Bosnian militia (Ottoman) | |
---|---|
Active | 1699–1878 |
Country | Ottoman Bosnia |
Allegiance | Ottoman Empire |
Part of | Ottoman army |
Engagements | Russo-Turkish War (1735–1739) |
The Bosnian militia was a military unit indigenous to Bosnia serving as a permanent frontier garrison and provincial army for the Ottoman Empire through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [1]
After the Treaty of Karlowitz, on 26 January 1699, the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier was fixed around the Danube River. The Ottoman standing army corps was overstretched from constant campaigning and had lost its strategic offensive capability against the Habsburgs, therefore the Ottoman government had to rely on a defensive strategy. To man and garrison distant border fortresses it was decided to give the responsibility of defense and security of border provinces to their governors. The new policy gave them rights to create provincial units. The soldiers were volunteers and villagers under the control of a provincial elite (Ayan). [2]
The provincial militias served as a chance of social mobility, though not open to Christians at first, they were also used by the governor internally to maintain or restore order during the numerous revolts about new taxes. [3] Some historians have described the Bosnian militia during that time as a tool used by the local elite to consolidate their power. [3]
During the first and second Serbian uprisings, Bosnia's Muslims had accepted primary responsibility for the suppression of the Christian revolt in the Belgrade province, Bosnian militia forces were sent across the Drina in support of the Ottoman army fighting the Serbian insurgents. [4]
In 1864, the Ottoman Government introduced conscription and a brigade of Bosnian militia was formed, consisting of two regiments of four battalions with half of the officers being Bosniaks from the province. [5] In 1869 the Bosnian contingent was assimilated into the Turkish army and a commission under the presidency of Omar Pasha, a former Serbian Orthodox, decided that Christians could be included in the conscription. [6] Eight battalions were formed, with half local officers and technically only serving within the province's borders. [5]
The transfer under Austro-Hungarian rule in 1878 ended the Ottoman Bosnian militia. In 1881 all Bosnian males became liable for conscription in the Austro-Hungarian army, at the same time a new Bosnian militia force called Pandurs was set up. [7] During the Bosnian crisis of 1909 a border militia called Streifkorps was established, during the same period the notorious Bosnian militia Schutzkorps , was raised by the Austro-Hungarians to act as a special paramilitary force, hunting down Serb guerillas. [8]
Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a country in Southeast Europe on the Balkan Peninsula. It has had permanent settlement since the Neolithic Age. By the early historical period it was inhabited by Illyrians and Celts. Christianity arrived in the 1st century, and by the 4th century the area became part of the Western Roman Empire. Germanic tribes invaded soon after, followed by Slavs in the 6th century.
Đorđe Petrović, better known by the sobriquet Karađorđe, was a Serbian revolutionary who led the struggle for his country's independence from the Ottoman Empire during the First Serbian Uprising of 1804–1813.
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The Herzegovina uprising was an uprising led by the Christian Serb population against the Ottoman Empire, firstly and predominantly in Herzegovina, from where it spread into Bosnia and Raška. It broke out in the summer of 1875, and lasted in some regions up to the beginning of 1878. It was followed by the Bulgarian Uprising of 1876, and coincided with Serbian-Turkish wars (1876–1878), all of those events being part of the Great Eastern Crisis (1875–1878).
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The Military Frontier was a borderland of the Habsburg monarchy and later the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Empire. It acted as the cordon sanitaire against incursions from the Ottoman Empire.
Sarajevo is a city now in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A series of military conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and various European states took place from the Late Middle Ages up through the early 20th century. The earliest conflicts began during the Byzantine–Ottoman wars, waged in Anatolia in the late 13th century before entering Europe in the mid-14th century with the Bulgarian–Ottoman wars. The mid-15th century saw the Serbian–Ottoman wars and the Albanian-Ottoman wars. Much of this period was characterized by Ottoman expansion into the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire made further inroads into Central Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, culminating in the peak of Ottoman territorial claims in Europe.
In diplomatic history, the Eastern question was the issue of the political and economic instability in the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th to early 20th centuries and the subsequent strategic competition and political considerations of the European great powers in light of this. Characterized as the "sick man of Europe", the relative weakening of the empire's military strength in the second half of the eighteenth century threatened to undermine the fragile balance of power system largely shaped by the Concert of Europe. The Eastern question encompassed myriad interrelated elements: Ottoman military defeats, Ottoman institutional insolvency, the ongoing Ottoman political and economic modernization programme, the rise of ethno-religious nationalism in its provinces, and Great Power rivalries.
The Battle of Zenta, also known as the Battle of Senta, was fought on 11 September 1697, near Zenta, Kingdom of Hungary, between Ottoman and Holy League armies during the Great Turkish War. The battle was the most decisive engagement of the war, and it saw the Ottomans suffer an overwhelming defeat by an Imperial force half as large sent by Emperor Leopold I.
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The Great Migrations of the Serbs, also known as the Great Exoduses of the Serbs were two migrations of Serbs from various territories under the rule of the Ottoman Empire to the Kingdom of Hungary under the Habsburg monarchy.
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The Austro-Turkish War was fought in 1788–1791 between the Habsburg monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, concomitantly with the Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792), Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790) and Theatre War. It is sometimes referred to as the Habsburg–Ottoman War or the Austro-Ottoman War.
Bosnia and Herzegovina fell under Austro-Hungarian rule in 1878, when the Congress of Berlin approved the occupation of the Bosnia Vilayet, which officially remained part of the Ottoman Empire. Three decades later, in 1908, Austria-Hungary provoked the Bosnian Crisis by formally annexing the occupied zone, establishing the Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the joint control of Austria and Hungary.
The Battle of Banja Luka took place in Banja Luka, Ottoman Bosnia, on 4 August 1737, during the Austro-Russian-Turkish War. An Austrian army under Prince Joseph Hildberghausen was defeated, as it attempted to besiege the town, when it ran into a large Ottoman relief force led by Bosnian Vizier Hekimoğlu Ali Pasha.
Golub Babić was a Bosnian Serb guerrilla chief and one of the most prominent rebel commanders of the 1875–77 Herzegovina Uprising in the Ottoman Empire's Bosnia Vilayet.
The Great Eastern Crisis of 1875–78 began in the Ottoman Empire's territories on the Balkan peninsula in 1875, with the outbreak of several uprisings and wars that resulted in the intervention of international powers, and was ended with the Treaty of Berlin in July 1878.
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The Krivošije uprising of 1869 was an internal conflict in the far south of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that broke out following the Austro-Hungarian government's decision to extend military conscription to the Serb tribe and region of Krivošije. It lasted from October 1869 until a formal peace accord was signed on 11 January 1870. The rebels managed to defeat the Austro-Hungarian army detachments sent against them and in the end the government conceded on all points of dispute.