Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Habsburg Colony (1878-1918) – a Hungarian Perspective

Csaplár-Degovics, Krisztián (2024) Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Habsburg Colony (1878-1918) – a Hungarian Perspective. Copernico - History and Cultural Heritage in Eastern Europe.

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Abstract

Historians have struggled to interpret the colonial status of Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially historians in the successor states, because the Habsburg Empire itself officially denied the idea of any colonization, the provinces were not treated as colonies by public law, and the political elites of the successor states were also dismissive about this idea. This paper argues that MPs in the Hungarian sub-empire, both opposition and government, unanimously thought of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a colony between 1878 and1918. The analysis of public debates on colonization demonstrates that MPs possessed and applied the necessary political concepts to define and talk about colonization, without most of them having any knowledge of the colonial practices in overseas empires and their legitimization in international law. However, these political concepts had clear Central-European origins and had nothing to do with their transatlantic counterparts.

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