Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

Chapter 1

THE YOUNG BOSNIAN

Dimitrije Mitrinovic was born on October 21st 1887 at Donje Poplat, a small village near Stolac in Hercegovina, the eldest of ten children.

Bosnia and Hercegovina had been occupied by Austro-Hungarian military forces in 1878 after three centuries of Turkish rule. Throughout the nineteenth century Bosnia and Hercegovina had been in a state of continual unrest. Under the weight of crippling taxes to the central state, religious persecution and exploitation by feudal landlords, the peasantry resorted to armed rebellion. There were frequent local uprisings which had flared up on a larger scale in 1875. Politically weakened and economically bankrupt, the Ottoman Empire had been unable to suppress the revolt. The peasant guerrillas, on the other hand, were unable to gain the support of the townspeople, with the result that by the winter of 1877 there was a stalemate between the opposing forces and no end to the conflict in sight.

The greed and territorial ambitions of the major European powers, particularly Russia and Austria-Hungary, were whetted by the power vacuum created in the Balkans by the disintegration of the Turkish Empire. Under the ‘honest brokership’ of Bismarck a congress was convened at Berlin in June 1878. Making no concessions to the aspirations of the Balkan peoples, the European powers at the Congress authorised Austria-Hungary to occupy and administer Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Under the Hapsburg occupation an extensive modernization programme was implemented in the provinces. By means of forced labour the authorities built over 6000 kilometres of new roads between 1878 and 1914. Over 1000 kilometres of railways were built during the same period. Mineral resources were exploited and heavy industries were established. It was mostly state capital that was involved in these enterprises, private capital was primarily engaged in the exploitation of the forests of Bosnia and Hercegovina: ~ :