Ethnic boxes: the unintended consequences of Habsburg bureaucratic classification

Abstract

The classificatory efforts that accompanied the modernization of the Habsburg state inadvertently helped establish, promote, and perpetuate national categories of identification, often contrary to the intentions of the Habsburg bureaucracy. The state did not create nations, but its classification of languages made available some ethnolinguistic identity categories that nationalists used to make political claims. The institutionalization of these categories also made them more relevant, especially as nationalist movements simultaneously worked toward the same goal. Yet identification with a nation did not follow an algorithmic logic, in the beginning of the twentieth century, sometimes earlier, various nationalisms could undoubtedly mobilize large numbers of people in Austria–Hungary, but people still had agency and nation-ness remained contingent and situational.

Forging the Nation‐centric World: Imperial Rule and the Homogenisation of Discontent in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878–1918)

“…However, the transition from the mainly imperial to the predominantly national worlds is a protracted, contingent, and messy historical process that owes much more to the actions of imperial state structures than to ambitions and plans of the nationalist movements. Not only that the new nation‐states regularly transpire from the changed geo‐political conditions, the behaviours of Great Powers, and the deeds of rulers that govern neighbouring polities, but the imperial state itself often unwittingly creates and boosts nationalist ideas and practices (Stergar & Scheer 2018). Thus, the end of Austro‐Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina also had very little to do with the domestic nationalist movements or ‘age old longings’.…”

“…Although this particular ideological project was later abandoned the introduction of national categories into the everyday practice of government officials remained in place. The Austro‐Hungarian bureaucracy was responsible for the proliferation of nation‐centric categories of identity throughout the imperial realms (Stergar and Scheer 2018; Judson 2106) and Bosnia and Herzegovina was not an exception. In fact, as the Habsburg government perceived rising Serbia and recovering Ottoman empire as the credible threats to its territorial claims in Bosnia and Herzegovina it displayed suspicion of national irredentism and invested great deal of energy in countering nationalism.…”

“…However much of recent research has questioned these assumptions. A number of historians and historical sociologists have demonstrated that there is more continuity than discontinuity in the 19 th century imperial and national projects (Hall 2017; Judson 2016; Kumar 2017; Malešević 2019; Stephanov 2018; Stergar and Scheer 2018). Moreover, this scholarship has successfully deconstructed traditional understandings of the late Habsburg and Ottoman worlds by explaining how empires have often unwittingly fostered development of institutional and ideological structures for the proliferation of nationalisms.…”

Slovenske priseljenke v Trstu: vprašanje identitete ob ljudskem štetju 1910

“…Pripadniki nacionalnih elit so si občevalni jezik vse bolj razlagali kot neposredni odraz narodne pripadnosti (Stergar in Scheer, 2018;Verginella, 2019). Toda tovrstne enoznačne interpretacije so problematične tudi zato, ker zanemarijo pritiske pri vsakokratnem določanju občevalnega jezika.…”

Conceptualizing and Operationalizing Identity, Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality by Law: An Introduction

“…Analyzing political and legal measures that serve to operationalize race, ethnicity, or nationality is a growing area of nationalism studies that brings together legal, historical, and political scholars (Dobos 2020;Sansum and Dobos 2020;Smith 2020;Stergar and Scheer 2018). In 2018, I convened a research group involving over 50 scholars from various disciplines on "Identity, Race and Ethnicity in Constitutional Law," under the auspices of the International Association of Constitutional Law.…”