Brownbag: Governance and Administrative Practice in Habsburg Bosnia and Herzegovina
13:00 - 14:00 VeranstalterIn Zentrum für Südosteuropastudien, SOEGA & Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft Veranstaltungsort: HS 04. Universitätsplatz 4, EG - Teilnahme. Termin vormerken Following the conclusion of the general strike of Bosnia and Herzegovina in May 1906, civil servants of the Habsburg occupation administration attempted to figure out why exactly these events had occurred. Their reports pointed to the pursuits of local actors involved in the workers' movement and efforts to enact agrarian reform, as well as national activists. Interestingly, the civil servants also often blamed administrators on the ground for having failed to act to prevent these moments of social conflict. Traditionally scholars of Habsburg Bosnia have interpreted bureaucratic inconsistencies, deviations, and failures like those of May 1906 in the context of the regime's ongoing attempts to establish control after 1878. But what if we stepped back to reconsider these instances in their own terms? This paper argues that in the case of May 1906 in the district of Ljubu¨ki such moments of perceived failure were often occasions where administrators debated their relationship to local actors as well as to other civil servants, and provide insight into the nature of Habsburg rule in Bosnia.
