Afterlife of Empire

"Afterlife of Empire" explores Ottoman cultural, social, and political continuities in Bosnia Herzegovina during the Habsburg administration (1878-1914). The research focuses on the enduring influence of the Ottoman Empire - an influence perpetuated both by the efforts of the Ottoman imperial state, and by the former subjects in Bosnia Herzegovina itself to explain the lingering aftereffects of the Ottoman Empire in the province. At the core of this dissertation is the argument that the Ottoman subjects and the former territories did not stop being Ottoman in any significant sense immediately after the separation from the empire, and that the break with the empire was not that of rupture, but characterized by enduring features of the empire that evolved to respond to diplomatic and strategic interests in the region. A shift from the common inclination to analyze the Habsburg period as the introduction of modernity, and a focus, not on the national/ethnic framework constructed around identity, but on the overlapping, multiple loyalties in this study convey a more accurate representation of the period and an assessment of what legitimacy and sovereignty meant in this region. By drawing on Ottoman and Bosnian archival sources in focusing on Bosnia's overlapping imperial, regional, religious, linguistic, and cultural frameworks, this dissertation demonstrates the importance of considering the Ottoman context after its formal departure, and the significance of incorporating Islamic intellectual history in understanding the past and present of Bosnia Herzegovina and Southeastern Europe in general.