THE POPULATION STRUCTURE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA AS A POLITICAL ISSUE DURING THE GREAT EASTERN CRISIS

Abstract

The Great Powers and new nation states in the Balkans of the 19th Century acted as defenders of Christian populations still living in the Ottoman Empire. The presence and numerical strength of Christian communities in Ottoman provinces was of huge importance for the possibility of spreading influence and projecting power of European countries in those areas. The number of Christians, Orthodox and Catholics together, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was frequently used as the main reason for interference in ottoman internal affairs and for the pressure for reforms and subsequently the change of legal status of the whole province. The Ottoman Empire started to counter such activities by publishing own population statistics that showed a different reality. Sources prove that the Ottoman administration deliberately fabricated untrue data about the population with the aim to present the Muslim population as a relative majority. Western European and Serbian diplomats and researchers regularly disputed the published numbers and were capable to obtain more accurate statistics from different, sometimes unknown sources. Their doubts and suspiciousness about the true nature of Ottoman statistics were finally confirmed when the Austro-Hungarian administration carried out a new census in 1879. The Census confirmed that the number of inhabitants in Bosnia and Herzegovina was higher than the Ottomans claimed and that the Christians formed still a clear majority.