| The
First Serb Revolution and the Birth of Nationalism
Part I
The import
of some moments in history is clear to the participants from the outset.
Far more often, the significance of such turning points does not become
clear for decades, and even then remains the subject of some debate.
What historians later called the first Serb revolution -- the moment in
February, 1804 when a disorganized collection of militant priests, village
leaders and forest bandits, led by a charismatic pig merchant, took up
arms against their local overlords – is definitely one of the latter.
That the
revolution of 1804 turned out to be the first successful national independence
movement in the Ottoman Balkans would have come as a surprise to the fighters
who first picked up arms in the winter of 1804. At the time, the
Western ideas of nationhood were vague dreams to most of the participants.
Their immediate goals were far more pressing, and it wasn’t until the movement
was well underway that autonomy became a goal. By the revolution’s
ultimately unsuccessful end in nearly a decade later, though, the Serbs
had turned a loosely organized struggle for better conditions into an all-out
war for independence. The Serb revolution of 1804 marked the birth
of a dream that would tear the crumbling monolith of the Ottoman empire
down in the space of a century.
The immediate
causes of the revolution seem much like those of countless local risings
through history – economic pressures, unpopular leaders and outlaw activity
creating limited unrest. The Serbs of the Ottoman empire were concentrated
in the area around Belgrade, separated from ethnically Serb subjects of
the Austro-Hungarian empire by the Danube river and a number of recent
treaties. The area was a battleground between the two empires, and
had been under Austrian rule until the Treaty of Sistova in 1791, which
marked an Austrian withdrawal north across the Danube. Austrian departure,
of course, meant a return to Ottoman rule.
Ironically,
the local ruler put in charge of the Belgrade pashalik after the Austrian
withdrawal was one of the most benevolent the region had ever seen.
Appointed by reformist sultan Selim III, pasha Hajdi Mustafa was so liked
by his subjects they dubbed him “Mother of the Serbs.” With
the support of the sultan, who was working to undermine the power of the
janissaries all over the empire, Mustafa expelled the janissaries from
the province. This was also part of the empire’s treaty agreements
with the Austrians, who had insisted that the retribution-prone and virtually
uncontrollable janissary troops be removed from the province. When the
janissaries – long since a renegade power in their own right and unresponsive
to the wishes of the Sultan – made forcible attempts to return, Mustafa
armed the local, Christian Serbs, defeating the janissaries in 1798.
This spectacle
caused an uproar. Christian troops, part of the Ottoman “flock” –
the reaya – had been sent against Muslims with the approval of the sultan’s
pasha. Attempting to mitigate the political damage, Selim III ordered
Mustafa to let the janissaries back into the province, where they resisted
all efforts at control. Mustafa sent his loyal Serbs against them
once more, in 1801, but was defeated and killed, leaving the janissaries
in control of the province.
Janissary
control disrupted the social fabric of the province, which had been based
on the traditional Ottoman timar land arrangement. The timars were
non-hereditary land grants to the sultan’s soldiers, the spahi, and under
this system the obligations of the peasants were strictly defined.
Peasants working on timars were much better off than serfs in medieval
Europe and Russia. The advent of janissary control over
the Belgrade pashalik signaled a forcible move to the chiflik system, which
gave the owner of the land – no longer the sultan in anything but name
– the right to set arbitrary demands on the peasants working it, often
over and above the peasants’ obligations to the sultan or spahi.
Janissaries in the pashalik began seizing land, “causing tension with the
spahis and spreading fear among peasants and notables alike. By the
beginning of 1804, janissary bands had forcibly taken over.”
For the
region’s Serbs, the burden of the janissaries’ excesses was particularly
acute after the benevolent, if brief, rule of pasha Mustafa and the more
enlightened domination of the Austro-Hungarian empire. They appealed
to the sultan, who threatened the janissaries once again with “an army
not of [their] faith,” which they took to mean the same Serbs Mustafa had
used against them. They launched a pre-emptive strike of sorts,
massacring Serbian village leaders (knezes).
This was
the spark that ignited the fire of rebellion. At this point, however
– and this is crucial – it was a rebellion not against the sultan but against
the janissaries:
The peasants wished to
be rid of the oppressive chiflik system, while the more substantial elements
– the priests, the knezes, and the pig dealers – were goaded on by the
intolerable excesses of the janissaries. None of these groups was
motivated at the outset by abstract ideals of independence and national
unity. None took up arms against the rule of the sultan in Constantinople.
[italics added] Rather, they fought against those troublemakers who
were flouting the sultan’s authority, and spreading disorder in the imperial
administration. The Serbs wanted not a new order but a return to
the old order of Hadji Mustafa.
Of the
many heads the janissaries mounted on Belgrade’s walls after the massacre,
one was missing – that of George Petrovich, or Karageorge. A native
of the area who had fought in the Austrian army and returned to make a
fortune as a pig dealer, Karageorge had retreated into the forests with
a band of loyal troops when the massacres of the Serb elites began.
By doing so he joined a long tradition of hajduks, or hill and mountain
bandits driven outside the law by the pressures of their landlords.
In those first days Karageorge was one of many knezes and who turned on
the janissaries in a series of small-scale local attacks that forced the
enemies into a few fortresses.
Realizing
they were outnumbered, the janissaries sued for peace on May 10, 1804,
calling on an Austrian commander to mediate a conference just over the
border in Austria. The Serbs professed their loyalty to the sultan
but demanded that the janissaries be expelled from the province once more
and that there should be some sort of foreign oversight to guarantee the
treaty. The Serb demands were unacceptable, and the conference ended.
Without the support of Istanbul, the janissaries were driven from the province
by the end of the fighting season in autumn.
Up to
this point the actions of the Serbs had been supported by the sultan.
Knowing this, and still hoping to reach an understanding, the leaders of
the rapidly coalescing Serb forces sent negotiators to Istanbul, hoping
to work out some sort of limited autonomy. At the same time, the
sultan was under pressure from the religious leaders in Istanbul, the ulema,
“who demanded that he end his support of the Serbian rebels in return for
their help against the janissaries in Istanbul.” Since the
sultan had already decided not to grant any concessions, the Serb negotiating
team failed. The head of the ulema, the mufti in Istanbul, declared
a jihad, or Muslim holy war, against the Serbs. This was the point
of no return for both sides.
Selim
ordered an army to be raised, and after a number of diplomatic and political
feints the sultan’s forces clashed with the Serbs and were routed in 1805.
“The next year he dispersed three armies attacking from the south, east
and west. In December, 1806, he captured Belgrade itself and by June,
1807, the last Turkish fort in northern Serbia had fallen.”
It was
the aftermath of these battles that saw the real shift towards a national
identity and true independence movement as opposed to a “mere” fight against
oppression within the confines of the Ottoman system. Foreign powers
– chiefly Russia – encouraged the Serbs to radicalize further, even after
the sultan agreed to concede virtual autonomy under pressure from the French.
The Serbs were sucked into the Europe-wide wars of the Napoleonic age,
and cast their lot against the sultan.
Karageorge,
by that point the agreed-on leader of the Serbs, signed an alliance with
Russia in July of 1807. The novice statesman had picked the wrong
ally. Russia concluded an armistice with Turkey not two months later,
and though Tsar Alexander tried to include Serbia in the agreement the
Turks refused. Russia abandoned the nascent Serbia. After the
armistice collapsed, the war for independence dragged on for another five
years in the shadow of the battle between the Russians and the Turks.
Finally,
in May of 1812, with Napoleon’s armies bearing down on the tsar’s territory,
the Russo-Turkish Treaty of Bucharest was signed. It included a provision
for Serb autonomy, which the vengeful Turks ignored. The long-embattled
Serbs were attacked from three sides, and the Turks “crushed the insurgents,
massacred, pillaged, burnt, deprted and installed direct rule by terror.
People fled to the woods, if not abroad.” His uprising-turned
revolution crushed, even Karageorge fled. For a brief moment, the
light of independence which the first revolution fostered was on the brink
of being snuffed out; it would rekindle just two years later and eventually
result in an independent Serbia.
The events
of 1804 were a landmark in the development of nationalism, both in the
Balkans and elsewhere. Still, the landmark remained obscured until
after it was long past. The original insurgents had little idea at
the outset what they would inspire later, and in this way the first Serb
revolution was singular among the Balkan wars for independence that came
after it. It began “with no far-reaching intellectual background
or political project ... in an obscure territory at a time of general fermentation.”
As the
first, it might be considered unique. But an examination of the revolution’s
roots show that the forces that brought the Serbs from servitude to self-rule
at the turn of the 19th century are the same conflicts and problems that
ran through nearly seven centuries of Ottoman imperial domination in the
Balkans and elsewhere. Three main currents fed the flood of 19th
century nationalist sentiment in the Balkans. The first was the rich
base of popular support national movements were able to call on.
This base was the result of the Ottoman policies of toleration and division,
unusual for empires, that allowed and even encouraged the preservation
of local language, customs and religion. These policies – embodied
in the millet system – preserved harmony in the empire for centuries but
also prevented any true identification between the Ottomans and their subjects,
paving the way for national revolution.
The second
current was a far more common phenomenon in the history of empires.
Tension between the urban seat of Ottoman power and the rural peripheries,
tension which had always been beyond the center’s total control, had been
around as long as the empire. Center-periphery tension was a problem
the Ottomans had dealt with well in the early centuries of their rule.
Institutions such as the janissaries, slave administrator/soldiers completely
loyal to the sultans by virtue of their status as seized property through
the devsirme “boy tax,” served to guarantee control in the provinces.
By the 19th century, though, the janissaries had long since moved from
being part of the solution to center-periphery tension to part of the problem.
Other issues, chiefly economic and organizational, undermined Ottoman control
over the rural provinces of the Balkans, opening the door for a successful
independence bid.
One final
force -- a far more modern one -- was at work in altering the nature of
the 1804 revolution from protest movement to war for independence.
Foreign intervention and encouragement directly caused a change in the
goals and motivations of the struggle’s leaders, and foreign support helped
convince the peasants and soldiers taking part to push towards independence.
For the first time (but not the last), the international climate in Europe
brought local events in the Balkans to the attention of powers outside
the Ottoman empire. Their response – which ranged from interventionism
to betrayal – had much to do with the shape and outcome of the revolution.
Next>>
Part
II |
