Both Bulwark and Bridge: The Symbolic Conceptualization of the Frontier Position of Croatia in the Original Yugoslavism
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Oriens Aliter |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | History |
| Keywords | Croatia; Eastern Question; antemurale christianitatis; Yugoslavism; Strossmayer; Rački; frontier Orientalism |
| Description | The paper examines the symbolic conceptualization of the frontier position of Croatia in the original form of the Croatian national-integrational ideology of Yugoslavism formulated at the beginning of the 1860s by Josip Juraj Strossmayer and Franjo Rački. For centuries, Croatia was a territory at the border of two worlds: Western Christian Europe and the Islamic Orient, i.e., the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire. This position attained its symbolic dimension in the form of an ideologeme about Croatia as the bulwark of Christianity, which played an important role in the self-perception of the Croats. However, in the second half of the 19th century this ideologeme transformed into a conception of Croatia as a bridge between West and East. This change was initiated by the aforementioned ideologues of the original Yugoslavism in their articles and public speeches after the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Hercegovina (1878). On the basis of an analysis of their texts, the author strives to follow, describe, and explain the transformation of the symbolic conceptualization of the frontier position of Croatia. He pays particular attention to two aspects of the researched subject: 1) the conceptualization of the role of the Croats in the history and the process of solving the Eastern Question as well as in mediating and spreading Western culture to the Balkans, and 2) the specifics of the Croatian Orientalist discourse, which is implicitly present in such interpretations of the historical and cultural mission of one's own nation. |
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