Professor Cathie Carmichael ‘A lost world: the Habsburg garrison in Trebinje’

Tuesday, 10 October, 5pm

Earlham Hall 0.12

All Welcome

East European refreshments provided

Habsburg power was imposed upon Ottoman Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1878. Although the Trebinje citadel surrendered, there was resistance elsewhere.  A new garrison was constructed, rapidly transforming Trebinje into a tree-lined city dominated by the army. In 1882, local guerrillas, mostly Orthodox, targeted the regime’s vulnerabilities but were rapidly defeated. Hospitals, cisterns, schools, roads, and railways were then built and educated soldiers produced new work on botany, geology, or archaeology in their spare time. There were peaceful years, but the 1914 assassination of Franz Ferdinand led to more persecution of the Orthodox.  Border villages were burnt, people executed in public or deported to camps. Slowly the infrastructure failed, partly because shepherds had been attacked; food shortages and news of military defeats left the Habsburg population beleaguered and they left rapidly at the end of 1918.