The People

Bosnia is the only republic of former Yugoslavia established on a geographical/historical basis rather than on an ethnic one. Bosnian refers to someone who lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina, not to a religious or ethnic group. Before the war, Bosnia's population was approximately 44% Muslim, 31% Serbian, and 17% Croatian, along with a smattering of Roma (Gypsies), Albanians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Italians. There were few ethnically homogenous villages in the Republic. To quote the Encyclopedia Jugoslavije offprint on Bosnia and Herzegovina (1983), "... the three main nations in B-H are almost completely intermixed, so that there are no nationally homogeneous territories, although there are limited areas in which the population of one or two B-H nations prevails." Bosnian Muslims have tended to be a more urban population than their Christian counterparts.

Bosnian Muslims are not ethnic Turks left behind by the Ottoman withdrawal. Rather, they are the descendants of the local Slavs, both Serb and Croat, who converted after the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in the 15th century. Motives for conversion ranged from escaping Roman Catholic persecution of the native Bogomil sect to retaining rank in the local nobility to escaping taxes placed on the Christian peasantry.

Just exactly who is a Bosnian is a difficult question to answer, and the question of the origins of the various nationalities has been a popular one with Yugoslav scholars. The scholars' pronouncements, generally in aid of a lightly disguised political agenda, almost always showed the Bosnian Muslims to be "really" Serbs or "really" Croats. However, until the Austrian occupation in 1878, the question of just who the Bosnian Muslims really were was a moot one. After 1878, the Austrian administration sought to recognize a separate Bosniak native identity to counter claims from Serbia and Croatia. Under the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, established after World War I, Bosnians became the inhabitants of a territory specifically set up to undercut claims of unique ethnic identity for a region. After World War II, Bosnia became a republic of Tito's Yugoslavia. The Muslims in Bosnia, however, gained recognition as a category in official censuses only in 1971. Before that time, many Muslims were identified only as "Yugoslav" or "other." Tito's hope had been that a truly Yugoslav national identity would emerge from Bosnia, eventually spreading, by example, throughout the entire country.

The language of Bosnia is known as Serbo-Croatian, though as a result of the war many Bosnians will now say, "I speak Bosnian." Amidst the destruction in Sarajevo, Bosnian scholars and linguists have been busy attempting to codify a distinctly Bosnian tongue, written in the Latin alphabet. Romany dialects (Roma), Albanian, and Ukrainian are spoken by substantial minority groups, and most individuals will have been exposed to some English or German in school.

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