With the Ottomans being the sick man of 19th century Europe, strategies were concocted to replace them. Sometimes even being enlightened is not enough to pull off the impossible. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The-Philatelist.
When I saw this stamp, I knew that Austria must have governed the Bosnia of the day. The style and the printing of the stamp tells you that.This was a fairly unique offering in that it offered views of Bosnia instead of just the Austro-Hungarian Emperor. Beni Kallay must have not been a stamp collector. The stamp offerings might have been an ideal way to show off local loyal nothings as if they were somethings. This as a condescending way to show that you as the big man are at one with the little people. I guess it was too early in the 20th century for that.
The stamp today is issue A4, a 10 Heller stamp issued by Bosnia Herzegovina in 1906. The stamp is part of a 16 stamp issue in various denominations. This stamp displays the Vrbas River Valley. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
By the second half of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was the sick man of Europe. After losing a war with Russia in 1878, the Great European powers met in Berlin to divide up the spoils. The resulting treaty in theory left Bosnia within the Ottoman Sanjak of Novi Pazar but gave Austro-Hungary the right to militarily occupy it. Austria invaded and although the local Ottoman garrison gave them a serious bloodying, Bosnia was conquered although theoretically still Ottoman. To me it was surprising that what followed was not an ethnic cleansing sending the Moslems back to Turkey. Times were changing though and there was a new class of enlightened with inclusion theories to try out.
The Hapsburg Empire appointed prominent Hungarian Beni Kallay the administrator of their new Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was a writer, political thinker, and historian of the various peoples in the area. He started a program of encouraging Bosnian nationalism as separate from Turkey or Serbia. Writers and artists were subsidized to promote Bosnia as a new self governing nation that was tied to the Hapsburg Emperor as a benefactor and protector. The Moslem faith was allowed to continue but the clergy were made employees of the state so to lessen the influence of the Caliph in Constantinople.
Kallay managed to keep Bosnia mostly peaceful for over 20 years. It is worth stressing what a feat this was in this part of the world at the time, or any time really. However after Kallay’s death in 1903 the policy was reassessed. Over time he was supposed to build a loyalty among the people toward the Hapsburg throne. This did not happen despite the cultural sensitivity and relative success economically. In fact the Muslims were actually still loyal to the Ottoman Pashas that were remember still present, if not actually doing anything. The Austrians formally annexed Bosnia in 1908 causing unrest and a political crises. The crisis was ended when Austria paid the Ottomans to accept Austrian sovereignty. With the sellout of the Bosnians by the Ottomans, the other powers quickly recognized Austrian sovereignty that lasted until the end of World War I in 1918.
Kallay reminds me of later liberal international do gooders like Bono or George Soros. In the end all the virtue signaling and wealth transfers can at best paper over the reality that local people want to represent themselves and don’t want to be spoken for. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.