muslim empire, the crucial distinction was that, at a time of burgeon-ing nationalist ideas, the dominant groups in the Austrian and Russian Empires werecomposed of the ethnic elements with the highest degree of national consciousness,whereas in the Ottoman Empire the case was reverse.The Turks, from a Balkan (butnot from a Middle Eastern) perspective, were the last group to develop their ownTurkish nationalism.When this began in the latter decades of the nineteenth century,the greater part of the Balkans was already outside the Ottoman sphere and was notdirectly affected by it, except for Macedonia and Albania [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]