Ottomans’ Questionable Legal Ownership

For thirty years Austria-Hungary exercised in Bosnia and Herzegovina all and every right and privilege of absolute sovereignty.

Continuing Austria-Hungary Annexes Bosnia-Herzegovina,
with a selection from Crisis in the Near East by Emil Reich published in around 1908. This selection is presented in 5.5 easy 5-minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Austria-Hungary Annexes Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Time: 1908
Place: Bosnia-Herzegovina

Austria-Hungary, in accepting the task of full and uncontrolled administration and government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, at once set to work in the most efficient way. All Europe at once recognized that Bosnia and Herzegovina were henceforth within “the comity of nations,” in that they had passed into the sovereign rights of an acknowledged Power. No stronger proof of absolute sovereignty could possibly be advanced. Much of the law administered in the two provinces is indeed still Turkish law; for, the agrarian customs and usages of Bosnia and Herzegovina being, as they are, very much at variance with those prevailing in either half of the Dual Monarchy, it was necessary to leave the old Turkish law of real estate more or less untouched. This, however, can not affect the right of sovereignty as de facto exercised by Austria-Hungary in all matters connected with the administration of law. As a further consequence of that Austro Hungarian right of absolute sovereignty de facto, the Bosnians and Herzegovinians were at once subjected to the law of general military service obtaining in Austria-Hungary, and the recruits of the two provinces were sworn in as soldiers of the Emperor-King of Austria-Hungary. In the same way, treaties of commerce and all international acts referring to Bosnia and Herzegovina, were, since 1878, concluded by the authorities of Austria-Hungary alone. Even in a minor fact of public life that absolute sovereignty de facto of Austria Hungary in Bosnia and Herzegovina manifested itself in the least doubtful manner. According to the criminal code in force in the two provinces before the recent change of status, any person insulting the Emperor-King of Austria-Hungary, or a member of his family, was subject to the penalties of lèse majesté proper; whereas similar insults directed against the Sultan of Turkey were, like those leveled at any other crowned head, subject to the minor penalties of ordinary defamation. Of all the former rights of the Sultan in Bosnia and Herzegovina, two formal privileges alone remained in force. One was the permission given to the Mohammedan Bosnians to mention, in their prayers, the name of the Sultan. The other was the permission to hoist on such Turkish minarets, where it had been customary to do so, the Ottoman flag during prayer-time. It would be impossible to invest these two privileges with the faintest semblance of the power of real sovereignty.

For thirty years, then, Austria-Hungary exercised in Bosnia and Herzegovina all and every right and privilege of absolute sovereignty. This is not the place to show in detail that those rights and privileges were, by Austro-Hungarian officials, exercised to the lasting benefit of the two provinces. In several weighty communications sent by various Englishmen to The Times in the month of October, enough has been said to bear out the well-known impression of the great efficiency of Austro-Hungarian administration in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thirty years ago there were no railways in the provinces; now there are over one thousand miles of railway, over two thousand miles of telegraph-lines, and nearly four hundred miles of telephone-wire. Close on seventeen million letters and postcards are now forwarded in the provinces where formerly the postal service was exceedingly primitive. These and similar facts all testifying to the great work of civilization done by Austria-Hungary in a country that had for centuries been in a state of neglect and stagnation have long since been made familiar to the conscience of Europe. Nobody seriously doubts them, and it is superfluous to insist upon them. What, however, must be insisted upon is the legal fact that this occupation, with all its de facto exercise of absolute sovereign power, was by the Congress of Berlin meant to be entrusted to Austria-Hungary, not as that of Cyprus was to Great Britain — that is, for a limited period — but for an unlimited one. In other words, it cannot seriously be maintained that the Congress of Berlin viewed the “occupation” of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in a light other than that of an absolute cession veiled temporarily in the guise of one of those legal fictions which, both in private and public law, are only meant as preliminary makeshifts for subsequent realities of a different character. Nor did the Sultan of Turkey view it in any different light. Whatever process of legal interpretation may or may not be applied to the Convention of the 21st of April, 1897, made, in further elaboration of the Berlin Treaty, by Austria-Hungary and Turkey; one point remains stable, clear, and unanswerable -— to wit, that the Sultan, in Articles II. and IV. of the said Convention, stipulated, as the only rights of active sovereignty which he could and did claim, the religious privileges mentioned above, and the circulation of Ottoman coins as legal tender in the two provinces. Of these two rights, the first is purely moral; and the second has, by contrary usage, long since become objectless. In Bosnia and Herzegovina there has, these twenty years, been no coin circulating other than Austro Hungarian coin.

To the Western mind, long since used to definite and clear delimitations, both in political institutions and in political territory, the indistinct legal measures frequently applied in Oriental or African politics offer more than one difficulty. The progress of international history in Central and Western Europe has made for greater plasticity and simplicity, whatever complications may still prevail in the home policy of the various nations. The present German Empire is not a fiction, as was “the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic Nation.” Its territory is completely rounded off and neatly demarcated to within a square inch. Its organization, as a public and international body, is absolutely clear, and lends itself to no fictions whatever. The same holds good of Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, France, Holland, Belgium, and, of course, of the oldest of all self-contained realms, of Great Britain.

Emil Reich begins here. Major Archibald Colquhoun begins here.

More information here and here, and below.