The Treatment of History in Austrian-Hungarian State Primary School Textbooks for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Treatment of History in Austrian-Hungarian State Primary School Textbooks for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Summary/Abstract: Following the Austrian-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the new authorities introduced an interconfessional school system aimed at educating children in the spirit of Bosnian-Herzegovinian provincial and Habsburg civic patriotism. Existing South Slavic textbooks, containing numerous texts that were offensive to Muslims, proved unsuitable for such an undertaking. The goal of this article is to address the treatment of history in the new textbooks written for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s state primary schools, considering both the selection of historical topics and the manner in which historical education was utilized in order to impart desirable loyalties among the students and further the government’s political goals. Besides encouraging the students to identify with the glorious deeds of their medieval forefathers and thus fostering a historically based Bosnian patriotism, the textbooks were written with a clear intent to appeal to the province’s Muslims and, in particular, to their gentry. They implied a clear continuity between Bosnia’s medieval, supposedly Bogomil aristocracy and the contemporary Muslim elites, while also being careful not to address historical topics in a manner that may offend Muslim sensibilities. Lastly, considerable effort was invested into historically justifying contemporary Habsburg rule over Bosnia in Herzegovina and, in a wider sense, teaching the children that a benevolent foreign government may benefit a society suffering from disunity or rebelliousness.

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