Politics of Identity in Post-Conflict States

The Bosnian and Irish experience

Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Gabriela Vojvoda

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138898264
• eBook ISBN: 9781317483540
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Ireland and the Balkans have come to represent divided and (re)united communities. They both provide effective microcosms of national, ethnic, political, military, religious, ideological and cultural conflicts in their respective regions and, as a result, they demonstrate real and imaginary divisions.

This book will specifically focus on the history, politics and literature of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, while making comparative reference to some of Europe's other disputed and divided regions. Using case-studies such as Kosovo and Serbia; Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia and Belarus; Greece and Macedonia, it examines 'space', 'place' and 'border' discourse, the topography of war and violence, post-war settlement and reconciliation, and the location and negotiation of national, ethnic, religious, political and cultural identities.

The book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of cultural studies, history, politics, Irish studies, Slavonic studies, area studies and literary studies.

1
Introduction

Éamonn Ó Ciardha

Section 1

The Balkans and Ireland, and specifically Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia, have become the watchwords for national, ethnic, confessional and cultural strife in twentieth-century Europe (O’Leary, 2005: 217–247; Toal, below). While these two ‘trouble-spots’ and their age-old conflicts have huge differences, there are some historical, political and cultural similarities, which will become apparent throughout this book. Both regions, and indeed all of the divided regions discussed below have been defined by their subjugation to, and relationships with Europe’s great empires (Ottoman, Habsburg, Papal, English/British, Spanish, French, German and Russian/Soviet), which have moulded their religious and cultural diversity and defined the ensuing conflicts and subsequent peace settlements.

Although located on the peripheries of Western Europe, these various territories have occasionally played crucial roles in the history, politics and culture of the continent, if only as ‘others’ and irritating side-shows from the business of warfare, diplomacy, nation-building and empire. Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s ‘Iron Chancellor’ dismissed ‘the whole of the Balkans as not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier’ (Taylor, 1955: 167). Having lauded Britain’s role in the post-Versailles’ reconstruction of Europe, Winston Churchill reluctantly drew her imperial gaze back to the ‘dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone’ (Lee, 1989: 46).¹ However, a single shot fired in Sarajevo in June 1914 would spell disaster for Bismarck’s Second Reich, while war among Churchill’s dreary steeples in 1919–1921 sent shock-waves across Churchill’s beloved British Empire.

This book will attempt to sketch comparative political, historical and cultural contexts for these two disparate regions, so effectively delineated in geographical space and in chronological and cultural time between Bismarck’s ‘Pomeranian grenadier’ and Churchill’s ‘dreary steeples’. Through an examination of a series of historical ‘bore-holes’ and literary and cultural case-studies, it will compare, contrast and discuss Ireland, the Balkans and other divided regions of Europe.

Ireland, the Balkans, and some of the other divided regions under discussion below, often found themselves as pawns between Europe’s great powers, and their early modern inhabitants invariably became cultural whipping boys for their respective polemicists. Sixteenth-century English propagandists and scribblers such as Edmund Spenser, Fynes Moryson, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir John Davies, Barnaby Rich and Meredith Hamner compared the Irish to Scythians and Tartars, Western watchwords, like the ‘Grand Turk’ and his Central European helots, for barbarity and savagery (Hadfield, 1998, 1997; Maley, 1997; McCabe, 2002; Palmer, 2001). These comparisons were, of course, predicated on ignorance, intolerance and confessional and cultural chauvinism. Until the publication of Sir Paul Rycaut’s History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1666) the English had little direct experience or knowledge of the ‘Sublime Porte’ or its persecuted minions; apart from a fascination with blood-thirsty sultans, scheming eunuchs, decapitated grand viziers, the harem, the savage blood-feuding of the Carpathians and, closer to home, the occasional depredations of the Barbary pirates (Rycaut, 1666; Colley, 2002: 23–125; Ekin, 2006).

Similar themes resonate through contemporary propaganda accounts of the European ‘other’. The Irish are typified as sharing various physical and personality traits and characteristics with Scythians, Tartars, Albanians, Morlaks, Croats, Serbs and Bulgars; a nomadic, lifestyle, a penchant for theft, banditry, blood-feuding; outlandish clothes and customs, indifferent table manners and personal hygiene, tails on men and the uncommonly large, pendulous breasts of their womenfolk – degrading, degenerate cultural traits that are the traditional hallmarks of barbarity and savagery. Ultimately, these comparative contexts and prejudices evolve but do not totally dissipate through the course of the early modern and modern periods (Jezernik, 2004: 14, 30, 31, 40, 44, 67, 71, 77–88, 121–129, 145).

The crusades and age-old wars against the infidel often defined Irish and English military and political discourse; moreover, uncommon savagery characterised warfare on both peripheries of Western Europe. Eoghan Rua Ó Néill, commander of the Ulster Army during the Confederate/Cromwellian Wars (1641–1652) is portrayed in the ‘Aphorismical Discovery of the Treasonable Faction’ (c. 1649) as an Irish ‘El Cid’, smiting the English and Scottish infidels; he himself likened the atrocities committed in his native Ulster to the depredations of the Turk (Ó Siochrú, 2008: 37). James Butler, first duke of Ormond, arguably the most prominent political figure in seventeenth-century Ireland drew Saracen’s heads on his papers during privy council meetings in the 1640s, a testament to the ‘Mohammetan’s’ place in the early modern psyche (Carte, 1851: 315, 316).

The persecuted minions of the ‘Grand Turk’ also enter contemporary political discourse in this period. Contemporaries dubbed Redmond ‘Count’ O’Hanlon, a famous Irish tory (outlaw) active in the reign of Charles II (1660–1685) as ‘the Irish Scanderbeg’ after Albania’s famous bandit-hero (Ó Ciardha, 2009: 51–70); the relentless pillaging of the ‘Rapparees’ and ‘Enniskilliners’, the Jacobite and Williamite militias in the War of the Two Kings (1689–1691), drew comparisons with ‘Croats’ and ‘Tartars’ (Ó Ciardha, 2004: 74–75, fns). This is no surprise given that in the late 1680s and early 1690s, Europe’s attentions would be drawn to her margins. The Jacobite/Williamite War emerged as a key theatre in the War of the League of Augsburg/War of the English Succession (1688–1697), where the combined powers of Europe aligned themselves against Louis XIV of France. William, Prince of Orange, Louis’ most inveterate enemy, would ultimately secure the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ (1688) and his possession of the English, Irish and Scottish crowns at the Battles of the Boyne (1690) and Aughrim (1691). At the same time, Jan Sobieski III, warrior king of Poland and saviour of Christendom, stopped the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha at the gates of Vienna in 1683. In the 1690s and early eighteenth century, Prince Eugene of Savoy, the ‘Atlas of the Holy Roman Empire’, who had served the Holy League with distinction against the Sublime Porte, heaped further humiliation on the Ottoman empire by sweeping through the Balkans as far as Belgrade (Jezernik, 2004: 42).

Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the ‘Grand Turk’ became the ‘Sick Man’ of Europe. Humiliated by Russia and Austria at Karlovitz (1699) and Passarovitz (1718) successive Russian Tsars sought to make the Black Sea (the Sultan’s ‘pure, immaculate virgin’) a Russian lake, establish a port on the Mediterranean and re-dedicate ‘Constantinople’ (Istanbul) as an orthodox capital (Seabag Montefiore, 2000: 215–223; Ascherson, 2007). Meanwhile, the Habsburgs looked to Mars instead of Venus, their traditional patron, to extend their territories in the Balkans.² Balkan Christians sought Russian and Austrian protection from Turkish ‘tyranny’ and both powers would inflict further defeats on the Porte through the course of the nineteenth century.

Irish nationalists and republicans were not unmindful of the anti-imperialist struggles of their Central and Eastern European counterparts; over the course of the nineteenth century they would draw comparison with (and inspiration from) Hungary’s dual monarchists, anti-Habsburg Young Italy and Serbian/Slavic anarchists and nationalists; indeed, it could be argued that ‘the Black Hand’ of Irish republicanism pre-empted the Greater Serbian movement of the same name (Hart, 2009: 190–204).

Arthur Griffith’s Resurrection of Hungary (1904) lionised the Magyr patriots Count Istavan Széchenyi, Ferenc Deak and Lajos Kossuth and their cause, while at the same time disparaging the Croats, Wallachs and Serbs who had allowed themselves to be manipulated by the unscrupulous Habsburgs (Griffith, 1904: xxviii; Aan De Wiel, 2006: 237–257). His pamphlet drew many political, socio-economic and cultural comparisons and contrasts between the Hungarians and Irish; highlighting, in particular, the condescending, hypocritical English attitude towards both groups. After the coronation of Franz Joseph as king of Hungary in 1867, he noted a London Times report that ‘tonight there will be another feast and more oxen will be roasted and more wine drunk and more boors get drunk and dance and sing and fight each other à la Irlandaise’ (Griffith, 1904: 66). Elsewhere, Griffith reported, that ‘when Hungary was in the vortex of her struggle for national existence’, Charles Boner, an English diplomat, ‘gave the Hungarians the benefit of his superior wisdom’, by noting that ‘a Hungarian always dwells on and cherishes his wrongs, and like the Irish, never loses an opportunity of putting them forward prominently’. However, he (Griffith) concluded that had they (the Hungarians) had ‘taken his [Bone’s] advice, forgotten their past, surrendered their language, assimilated themselves and learned the “wisdom of compromise,” they would to-day be in the enjoyment of blessings similar to those which England showers on this country [Ireland]’ (Griffith, 1904: 80).

Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne during the latter’s ill-fated visit to Sarajevo in June 1914, at once ignited the First World War, postponed Irish home rule and prevented a British Army mutiny and possible civil war in Ireland. The ranks of the unionist UVF and National Volunteers would instead be decimated in a war for the ‘Freedom of Small Nations’. By this stage ‘The Sick Man of Europe’ had become ‘Johnny Turk’ a suitably exotic and blood-thirsty ally of the hated Hun; the final dissection of the remnants of his vast European possessions would form part of Churchill’s grandiose exercise in post-war, map-making (Clark, 2013: 342, 488–490, 493, 545).

Indeed, the subject-peoples of four prostrate empires (Germany, Austria, Russia and Turkey) would clamour for recognition at the Paris Peace Conference (1919), a gathering that excluded the representatives of the newly-constituted Dáil Éireann (Irish Parliament). By this time, the Irish had rejected home rule, swept the Irish Parliamentary Party from power, swore an oath to the Irish Republic proclaimed during Easter 1916 and set up a government in opposition to Britain. Thus, the Irish-merican Michael J. O’Brien’s Hidden Phase of American History: Ireland’s Part in America’s Struggle for Liberty (1919) reminded President Woodrow Wilson, the ultimate arbiter of the post-war settlement of American’s debt to Ireland and her rightful place among these emancipated nations:

There is every reason to hope that the great-hearted American people will pay the debt their country owes to Ireland for the part played by her sons in the achievement of our liberty … Our President [Woodrow Wilson] has declared that the small nationalities shall have the right to self-determination and that this question shall be settled at the peace conference … It does not mean to bring freedom to the Poles alone, nor restore freedom to the Serbians alone, but to bring freedom to all oppressed peoples and to all down-trodden nations … While Ireland, in its present condition, stands festering like a great sore in the side of England, there can be no security for England or for Europe … Justice demands that Ireland should have the same rights given to her as that which is to be given to the other small nations of Europe.

(O’Brien, 1919: 386–387)

Having been rebuffed in Versailles, nationalist Ireland would be forced back to her own devices. War, civil war and partition quickly ensued. Eamon De Valera, who emerged to dominate Irish politics in the inter-war years sought to secure Irish neutrality, an option not available to Peter II of Yugoslavia; De Valera later carried it to its logical, fartcical conclusion by offering his condolences to Dr Eduard Hempel, German Ambassador to the Irish Free State after Hitler’s suicide (Coogan, 1993: 601). Northern Ireland, by stark contrast, played a pivotal role in the war, which Churchill commended in a victory speech (13 May 1945) that deplored De Valera’s frolics with Japanese and German ambassadors (Fisk, 1985). Crucially, the same Churchill shafted the Serbian royalist Dragoljub Mihailović and conceded post-war Yugoslavia to Tito and his Communist partisans (Batty, 2011: passim).

Events in the kingdom of Yugoslavia, fascist Croatia and Communist Yugoslavia occasionally made headlines on the other side of the continent. Hubert Butler, the Irish essayist and antiquarian, taught English in Egypt and Leningrad, lived in Zagreb between 1931 and 1934, before moving to Vienna where he helped Austrian Jews to flee the Reich. Yugoslavia attracted him because ‘it had attained its independence at the same time as we did in Ireland, and had to confront similar problems of diverse religions, cultures and loyalties’ (Agee, ‘The Balkan Butler’). During his sojourn in the Balkans he learned Serbo-Croat and, as review editor of the Bell magazine brought an extensive corpus of Slavonic literature to an Irish audience. He noted that ‘even when his essays appear to be about Russia, Greece or Yugoslavia, they are really about Ireland’; indeed Agee makes the convincing claim that ‘Butler’s oeuvre is the definitive confirmation that the sense of commonality between Ireland and the lands of the former Yugoslavia is a rich, important one’ (Agee, ‘The Balkan Butler’).

Butler returned to Zagreb after the war, and while researching Croatian war-time newspapers discovered the atrocities committed by Dr Ante Pavelić’s Croatian fascist Ûstashe against orthodox Serbs. Indeed, he considered it to be ‘the most bloodthirsty, religio-racial crusade in history, far suppressing anything achieved by Cromwell or the Spanish Inquisition’ (Agee, ‘The Balkan Butler’). In 1952, Butler raised the matter at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs ssociation in Dublin and Gerald Patrick Aloysius O’Hara, Bishop of Savannah and Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland walked out of the room in protest. Castigated by the national press and removed from many of his small public offices, he withdrew from public life and occupied himself with his garden, writing and research into Irish and European origins (Bateman, 2009, ii: 121–123; Agee, ‘The Stepinac File’; Agee, ‘The Balkan Butler’).

Conversely, Tito’s ‘persecution’ of Yugoslav Catholics, particularly the trial of Alojzije Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb (1898–1960) for treason and war crimes, animated Irish public opinion in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Agee, ‘The Stepinac File’). In November 1946, deputy James Dillon, TD, called ‘upon all Christian peoples, and those who do not actually hate Christendom to join in repudiating as fraudulent this pseudo-trial and in stigmatising it for what it is, a crude pantomime of justice’ (McCabe, ‘Catholics, Communists and Hat-Tricks’). However, having tangled with Pavelić, Hitler and Stalin it is unlikely that the TD for Monaghan would have unnerved Marshal Tito. De Valera subsequently issued a statement on behalf of the Irish government expressing deep concern at the treatment of Hungarian and Yugoslavian Catholics (McCabe, ‘Catholics, Communists and Hat-Tricks’). Pius XII, who later bestowed a red hat on the incarcerated Stepinac, sent a telegram and his blessing to the Irish people. Irish diplomats made representations to the British, Canadian and American governments and masses, novenas, demonstrations and proce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• PART I The impact of empire on Ireland and the Balkans
• PART II City infrastructure, culture-specific architecture and natural boundaries
• PART III Space, place, location and border in the literatures and identities of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland
• Index