| The
First Serb Revolution and the Birth of Nationalism
Part II
The first
element to explore is the strong national sentiment that existed in Serbia
prior to the 1804 rising. Strong national sentiment, as later events
were to prove, was not unique to Serbia. The many successful bids
for independence from the Ottomans that the 19th century saw, and the less
successful bids for national independence that continue to this day in
the region, showed that seven centuries of Ottoman rule did little to suppress
the identity of the empire’s subject peoples.
Three
factors explain the deep reserves of regional and ethnic identity that
the hills and valleys of the Balkans harbored. The first is the Ottoman
system itself, which promoted a policy of rigid but (to an outsider, at
least) enlightened divisions between religious and by extension ethnic
and linguistic groups under their sway. Inseparable from this millet
arrangement is the role of the church in preserving what would become national
histories and languages. Finally, the west European romantic ideal
of nationhood and self-rule was just beginning to make its way into the
Balkans through missionaries and education abroad. This last played
a very minor role in the first Serb revolution, but was to prove very important
for later Balkan national struggles.
Looking
at Ottoman rule, it soon becomes clear that suppressing ethnic identities
was never the empire’s goal. Compared to many empires of similar
size, the Ottomans seem to an outsider like remarkably enlightened rulers.
The millet system is a big part of this image. It was an organized
way for the sultan to both follow Islamic law, which mandated religious
tolerance for “people of the Book,” or Christians and Jews. The millet
also let the sultan to devolve authority onto the community leaders without
losing it. Under the millet, leaders of each religious community
were accountable to the sultan for the actions of their flocks, creating
a sort of self-governance. They were also responsible for gathering
taxes. The millet was an eminently practical system: “The Ottomans
ruled over a vast territory populated by members of different Christian
sects. Even if they had wanted to force conversion, it might have
proved impossible and certainly would have caused revolt. As long
as his subjects accepted his rule, it was in the interests of the sultan
to leave them in peace.”
Ottoman
millets succeeded in keeping this separate peace for centuries.
Each community knew its place, and fulfilled its obligations of obedience
and tribute to the sultan in exchange for freedom of worship, which carried
with it associated freedoms, including the right to speak a separate language.
The millet system was especially appropriate for the territories of the
Balkans, where a “mosaic” of peoples and ethnicities without solid blocks
of territory could be organized as members of a religious community and
“not as residents of a given circumscribed area.”
The system
began to crumble when it first encountered the modern concept of nationalism,
which called for a the control of one piece of land by one people under
one law. That this conception was utterly unrealistic in terms of
the complex fabric of the Ottoman empire mattered little:
... nationalistic peoples
were [un]likely to be content without a country of their own. This
was the challenge that the Ottoman statesmen faced. ... Nationalism, carried
to its logical conclusion of separate national states, would tear pieces
out of the Ottoman mosaic. ... It would destroy the government of the Ottoman
dynasty ... and kill the empire.
In the
end the time-tested millet divisions fell to the compelling dreams
of modern nationalism. While they lasted, though, they prevented
the assimilation and integration that had blurred the lines of religious
and ethnic division in other empires. As a result, the national movements
of the 19th century had a ready base of support all over the Balkans.
Another
crucial part of this base of support were the administrators of the millets,
the various churches and other religious structures (in the case of the
Jews). These worked within the millet to consolidate their own control
and further define their jurisdiction, struggling to preserve separate
languages and histories. One scholar speculates that an all-Muslim
Ottoman empire might never have fallen, pointing out the crucial role of
churches in fostering national movements throughout the Balkans.
“Although nationalism ... was secular, there was an attempt to elevate
the national churches, to venerate them as the national souls ... The church
was viewed as the repository of national identity in the period prior to
the rise of modern nationalism.”
The clergy’s
role in the Serb revolution was in keeping with this inspirational role.
Historian Ivo Lederer emphasizes the church’s role in establishing a national
identity prior to the events of 1804:
A ... direct contribution
to national consciousness came from the Serbian church that – despite the
high incidence of illiteracy among the clergy -- over the ages succeeded
in keeping alive a sense of Serbian entity. This was especially true
while the Ottoman millet system functioned uncorrupted. Orthodoxy
... rooted in a population whose life under the Turks was increasingly
forlorn, became a national elixir.
Combining
with this reserve of ancient traditions and religion was an influx of modern
ideas and influence that only heightened national sentiment. This
influx was largely an effect of the peripheral location of Belgrade, which
sat on the border of the Ottoman empire. Though this influx of modern
ideas was common to many of the national revolutions of the 19th century,
this peripheral geographic position placed them in a particularly advantageous
position. Straddling the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, the
Serbs under Austrian rule capitalized on their position at the periphery
of a rapidly modernizing west European empire to act as a transmission
belt, communicating ideas and knowledge to their fellows south of the Danube.
During
the revolution, the Vojvodina Serbs north of the Danube “sent the insurgents
food, money, and military supplies and joined them as volunteers. ... What
the insurgents lacked the Vojvodina Serbs supplied in large measure for
they were repairmen and makers of military gear, scribes, teachers, jurists
and military instructors. Some Serbs in the Austrian military service
deserted their units in order to join their fighting fellow nationals across
the border.”
Compounding this effect
was the leading position of Serb traders, who dominated interregional trade.
These traders were very mobile, “conversant with both central Europe and
the Balkans,” and it was through the ranks of these worldly merchants that
“the political philosophy of Europe was filtered to the south. [The merchant
class] gave substance to political life and cultural activity and considerable
vigor to Serbian nationalism.” Most notably, the revolution’s
leader Karageorge was a member of this cross-border merchant class, and
had served as an officer in the Habsburg army.
This
transmission belt effect had a tangible impact on the first Serb revolution.
It served to train, galvanize and sustain an elite that successfully pushed
a huge reserve of national sentiment onto another plane, that of nationalism
and the drive for independence. That it was given the opportunity
to do so had much to do with its location and the traditional power dynamic
of the Ottoman empire. Situated on the extreme periphery of the empire
– not just on the physical edge but on the border of the Muslim dar
ul-Islam, or “house of peace,” and the violent opposition of Christianity’s
dar-ul Harb, or “house of war,” the Serbs were the focus of some
of the most extreme center-periphery tension of the Ottoman empire.
Their revolt came at a time when this dynamic, once a source of renewal
for the empire, had disintegrated into chaos. The origins of the
1804 revolt can be seen as a drive to restore the balance, bringing back
some elements of control from the center. After failing to establish
this balance, the Serbs looked for the future elsewhere.
The clearest
manifestation of both the center-periphery dynamic and its collapse are
the famed janissaries. Once the terror of Christian Europe, by the
end of the 18th century they were far more terrifying to the sultan they
were supposedly sworn to. The events leading up to the 1804 revolution
are a great example of this – one of the sultan’s local pashas had to arm
Christians to bring the rampaging janissaries (known in the province as
yamaks) under control, and even then failed to subdue them.
This situation
was difficult for the sultan to accept. With Belgrade in the hands
of the janissaries, his governor “was no more than an ambassador to the
court of Belgrade. Serbian complaints against yamak misrule were
therefore welcomed by Selim. He saw Serbian loyalty to his government
as a means of dislodging the yamaks from power.” To that end,
the sultan actually encouraged a different sort of periphery assertiveness,
nationalism. “The sultan and his reformers encouraged the early rise
of Serbian nationalism, because this would eliminate not only janissary
rule in Serbia, but also facilitate the introduction of ... reforms throughout
the empire.”
Sultan
Selim’s grave miscalculation was encouraging the Serbs to remove the janissaries
without making provisions to introduce another, equally powerful authority
in their place. When the Serbs expelled the janissaries with the
Porte’s backing, a power vacuum was created on the edges of the empire
that allowed the idea of nationalism to flood in.
Another
manifestation of the long-standing center-periphery dynamic was the pre-revolution
loyalty to the sultan that has been cited so often above. Though
Belgrade was on the outskirts of the empire, its people still looked to
Istanbul for authority. Peasants, merchants and village leaders’
entire concept of legitimate power revolved around the preeminence of the
Ottomans, right down to the traditional symbols of authority. After
the initial successes of the 1804 revolt, the hajduk “commanders
had all taken to dressing like Ottoman worthies, to make their victory
obvious.”
Belgrade’s
centuries of existence on the periphery of a great empire also made it
difficult for the leaders of the 1804 revolt and the later struggle for
independence to fully embrace the idea of an autonomous nation. As
a result, the years between 1804 and the final defeat in 1813 were marked
by repeated attempts to gain the protection and patronage of an empire.
From the first calls for an Austrian commander to mediate negotiations
with their opponents in 1804 right down to the end the rebellious peasants
“believed that only another emperor could deal with the sultan, and there
were three of them – the Russian, the Austrian and the French.”
This quest for support was not in keeping with the ideals of strict self-determination
that western nationalism espoused, but was instead grounded in practicality.
Unfortunately for the Serbs, they chose the wrong moment to look for reliable
patrons, as the Russian betrayals detailed above demonstrate.
Europe
at the turn of the 19th century was in flames – not the flames of popular
revolution and nationalism that would consume it five decade later but
rather the last great clash of Europe’s empires. Providing its share
of the fuel for this fire was the famed “eastern question” of the collapsing
Ottoman empire. The Ottoman lands were to a large extent the pivot
of Europe’s balance of power. Each of Europe’s powers wanted to exert
its influence on the region, but none wanted the all-out war for territory
that would certainly follow a total collapse:
The nineteenth century
was to prove that it was impossible for a single power to solve the eastern
question alone. The sharp reactions of rivals and general guarantees
on the part of the powers to preserve the Turkish empire, linked with stipulations
about the Bosphorus, invariably blocked the way. Such conflicting
interests and animosities were to help postpone the collapse of the Turkish
empire till the beginning of the twentieth century and preserve an increasingly
untenable status quo at the expense of the Balkan Christians.
In the
context of this precarious arrangement, the Serb search for unequivocal
support from the courts of western Europe and Russia was doomed.
All had an interest in Serb independence, but due to more pressing concerns
none found it compelling. The most prominent of these concerns was
the Napoleonic upset of the European balance, which pulled together long-standing
enemies to preserve the Ottomans out of fear for their own future.
Just before the Serb revolution, Russia, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and Britain
all coalesced (briefly) in reaction to Napoleon’s attack on Egypt in 1799.
Lasting
alliances were rare in this age, though. Four years later, when the
Serbs picked up arms, the alliance had already collapsed, and the when
the Serbs went to the Russians for support they were met with an ambivalent
reaction. “[Tsar Alexander] had no dispute with Turkey at this time;
instead, he was concerned about the danger of French expansion ... he preferred
that the sultan should not be weakened and that the Serbs be reconciled
to their sovereign as soon as possible. On the other hand, the Sultan
feared that if he rejected the Serbs altogether they might turn to France
or Austria.” Instead, they stuck with the Russians and fought
on their own, and when the tides of international statecraft turned in
their favor two years later (the sultan joined forces with Napoleon, and
Russia and Britain attacked) they found themselves a well-supported part
of the Russian war effort against Turkey and Napoleon’s France.
The ongoing movements of the European alliance structures are too complex
to further recount in a discussion of the first Serb revolution.
Suffice it to say that the Serbs found themselves struggling for purchase
on treacherous terrain. Russia proved a fickle ally; the Serbs, desperate
in the last days of revolution, seem to have made advances towards everyone
but the British. Though in the end the Serbs failed to secure
a lasting patron, foreign intervention had directly affected the goals
of the struggle’s chiefs. More important, foreign support -- no matter
how fleeting -- helped convince the peasants and soldiers taking part to
push towards independence. Europe’s complex great power statecraft
and the central role of the collapsing Ottoman empire brought local events
in the Balkans to the attention of Europe’s power brokers, and in that
the first Serb revolution was a harbinger of chaos to come.
Of course,
the Serb revolution of 1804 was a harbinger of more than just great power
adventurism in the Balkans. It served as inspiration and sometimes
model for national revolutions across the Balkans, not least of which were
the ongoing struggles of the Serbs themselves to win true independence
from the Ottomans.
It was
a sweet irony – that the whole conflagration started as a fight to return
the authority of the sultan to a lawless province. That the unrest
of 1804 evolved into the first successful national independence movement
in the Ottoman Balkans would have surprised the forest hajduks who
first picked up arms. The immediate goals of the proto-partisans
were far more pressing, and the movement was in full swing before autonomy
became a goal. By unsuccessful end of the revolution nearly a decade
later Karageorge and his Serbs had turned a fight against janissary oppression
into an all-out war for independence. The revolution of 1804 sparked
a fire that would level the already crumbling Ottoman empire in the space
of a century.
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