the uses of balkanism

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The Uses of Balkanism: Representation and Power in British Travel Writing, 1850-1914

Author(s): Andrew HammondSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Jul., 2004), pp. 601-624Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Associationand University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4213941.

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T H E SL VONICN D E S T EUROPE N

REVIEWVolume82, Number3 July 2004

h e U s e s o Balkanismepresentation n d P o w e r n

B r i t i s h T r a v e l W r i t i n g I 850- 9 I4ANDREW HAMMOND

IN the scholarship on balkanism that has emerged over the last tenyears there is insufficientanalysisof the relation between representationandpower. On the actualformthatbalkanismhas taken the scholarshipis detailed and largelyunanimous,with Maria Todorova,Milica Bakic-Hayden, Vesna Goldsworthyand others locating a conceptual frame-work composed of violence, discord and backwardnesswhich delimitsthe antitype of the enlightened West. Yet the functions and materialeffects of balkanistrepresentationare rarelyanalysedin depth, and areat times omitted altogether.' The oddity of the omission is clear whenone recalls that the roots of this branch of critical inquiry lie in thepoststructuralist ield of colonial discourseanalysisinspiredby EdwardSaid's OrientalismI 979). As Said's workexemplified,here was a criticalschool dedicated to exposing the ways in which the West'sunderstand-ing of other cultures vindicates and advances forms of power,particularlycolonialism.2 For balkanism, it is as if the general lack ofdirectWesterncolonization of the region has crippleddiscussion of thepower relationsunderlyingrepresentation.This is illustrated by K. E.Fleming's 'Orientalism,he Balkans, and Balkan Historiography', inwhich the commonalities and contrasts between orientalism andAndrew Hammond is a Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature at the Swansea Institute,University of Wales.

' See Goldsworthy's thesis in her InventingRuritania:7he Imperialism f theImagination,NewHaven, CT and London, I998.2 Said defined orientalism, for example, as the 'Western style for dominating, restructur-ing, and having authority over the Orient': Said, Orientalism,ew edn, London, 1995, p. 3.

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602 THE USES OF BALKANISMbalkanism are explored. Despite some insightful points, the articlemarkedly fails to analyse Western interestsin South-East Europe, andconsequently undermines Fleming's stated belief that this kind ofBalkan scholarship can 'expand ...] and elucidate the theoreticalcategories of inquiry first developed by [postcolonialism]'.3 In thisessay I will contend not only that very strong systems of political andeconomic domination are facilitated by balkanist writings, and arethereforein urgentneed of analysis,but that suchpower systemsrevealsimilarities n style and effect to those of classic colonialism.The point can be seen in the context of British travel writing of thenineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was in this period thatSouth-EastEurope fully emerged in the Britishgeographicalimagina-tion as a peripheralzone of barbarismand conflict,particularlyvia thejournals of travellers,4and also that such imagining began to interactwith a rapidly burgeoning political engagement on the part of theBritishstate. This is not to suggest, of course, that Victorian balkanismwas ever systematized as a discourse, or had its aims singularlydetermined. In contrast to the territorialacquisition and rule legiti-mized by colonialist writing, the forms of political power achievingvindication through balkanist paradigms were ambiguous, shiftingpatterns of diplomatic and economic strategy that differed betweenpolitical party and political party and from one administrationto thenext. Indeed, the geostrategicconcern that Britaincame to know as theEasternQuestion was, by its very appellation, definedless by historicalevents than by their provocation of controversy and debate.5 TheVictorian travel writers'mindfulness of that debate, and characteristicdetermination to participate, produced a constant source of relevantinformation, but hardly clarified the issue. The bewildering politicalstances a contemporary reader could find in the travelliteratureof theera included supportforDisraeli, supportfor Gladstone,pro-Austrian-ism, anti-Austrianism, Turkophilia, Turkophobia, and a particularlyrabid anti-Russianism. A number of memoirs even found their waytowards heartfelt censure of British diplomatic policy (though this neverwent so far as to question Britain's right to intervene in the 'Near East').In the light of such apparent confusion, one might well ask how the

3 Fleming, 'Orientalism,he Balkans, and Balkan Historiography', AmericanHistoricalReview,105, 2000, 4, pp. 12I8-234 (hereafter, Fleming, 'Orientalism')p. 1220).

4 Maria Todorova captures the flavour of this writing well: see Todorova, Imagining heBalkans,Oxford and New York, 1997, pp. 89-I 15.I E. F. G. Law even wrote on the 'Near Eastern Question' that 'absolute impartiality ishardly to be looked for in a matter so replete with controversial issues, so pre-eminentlycalculated to excite passion and prejudice' (Law, 'Preface' to Allen Upward, TheEast EndofEurope. The Reportof an UnofficialMission to theEuropeanProvincesof Turke)on theEve of theRevolution,London, I908 [hereafter, Upward, East End], p. vii).



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ANDREW HAMMOND 603will-to-knowledgein such writings could have possibly translatedintosupportfor any specificmanifestation of power.The power-knowledge to be found within British travel writingemerges from a more profound conjunction of power and representa-tional form. Beneath the variegated political stances -what we mightterm the surface utterances of individual travellers -lies an articula-tion of fundamental culturalassumptionsthatshape,organize, channel,and profoundly synthesize the majority of texts from the period. Ofthese assumptions, the denigration of the Balkans as a set of inferiorcultures has a significance, and unifying function, that should not beunderestimated.In both rhetoricand practice, imperialismhad rigidlypartitioned the world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuriesinto nations destined to rule, existing in privileged space, and regionsfated to be ruled;6and there was no doubt into which category theBalkans fell. The region was viewed as so subordinate to colonialpower, in fact, that most travellers overlooked both South-EastEurope's own imperial endeavours of the past and its contemporaryemergence, at points through the peninsula, into a new era ofnationhood alongside Italy and Germany. Instead, the region wasconstructed from discursive material the West had been developingprimarily,though not exclusively, for usage on the colonial object.Thisis unsurprising when one considers the extent to which imperialisticsentimentpervaded the culture from which Balkantravellersemerged,saturating British literature, art, science, even education, and theirrepresentationsof backwardness,savageryand social turbulence in theBalkanspresented (the occasional) difference in degree though not inkind from representations of Britain's own colonial possessions. Inshort, whatever their opinion on governmental policy, travellersrevealed remarkable agreement on the subordinate status of theBalkans, and expressed this subordinationthrough a narrow range ofcultural signifiers which, depending on the circumstance, evoked aplace of comedy, romance or imminent threat.This dominant signifying system emerged from, and fed into, apronounced refusal to grant the Balkan region the possibilities ofindependence. Even when the travellerquestioned the contemporaryshape of colonial rule (the 'Ottoman barbarity' in Bulgaria, say, orAustrian illegality in their occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina),there was rarely any doubt that the Balkansrequiredgovernance froman external source, whether that source was an individualpower or a

6 It is crucial to keep in mind that, as Porter writes, 'the colonies were not the onlymanifestations of [British] predominance. Other countries outside the empire could bedominated or controlled by one means or another from Britain almost as closely as hercolonies' (Bernard Porter, TheLion'sShare:A ShortHistoryof BritishImperialism,850-I983,2nd edn, London and New York, 1984, p. 2).



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604 THE USES OF BALKANISMcollection of Western Europeanstates.H. A. Brown's reflectionson thefuture of Albania is an example in kind. Unable to conceive theterritoryas anythingbut subordinateto an imperial authority,this lateVictorian traveller's contemplation of the inevitable Ottoman with-drawal leads not to an outline of the kind of internal administrationthat might follow, but simply to the idea 'thatthe nation which gets thiscountry, and imagines it has got hold of something valuable, willdeserve our sincere sympathy'.7As a more pointed example, W. J.Stillman claims, in a generally supportivestudy of the insurrectioninBosnia-Herzegovina, that 'an impossible autonomy' is less the answerthan a Great Power commission operating a 'system of patriarchaldespotism'.8 Similarly,D. T. Ansted concludes a surveyof Transylva-nia, along with other Hungarian-held regions, by cautioning that its'material prosperity' is only possible 'if the people will be content to bequietly governed', and Robert Munro concludes his journal on thewestern Balkans by lauding the 'conspicuous improvements' broughtabout by Austro-Hungarian rule.9Speaking of the 'trumpery govern-ments' of Serbia and the Danubian Principalities,R. Arnold wouldeven preferto see these autonomous regions 'fallbeneath the crown ofthe Kaiser' than 'their scandalous autonomy' continue.'0 The vitalpoint about the line of argument pursued by these and so many otherwriters is that it was quite simply the only conclusion that could bedrawn from the styles of representationwithin which travellers foundthemselvesworking.Afterlocating such discord, savagery and violencein the region, attributes deemed to form such a palpable threat to thecivilized West, the only solution likely to occur to the imperialimagination was a clampdown by some external source. Naturally,there are exceptions to be found in the travel writing of the period.

7 Brown, A Winter nAlbania,London, I888, pp. I59-60. Elsewhere, Brown develops thepoint by denying the need for a written Albanian language (ibid., p. 57) and by stressing thenecessity for 'external influence' if Albania is ever to progress (ibid., p. i i6).8 Stillman, Herzegovina nd theLateUprising.TheCausesof theLatterand theRemedies,London,I877 (hereafter, Stillman, Herzegovina), p. 12, 155.9 Ansted, A ShortTrip nHungagy ndTransylvanian theSpringof i862, London, I862, p. 25 1;Munro, RamblesandStudies n Bosnia-HerzegovinandDalmatiawithan Accountof theProceedingsof the Congress fArchaeologistsndAnthropologists eld at Sarajevo,August 894, Edinburgh andLondon, I895 (hereafter, Munro, Ramblesand Studies),p. 390. Such sentiments are to befound in almost all travel texts of the period: see, for example, Robert Dunkin ['Snaffle'], In

theLandof theBora: Or,CampLifeandSport n Dalmatiaand theHerzegovina894-5-6, London,I897 (hereafter, Dunkin, Land of theBora), pp. I92-95, 349-50; and William Le Queux[Anon'], An Observern theNearEast, London, I907, pp.287, 291.10 Arnold, From theLevant,the Black Sea, and theDanube, 2 vols, London, I868 (hereafter,Arnold, From heLevant), , pp.235-36.See, for example, James George Cotton Minchin, The Growthof Freedom n theBalkanPeninsula.Notesofa TravellernMontenegro, osnia,Servia,BulgariaandGreece.WithHistoricalandDescriptiveSketches f thePeople,London, i886 (hereafter, Minchin, Growthof Freedom); ndG. Muir MacKenzie and A. P. Irby, Travels n the SlavonicProvincesof Turkey-in-Europe,5th edn, 2 vols, London, I877 (hereafter, MacKenzie and Irby, Travels).



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ANDREW HAMMOND 605Yet the advocacy of colonial rule, whetherexplicitly pursued by a writeror left as an implicit consequence of textual representation for thereadership to discern, was the dominant political thread runningthroughVictorian and Edwardian texts.It is at this point that we reach the connection between representa-tional styles and Britishpolitical strategy.Despite the various shifts inpolicy, and despitethe politicaldifferencesthat existed, the Britishgoalin South-East Europe was to achieve a stable, relatively peacefularrangementthat would help to ensure both British intereststhrough-out the East and Great Power harmony within Europe. This goalrequired an effective block on any encroachment upon the region by ahostile power, as well as the maintenance of the geopolitical statusquoamongst the Balkan countries themselves. Now although Britain wasnot about to do all this herself, it certainlyintended to help those whocould. Forthe majorityof the nineteenth century,this meant bolsteringthe Ottoman Empire, that 'Sick Man of Europe', whose increasinglyinsecurestandingdemanded constant attendance if it were to continueto check Russian and South Slavonic interests. It would latermean theapproval of Austrian expansionism in the region but, whicheverstrategyprevailed,there was a need foran understandingof theBalkansas a territorysuited to colonial rule, and the dominant representationalparadigm supplied that understanding. In this essay, I shall beattempting to clarify the links between representation and politicaldesire in the latter half of the nineteenth centuryvia a criticalanalysisof the contemporarytravelwriting. In doing so, my aim is not to chartBritishpolicy in full, but to pick four major features of its involvementin the region and, moving through the period under study, attempt todetail the manner in which textualrepresentationhelped both tojustifythat involvement and to maintain the Balkans as a subordinate cultureavailable for Great Powermanipulation.The firstsphereof involvement -to startat the most basic levelinvolves the pattern of relationships that individual Britons chose toestablish amongst the host populations of the Balkans. The mainte-nance abroad of inflexible forms of social decorum, whether from fearof transgressionor fear of dissolution, was a pronounced attribute ofVictorian traveland tended to include an extremely carefulpolicing ofthe boundary between self and other. Naturally, in the relativelyaccommodating social landscape of a British colony the result was arigid clustering within expatriate communities.2 In a region like the

12 Using India as his example, Scott B. Cook gives a good sketch of the highly insularnature of British colonial society in Cook, ColonialEncountersn theAge of High Imperialism,New York, I996, pp. I 24-36.



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6o6 THE USES OF BALKANISMBalkans, encountering a mass of indigenes in the absence of compatri-ots, more often than not the Briton would associate with that classclosest to his or her own rank and station: the colonial overlord. Thiswas certainly true of those military advisors, diplomatic staff andnewspaper correspondents who found themselves stationed toborrow Edith Durham's phrase -at 'some intolerable hole' in theOttoman dominions.'3 The British may have had occasional doubtsabout the advisability of Ottoman rule, but outside their own limitedcircles it was the Ottoman authorities the British knew professionallyand socially, drawn to them not only by the Ottomans' status as themajor power player in the region, and the one therefore necessary tocourt, but also by the 'civilized' standards the two parties generallyshared in education, cuisine, entertainment and domestic comfort.'4These relationships with the colonial authorities, when set alongsidethe dominant representational paradigm of the indigenous populationas a disreputable and unindividuated peasantry inclined towards semi-barbarism,'5 tended to set the tone for relationships of a moregovernmental variety.To illustrate my point, the memoirs of long term expatriates inSouth-East Europe are particularly pertinent. The writings of militaryattache J. C. Fife-Cookson in Bulgaria, for example, reveal therespectful relations that could accrue between the British and theOttoman governors, landowners and military officials.'6 While accept-ing their value, however, I prefer to turn to one of the most interestingworks of travel from the period, Edward Lear's Journals of a LandscapePainter nAlbania, first published in I85 I. Although mostly rememberedfor his nonsense verse, Lear was primarily a painter and illustrator of

13 Durham, The SarajevoCrime,London, 1925, p. i i. The same occurred in the Austrianregions, where again there was very little contact achieved with the indigenous peasantry:see, for example, the pattern of relationships pursued by W. F. Wingfield in his A TourofDalmatia, Albania, and Montenegro;With an Historical Sketchof theRepublicof Ragusa, rom theEarliest Timesdownto Its Final Fall, London, I859; Maude M. Holbach in her Bosnia andHerzegovina. omeWaysideWanderings, ondon, I 9 I0; and Percy E. Henderson in his A BritishOfficern theBalkans. TheAccountof a _Journeyhrough almatia,Bosnia andHerzegovina,London,I 909 (hereafter, Henderson, BritishOfficer).14 Both Todorova and Norris concur: see Maria Todorova, 'The Balkans: From Discoveryto Invention', SlavicReview, 53, 1994, 2, pp. 453-82 (p. 465); and David A. Norris, In theWakeof theBalkanMyth. Questions f IdentityandModernity,Basingstoke and New York, I999,p. 6. The latter writes: 'it was possible for British travellers to establish a modusvivendiwith

the authorities there who acted as their hosts and were men of power and influence in theworld; while the local Christian population was excluded from public life, colonized anddowntrodden [. . .1. British travellers felt that their meetings with the Turks were like thecoming together of two imperialistic nations able to appreciate their mutual success' (ibid.,p. 6).

15 On the whole, Stillman is correct in saying that the peasantry were a people 'with whomthe casual traveller has no intercourse' (Stillman, Herzegovina, . 39).16 See Lieutenant-Colonel Fife-Cookson, With theArmiesof theBalkans and at Gallipoli inI877-I878, 2nd edn, London, Paris and New York, I879 (hereafter, Fife-Cookson, Armiesof theBalkans).



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ANDREW HAMMOND 607immenseambition, and his determinedsearch for the picturesqueinspiredong ourneysaround heclassicalandscapes f theMediterra-nean, including in the autumn of I848 the trip throughMacedoniaand Albania.Forthis,Learwas not averse o reaping hebenefitsof colonialsociety,despitehiswillingnessorsolitary ravel.Aformer residencein Corfu,for example,then an importantBritishcolonycrammedwithofficers, overnmentmen and their amilies,hadalreadyfamiliarizedhim with what could be considered he ratherimperialprocessof procuring idyllicsceneryandpicturesquenatives[.. .] with all the comfortsof the Home Counties'.'7For OttomanAlbania,onlyfourmilesto the east, hisfriendshipwithsuchvenerablediplomats as Sir StratfordCanning, the British AmbassadoratConstantinople, adsecured orLearthe travelpermitsand lettersofintroductionwhich offereda similarrangeof perksand privileges othose of British Corfu. This was perhapsas well, since Lear tookAlbania o be a land of 'savageoddity', ull of 'strangeplaces'and'illdefined' and 'entangled'ethnic groupsthat bred 'a savagerace' ofmen.18His worst earsseemtobe confirmed pon arrival t Thessalon-iki: Instantlyhe wildestconfusion eizedall',he exclaims,as the localporters fight over his baggage with 'the most furioushair-pulling,turban-clenching,ndrobe-tearing', nlyquittingwhenthepolicegivethema 'severebeating[with]sticksandwhips' (p. 20). The sense ofbrutality nddisorderncreaseswhen Lear ourneysoverland nto theAlbanian-populatedegions,where he 'wretched nddisgusting'owns(p. 60),the'filth'ofthelodginghouses p. 6o)andthe 'moroseandwildlook' (p. 54) of the townfolkall lead Lear to sum the place up as a'strange ndfearful' egion p. 145).Withinsuch an apparently mpossible ociety, t is no surprisehatLear achievesvery little genuine interactionwith the indigenouspopulation.The onlysustained ontacthe has, apart rom withthoseemployedto servehim, comesduringvisitsto the region'sscattered'upperclass':the foreigndoctors,consularstaff,priests and, mostcommonly, he Ottomangovernorsand landowners.Althoughcom-plaining hattheseprovincial beysandpashas . .. ] lose muchtime inceremony' p. 6o), they offerLearnotonly the chanceofconversation,decent food and accommodation luxuriesnot unappreciatedinwildssuchasthese' p. 69) but also a certain ecurity, urnishing im

17 Susan Hyman (ed.), EdwardLear n theLevant.Travels nAlbania,Greece nd Turkeyn EuropeI848-9, London, I988, P. 37. For a sketch of British society on Corfu and of Lear'sambivalent response to it, see Vivien Noakes, EdwardLear. 7he Life of a Wanderer, ondon,I968, pp. 132-51.18 Lear, J/ournalsof a LandscapePainter in Greeceand Albania, new edn, London, I988(hereafter, Lear, Landscape ainter),pp. 51, 2 I, I I, I I, 38. Future references to Lear's Jurnalswill be given in the text.



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6o8 THE USES OF BALKANISMwith further ettersof introductionand the constantcompanyof a'Kawas',or armedguardian.An exampleof the latter'susefulnesscomesduringhis frustrated ttemptso sketch he Muslimpopulation,an example that also revealsthe deep politicalcomplicity hat couldresultfromBritish-Ottomanelations.No soonerdoesLearbeginhiswork hanthecrowds,considering ictorial epresentationheworkofthe devil, starthiding,shouting,whistlingand, moreoften thannot,peltinghimwith'unceasinghowersofstones,sticks,and mud'(p. 47).In the town of Berat, having been exasperatedby this sortof thingbefore,hewastesno time n arranginghesolution:

Havinga letter to the Pasha [.. .], I sent Giorgiowith a requestfor aKawas,whoshortlyarrived, ndafterearlydinner beganto sketch thereis no timeto be lost in placesso full of interest) n theriverside elow thecastle, with]hundreds fpeoplepouringorth o seemyoperations;ut allwereviolently epelledbythe activeguardianKawaswitha stick,whichhethrewwithall his forceat thelegsof suchunluckyndividuals spressedoocloselyon me or interferedwiththe view.Whenthisclubwasejected romtheincensedauthority's and the rushto escapewasfrightful ndtheyellsof thosewho received heblowsverydisagreeableomyfeelings. p. 102)

Disagreeable s they are,Learneithercallsoff the 'Kawas'nor allowsthe 'frightful' eatingto interrupthis work,but conspiresn a brutalrout by which thepopulationbecomesdoubly subject', oth of Lear'sartisticdesireand to Ottomancolonialdominion.This dualsubjuga-tion, in turn, feeds into the binary oppositionconstructedby thepassagebetweenthe populationand theircolonialmasters:althoughthe formof disciplinewieldedbytheguard scrude, hisrepresentativeof Ottoman authority constitutesthe forces of a law, order andgovernmenthatcontrast o theuneducated, ndisciplined,hreateningmob standingbetweenLear andhis 'pursuitof knowledge' p. 38), asheconsiders is art.Ottomanruledoesnot gethisunequivocalupport,in otherwords,but it certainlyconstitutesa welcomealternative oindigenousdisorder.19Whilesuch passages eemwhollyreprehensibletoday,oneimagines hatanimperial eadership,amiliarwiththe needfor discipliningcolonial subjects,and aware of the perils of anindigenousmob, would have foundlittle to censureeither in Lear'spursuitof his aimsabove thewishesof thecolonizedpopulation,or inhis alignmentwiththe forcesof colonialpower.Indeed, hosewell read

19 Tellingly, he goes so far as to call another enraged crowd his 'enemies' (ibid., p. 47). AsWolff writes on the complicity of Westerner and Ottoman authority: 'The traveler inEastern Europe found himself casually implicated in the brutality of oppression and slaveryjust by the conditions of travel, just in the arrangement of food, lodgings, transport, andsecurity' (Larry Wolff, InventingEasternEurope: The Map of Civilisationon the Mind of theEnlightenment,tanford, CA, 1994, p. 74).



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ANDREW HAMMOND 609in Balkan travelogues would have been used to British travellers takingthe disciplining of the peasantry into their own hands.20This collaboration against the indigenous population becomes evenclearer when one moves to the sphere of national relations betweenBritain and the Porte. In establishing financial, military and diplomaticsupport for the Ottoman Empire, British imperial policy, like Lear'sartistic pursuits, was naturally conducted with sole regard to thefurtherance of its own interests, showing scant regard for indigenouswishes, and little understanding of what those wishes actually were.21The effects of that policy, and the patterns of representation thatsupported it, are best illustrated by the British response to the EasternCrisis of I875 to I878, a collection of uprisings, suppressions and warsthat finally thrust the Balkans into the British popular consciousness.22Although the crisis began in Bosnia and Herzegovina in I875, whereeconomic hardship and the awakening of national sentiment hadincited the Christian peasantry to rebellion, it quickly spread across thepeninsula, with insurrection breaking out in Bulgaria in May I876 andboth Serbia and Montenegro declaring war on the Porte a month later.With the amount of Great Power interest in the region, it was alwaysunlikely that events would go unnoticed. Russia and Austria were bothintent on increasing their respective spheres of influence, and after aseries of abortive attempts were made to check Ottoman militarysuccesses against the rebels, Russia finally declared war in April i877.For Britain, interestingly, the Russian declaration further split analready divided public opinion. The dominant mood was certainly forDisraeli,23 the Tory Prime Minister, who advocated shoring up thePorte in order to check Russia and its ambitions for an independentBulgaria under Russian influence. Yet there was a small, though vocal,minority outraged by Ottoman reprisals against the Balkan population.

20 The beating of indigenes by nineteenth-century travellers was common: see, forexample, J. C. Broughton Hobhouse, A journey throughAlbania, rpt edn, New York, I97 I,pp. 77, 8o; Henderson, BritishOfficer, . I93; Emily Anne Beaufort Strangford, TheEasternShoresof theAdriatic n i863. Witha Visit toMontenegro, ondon, I 864 (hereafter, Strangford,EasternShores),p. I7; Arthur J. Evans, ThroughBosnia and theHerzegovina n Foot during heInsurrection, ugustand September875: With an HistoricalReviewof Bosnia and a Glimpseat theCroats,Slavonians, nd theAncientRepublicofRagusa,London, I 876, p. 205; and Alfred Wright,Adventuresn Servia. Or the Experiences f a Medical Free Lance amongthe Bashi-Bazouks,Etc,London, I884, p. 46.21 This reflected the strategies of other Great Powers in South-East Europe. See, forexample, Robin Okey's study of German expansionism in Eastern Europe and therepresentations deployed to justify it: Okey, 'Central Europe/Eastern Europe: Behind theDefinitions', Past andPresent, 37, 1992, pp. 102-33 (p. I 15).22 For British perceptions of the Balkans, it would be difficult to underestimate thesignificance of the events of the i87os. The period formed the first real challenge toOttoman dominion in the Balkans, and one that both increased British political involvementin the Empire and developed the pattern of representation that condoned that involvement.23 As John L. C. Booth writes, favouritism towards the Ottomans was 'the leaning of theaverage Englishman' (Booth, Troublen theBalkans,London, 1905, p. I I 5).



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6io THE USES OF BALKANISMThis was led by William Gladstone, the leader of the Opposition, and apolitical strategistunderno illusionabout the efficacyof travel literaturefor the moulding of public opinion. The life that Christiansled 'underTurkishmastery',Gladstone wrote in his preface to one journal of the1870s, 'was a life never knowing real security or peace [... .]. A lifewhich never had any of the benefitsof law [. . .]. A life which left to theChristian nothing, except what his Mahommedan master did notchance to want'.24In the face of the threat to Ottoman integrity, the discourse ofbalkanism, with its images of a ferocious, unruly, primitive Balkanpopulace, proved a cogent means by which to exonerate Britain'spreservationof the Porte for a domestic readership.The polemical AResidencen Bulgaria i 869), by S. G. B. St Clair and Charles Brophy, isone amongst many examples of how such exoneration was textuallyconducted. Writingat a time when Russia was encouraging natives torevolt, and worried about calls for enforcing improvements to theSultan's treatment of Christian subjects, these two 'sincere friends ofTurkey'make their support for the Ottoman administrationan explicittheme in the text: 'An absolute and powerful government', theyproclaim, 'or a vigorous aristocracy,are the schoolmastersof an infantpeople' for whom 'liberty, when it is neither won nor deserved,degenerates into licence, and can produce only disorder and stagna-tion'.25The only solution, therefore, is a 'genuine Turkishadministra-tion untrammelled by foreign influence'.26The view is reinforced byallocating such discord, savagery and backwardness to the Bulgarianpeasantry that a reader is left in no doubt about their aptitude forlicence and their unsuitability for self-rule. The most pertinentillustration comes at the start of the opening chapter, in which theauthors'portraitof a typical village doublesas an overtureto that set ofessentialized characteristicsof the national geniuswhich made up therepresentational paradigm. In a systematic recital of obscurantism,disorder and underdevelopment, the authors depict 'brownish' settle-ments 'not easily seen from a distance', 'cottages apparently throwntogetherwithout order', enclosures 'in every stage of dilapidation'andfarming implements 'unaltered in form since the earliest days ofagriculture'.Then, as the eye of the narratorsettles on the rural publichouses, the text goes on:

24 Gladstone, 'Preface' to MacKenzie and Irby, Travels, , p. xiii.25 St Clair and Brophy, A Residencen Bulgaria, Or,Notes on theResources ndAdministrationfTurkey.: he Condition ndCharacter,Manners,Customs, ndLanguage ftheChristian ndMussulmanPopulations,with Reference o the Eastern Question,London, I869 (hereafter, St Clair andBrophy, ResidencenBulgaria), p. 203, 368-69.26 Ibid., p. vii.



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ANDREW HAMMOND 6IIbefore the door of each is collected a knot of men, sitting cross-legged onthe ground, occupied in drinking, smoking, and discussingtheir own andtheirneighbours' affairs,very much as if they were Englishmenin England,except that, as the drugged wine produces its effect, a dispute arises, andthey startto their feet abusing one another with all the facile eloquence ofSlavonic vituperation, and draw their knives with more than Italiangesticulation. The Italian coltellatas, however, seldom given in these publicquarrels, for woman, the universal peacemaker, appears upon the scene,armed with persuasive words and a thick stick. But though her verbal ormanual arguments may stay the impending strife, she too often shares theproverbial fate of 'those who in quarrels interpose,' [. . .] and wives are assoundly thrashedin Bulgaria as in Lancashireor Clerkenwell.27

After the disorder and backwardness of rural Bulgaria have beenestablished, this evocation of endemic violence becomes the passage'scontrolling image, a violence occurring not only between racial groups,as the authors develop elsewhere, but within both the ethnically-homogenous community and that most fundamental tenet of Victoriansensibility, the family unit. More importantly, members of the com-munity lack any internal source from which to solve their internecineconflicts. The necessary restraint can come neither from the villagepatriarchs (with their 'facile eloquence') nor from the 'thick stick' oftheir womenfolk, and the final impression is of a helplessly perpetuateddiscord that clearly requires more vigorous policing on the part of anexternal presence; on the part, that is, of the Sultan.28 It is at this pointthat the passage's allusion to the English working classes gains a certainpoignancy. The deployment of comparisons between Britain and theBalkans -of Bulgarian homesteads like 'English cottages', a Bosnianlandscape like 'English country', of Serbian pasture like 'an Englishpark'29 was an intrinsic part of the Victorian and Edwardiandenigration of the region, indicating the full distance between thesepoles of Europe by the ironic placement of 'civilized' qualities in thisgrossly 'uncivilized' context. This is undoubtedly at work in the passageat hand. Yet at the same time, the author's allusions to 'Englishmen inEngland', and particularly to working class violence, play on theVictorian readership's increasing fears of an expanding proletariat,

27 Jbid., pp. 2-3. The authors go on to say that, when drunk, the Bulgarian 'prefers to stabhis adversary at an advantage, or to adopt the more silent vengeance of poison' (ibid., p. 3).28 On the internal discord of the Bulgarians, Charles Eliot would later write: '[o]ne istempted to believe that wherever there are three Bulgarians, two will combine against thethird, and the third call in foreign assistance' (Eliot ['Odysseus'], Turkej n Europe,London,1900, p- 352).29 Florence K. Berger, A Winter n theCityof Pleasure;Or,Life on theLowerDanube,London,I877 (hereafter, Berger, Cityof Pleasure),p. 26; James Creagh, Over heBorders f Christendomand Eslamiah: A JourneythroughHungagy,Slavonia,Servia,Bosnia, Herzegovina,Dalmatia, andMontenegro,o theNorthofAlbania, in the Summer f I875, 2 vols, London, i875-76, 2, p. 70;A. WV.Kinglake, Eothen,new edn, London, I948, p. 38.



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612 THE USES OF BALKANISMand do so in a way that recallshow closely cross-culturaldiscourse canmirror the discourses of class, each working to legitimate forms ofbourgeois culturalauthority.Certainly, St Clair and Brophy'sconclu-sion on the question of Bulgarian autonomy strongly reminds one ofmiddle-class paternalism: with Bulgarians being 'brutish, obstinate,idle, superstitious, dirty', the authorswrite, 'can anyone say that he iscapable of being civilized without a long and difficult course ofpreparation?'.30The political sympathy that informs the writing of St Clair andBrophy is even clearer in a series of texts that were to emerge fromBritishpresence in the Balkans during the war of I877 to I878. In amanner that would characterize the national responseto Balkancrises,the Russo-Ottoman conflict was attended by a flood of reporters,doctors, relief workers and military volunteers, as well as thoseBritons consuls, military attaches employed in more officialcapacities. The historian of the voluntary organizations, DorothyAnderson, tends to portray them aspeople of 'courage, hardiness[and]enterprise', a popular depiction of Victorians in the Balkans thatconceals both the deeper injusticesof Britishpolitical involvement andthe collusion with that involvement which Victorian memoirsachieved.3' An example in kind is the autobiographical work ofValentineBaker,an EnglishMajor-Generalwho servedin the ImperialOttoman Army from the early days of the fighting in central Bulgaria,throughthe humiliating retreat across the southern Balkansto the final,desperatedefence of Constantinople. ForBaker,a staunchdefender ofDisraelian belligerence abroad, no quarter should be given to eitherthe Russianimperialistsor the Bulgarian nsurgents.The latterenduredno particularhardshipbefore Russia stirredup 'religiousstrife', ofteninhabiting 'very prosperous' villages in 'perfect amity' with theirMuslim neighbours.32At the same time, Baker is in no doubt aboutBulgarian degeneracy, for here were a people who live in filth anddisorder, perpetrate 'fearful atrocities'and 'brutalities'on the Muslimpopulation and, also, in an infuriating instance of Balkanobfuscation,'give no information which could be in any way relied upon'.33Indeed,so sure is Baker that the Bulgarians are undeserving of sympathy thathis command of the Ottoman force is depicted with a pathos withwhich the reader is clearly invited to empathize. The point is illustrated30 St Clair and Brophy, ResidencenBulgaria,p. 408.31 Dorothy Anderson, TheBalkanVolunteers,ondon, i968, P. 205.32 Baker, War n Bulgaria:A NarrativeofPersonalExperiences, vols, London, I 879 (hereafter,Baker, War nBulgaria),, pp. 273-74.33 Ibid., I, pp. 255, 320, 9; 2, p. 276. This very pro-Ottoman pattern of representation,mixing imputed Bulgarian degeneracy with a general sense of inter-ethnic harmony underthe Porte, is closely repeated by Fife-Cookson's depiction of pre-war Bulgarian society, inFife-Cookson, ArmiesoftheBalkans,pp. 52-56, 104-05.



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ANDREW HAMMOND 6I3by his sketch of the battle at 'Tashkessen', where Baker's troops,including Bosniansand Albanians, achieve a victory over the Russiansthat gains this 'daring Englishman'34 romotion to Lieutenant-General.At the moment of triumph, when his men 'climbed upon the rocks,their faces fierce with the light of battle [. . .], and hurled out defianceat the retiring foe', Baker writes

There are moments in the past of many a man's career that stand out clearand defined after the lapse of even many years: life-pictures, the verymemory of which bringsback a gloriousthrill of pride and pleasure.This isthe feeling which vibrates through me still, when I recall that last andclosing scene which crowned the hard-fought fightof Tashkessen.35Such emotionalism can best be explained by the fact that Baker'sallegiance to the Porte is first and foremost an allegiance to Britain.With the Russian policy being 'to sap the foundations of our IndianEmpire', as he himself puts it, Britain must offer Turkey 'that true andhonest assistance which will enable her to reorganize her empire on anestablished and permanent footing', and do so 'with the same energyand determination that characterized our forefathers, and whichenabled them to raise the British Empire to the pinnacle of greatnessand influence'.36According to this stridently imperialisticvision, notonly is support for Balkan national aspirations absent from Britishpolicy, but British policy is actively dependent on their continuedsubjugationto the Sultan.The support of British strategyin South-East Europe was not alwaysas explicitly stated in autobiographicalwritings. The interest of manyof the texts lies, as suggested, in how the conceptual structures ofbalkanismlegitimize the dominant political intent the continuationof Ottoman rule while seeming to have no overt stakein the politicaldebate. H. A. Brown may foresee the Ottoman departure fromAlbania, for example, but his continual evocation of Albanian back-wardness, violence and disorder -and this during an age when suchattributeswere seen to characterizecolonized populations producesno sense that their departure is an urgent political requirement.Interestingly, the same resultcan occur in travelogues whose stance onthe Eastern Question is ostensibly anti-Ottoman. Henry Barkley istrenchant about Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, in both his Between heDanube ndBlackSea(1876) and BulgariaBefore he War i 877), yet at thesame time his portraitof the indigenous populations relies so strongly

34 Frederick William von Herbert, By-Paths in the Balkans, London, I906, p. I5. Bakertended to draw very positive comment from his contemporaries; see also Fife-Cookson,Armiesof the Balkans,p. I 46, and Ardern G. Hulme-Beaman, TwentyYears n the Near East,London, I898, pp. 89-92.35 Baker, War nBulgaria,, p. 157.36 Ibid., 2, pp. 389, 386-87, 39I.



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614 THE USES OF BALKANISMon balkanist paradigms that self-rule seems neither possible nordesirable.37 n Servicen ServiaunderheRed CrossI877), Emma Pearsonand Louisa McLaughlin even depict the autonomous Serbia, whosepeople they have gone over to nurse, with the familiar mixture ofbackwardness and barbarism, giving no sense of why Serbia hadwarrantedautonomy or could deserve independence.38Indeed, duringthe late I870s, so steadilywere balkanistrepresentationscirculatinginthe homeland that it was no surprisethe Turkophilesfinally got theirway. AfterRussia defeated the Portein the war, Disraelihad wasted notime in revokingthe Treatyof San Stefano- by which Russiamappedout an enlarged Bulgaria ikelyto facilitate its control of Constantinopleand the Straits and in helping to convene a conference at Berlin toachieve a more satisfactorypeace. For the pro-Ottoman lobby, so ablysupportedby balkanistwriting, the Treaty of Berlin was a resounding'victory':39 substantialportion of Bulgariawas returned to the Porte,Russia pushed back from Constantinople and the Ottoman Empiregranted a reprieve. The routes to India had been preserved.Denying the possibility of independence to the Balkan regions wasnot the only consequence of the representationalstrategy of travellersand expatriates.Along with itsjustificationof continued Ottoman rulein the region, such strategy also created a kind of political distancebetween South-EastEurope and the West, a sense of mutual isolation,or extreme disassociation,which effectivelymasked the intimacy thatWestern diplomacy often had with Balkan misfortune. After all, thatreputedly turbulent peninsula met with in British travel writing musthave seemed to bear scant relation indeed to the peaceful and morallyirreproachable civilization at the other end of Europe, especially inthose texts that refused allusion to the West's 'Near Eastern'policies.

37 Barkley, BetweentheDanubeand theBlack Sea. Or, Five rears in Bulgaria,London, i876;Barkley, Bulgaria before the War. During Seven rears' Experienceof EuropeanTurkey and ItsInhabitants,London, I877.38 'It is a great mistake of the wellwishers of these lands', they write, 'to use enthusiasticterms in praising this people', and go on to add, 'we could not admit that the nation was faron the path of progress, or even likely to influence European politics. The people were nobetter than those of other lands' (Pearson and McLaughlin, Service n Serviaunder heRedCross,London, I877, pp. 347-48). The authors accept Serbian autonomy, but categoricallyand repeatedly deny any legitimacy to the extension of territory that the Serbians desired

(see ibid., pp. 4-5, 15-I6, 25).39Anderson's epithet for the treaty: M. S. Anderson (ed.), TheGreatPowersandtheNearEast,I774-1923, London, 1970, p. io8. After mentioning its deleterious effects on Bulgaria andMacedonia, he says: 'Serbia and Montenegro gained relatively little by the treaty andGreece nothing; this disregard of the ambitions and claims of the small Balkan nationalitieswas its most fundamental defect' (ibid., p. I09). Brantlinger, recognizing the importance ofthe Ottoman Empire to British imperial designs, writes that 'a crusading spirit [. . .]always at least implicitly imperialist informs most nineteenth-century British writing thattook the Near East for its subject' (Patrick Brantlinger, RuleofDarkness.BritishLiterature ndImperialism,830-1914, Ithaca, NY and London, I988, p. 137).



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ANDREW HAMMOND 6I5Once that all-important reference was elided,40 the existence andadverse results of Western policy were irrevocably lost amongst themore visible imagery, and evaluation, of balkanist discourse. Theeffects of Western-sanctionedOttoman rule in Macedonia, for exam-ple, or the disastrous effects of the Berlin Conference (which, byhanding southern Bulgaria to the Porte, handing Bosnia-Herzegovinato the Dual Monarchy, and drawing up insensitive borders elsewhere,effectively ensured future bloodshed across the peninsula41), becameless a part and parcel of Great Power interference than simply theconsequence of those congenital flaws that had always bedevilled theBalkans.

This creation of distance in British travel writing is important tointroduce, as it was central to the next featureof British involvementinthe Near East I wish to analyse, that of financial investment.After theeconomically crippling impact of the Crimean War, the Ottomangovernmentcommenced upon a series of loans frompublic and privateinstitutionsin the West which, due to its increasinglylavish scale, drewthe Empire into an ever-degeneratingspiralof expenditure,borrowingand debt. By I874, some ?200 million had been issued to the Porte onthe London marketalone, the payment of debt coming to account foran extraordinary43.9 per cent of national revenue. As Misha Glennyhas shown, the outcome for the Empire was not only lack of internalinvestment and infrastructural development, but an onerous taxburden on the Balkan peasantrywhich resulted, particularlyafter thefinancial crash of I873, in many of those problems such as widespreadfamine, poverty and discontent that balkanistswere blaming on theindigenes.42As Glenny goes on to mention, this unquenchable searchfor investment in Eastern Europe did not limit itself to the Ottomangovernment. At the end of the nineteenth century, once their ties withthe Porte finally loosened, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria were alsoadvanced loans by the Great Powers and, with much of that moneybeing spent amongst the Westernarms manufacturers(strongnationalarmies being deemed as useful an obstacle to Russian advance as a40 Upward's allusion to '[t]he Europe which plays the part of Providence for the Balkanworld' (Upward, East End,p. 50) is unusual.41 See Misha Glenny, TheBalkans 804-iggg. Nationalism, Warand theGreatPowers,London,

1999 (hereafter, Glenny, Balkans),p. 149. Stavrianos writes that '[f ]or the Balkan peoples[...] the Berlin Treaty meant not peace with honor but rather frustration of nationalaspirations and future wars. The direct and logical outcome of the Berlin settlement wasthe Serbian-Bulgarian War of I885, the Bosnian crisis of i908, the two Balkan wars of19 12- I9 I3, and the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in I914' (L. S. Stavrianos, T7heBalkanssince 453, New York, I963 [hereafter, Stavrianos, Balkans], p. 412).42 Glenny claims 'that a combination of European fiscal recklessness and Turkish [sic]profligacy played an important role in sparking off the Great Eastern Crisis: Glenny,Balkans,p. go. I am indebted to Glenny's discussion of British financial involvement (seeibid., pp. 84-90).



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6I6 THE USES OF BALKANISMstrong Ottoman Empire), bankruptcyand Western control overdomestic conomiesbegan oprevail hroughoutheregion.43 y I914,for example,Romania'sdebtburden otalled 7 billion rancsand thatof Bulgaria850 million francs, with 30 per cent of the latter'sgovernmentevenuebeingusedtopayoff theburden.44An early exampleof the elisionin travel writingof the cripplingeffectsof debt on the independent tates comes in FlorenceBerger'sportraitof Romaniain A WinterntheCity fPleasureI877). Formedfrom the unitedprincipalities f Moldaviaand Wallachia, he Roma-nianstate had been establishedessthantwentyyearsbeforeBerger'ssojourn, and amongst the various difficulties o emerge was thenecessity o cover he costofbuildingtsarmy,roads,railways ndcivicdevelopmentwith foreigncapital.The oneroustaskof meetingeventhe interestrepayments n theseloans,an unheardof burdenbeforethe union,wasbecoming ncreasingly nlikelybythe I870s (the hightaxationof thepeasantry avingalreadyedto eviction, mpoundmentand sporadicunrest),and in I877 the deficitwas such that Bergerclaimsnothingcould 'saveRoumania rom hebankruptcy hichmustoverwhelmherat no verydistantdate'.45The importantpointabouther portrait f thecountry,however,s thatwhilereference o nationaldebt smade,the economicproblemsplaguinghecountryareascribedtowholly ocal,evencongenital,actors.Ofcentral oncern s whatsheviewsasthe depravity ftheboyars,orlandedgentry:t isthisdissolutegroupof land-owners, ivento gambling, icentiousness ndprofligacy,thathas madeBucharest otonlya placeof terriblemoral corruption'(p. 73) the authortermingit 'the 'Babylonof the Apocalypse'(p. 134) but alsoone of unrelieved conomic wretchedness'p. 45).Theboyar'smixtureof extravagance nd sloth, or nstance, iesbehindthecity'sstartlingnequalities, rindingpovertyand thoroughabsence

43 See ibid., pp. 2 Ig-21. Okey also comments on what he terms 'a chain of increasinglydependent economies, each one in turn more heavily fettered to its more powerful Westernneighbours' (Robin Okey, EasternEurope, I740-I985. Feudalism o Communism, nd edn,London and New York, I986, p. II7). See also John R. Lampe and Marvin R. Jackson,BalkanEconomicHistory,I550-1950: From mperialBorderlandsoDevelopingNations,Blooming-ton, IN, i982, pp. 2I0-36.44 Stavrianos, Balkans,p. 419. Stavrianos offers a good discussion of the 'intensive Westerneconomic penetration' of the Balkans during the late nineteenth century, an imperialismwhich was pursued via government loans, the building of railways and the influx of Westernproducts (ibid., pp. 413-19).45 Berger, Cityof Pleasure,p. 235. Future references to Berger's travelogue will be given inthe text.



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ANDREW HAMMOND 6I7of any high cultural landmarks.46 At the same time, such iniquities havealso devastated the countryside, a point Berger makes throughcontrasting the boyar, and his decadent lifestyle, with the peasant fromwhom the boyar draws his income. 'What points of resemblance arethere', Berger asks,

between that well-dressed cynical offshoot of a hot-bed civilization, the fitof whose gloves is of more moment to him than the rise and fall of empires,who reclines back in his elegant carriagethat is paid for (if it be paid for atall) by the tithes wrung from the toil of his wretched brother [. . .] andthat degraded son of the soil who pashes doggedly along in the mire withsoddened rags bound round his feet and legs by thongs, a foul sheepskindanglingfrom his shoulders,his brown bosom bare to the winter'sblast, hislong matted hair fallingover his face and eyes? (pp. 74-75)This rather romantic sketch of rural poverty ('his brown bosom bare tothe winter's blast') should not be taken as a form of unconditionalsympathy. For Berger, the corruption to be found within the gentry ismerely part of a self-perpetuating cycle of economic helplessness bywhich the boyar's rapacity produces 'moral depression' and 'apatheticstupor' amongst the peasantry, as the victim of rapacity 'bows his headand makes no effort at all to improve his condition' (pp. 148-49),which in turn strengthens the hand of the boyar. As with most othertravellers of the times, it is not the country's independent standing withwhich Berger is at odds: on the subject of Romania, Serbia, andMontenegro, all of whom had their independence ratified at Berlin,British travellers tended to concede that there was no going back to thedays of Ottoman suzerainty.47 What seemed a long way of, however,was the accordance to these three states of the respect shown toGermany or Italy, travellers often evoking them via the same represen-tational framework that was being deployed for colonized regions. Increating a sense of distance between the two poles of Europe, thebalkanist would be seen to blame economic and social crises on innate

46 Culturally, Bucharest is evoked negatively: 'no traveller comes to Bucharest either outof curiosity or a desire for amusement. There are no temples as on the Acropolis [. . .]; nofrescoes as in the Sistine Chapel; no perfect specimens of a lost art, as in the colouredwindows of the Dom at Koln. There are no opera-houses as on the Boulevard desCapucines and in the Opera-Ring; no cafes as at Naples; no bull-fights as at Seville; nodancing dervishes as at Pera; no skating-rinks and polo-clubs as in London' (ibid., p. 39).One is reminded here of Lear's sketch of an Albanian inn as 'a negative abode, and quiteout of the question as a lodging for the night, for there were no walls to the rooms, noceiling, no floors, no roofs, no windows, no anything' (Lear, Landscape ainter,p. 93).

47 Ozanne and Arnold are significant exceptions, believing respectively thatRomania and Serbia should pass back to imperial rule (see J. W. Ozanne, ThreeYears nRoumania,London, I 878, pp. 225-26; Arnold, From heLevant,2, pp. 235-36).



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6i8 THE USES OF BALKANISMfactors rather than on its entrance into a globalizing economy that hadalreadyleft the Balkans farbehind.48Up until now I have focused on the mid-Victorian period, a time inwhich the conceptual structuresof balkanism and the writer'sconfidenthandling of those structures came to achieve their full expression.During the decades to come, however, balkanist discourse would be farfrom static. The late nineteenth century was one of acceleratednationalism in the Ottoman and Austriandominions, and as insurrec-tionist activity in areas like Macedonia and southern Bulgarialookedset to free them from the Porte, rivalry, hostility,mutual suspicionandfears for continental peace and stability began to grow throughoutWestern Europe. This accretion of Great Power animosity, a vitalfeature of high imperialism, in turn gave rise to an intensification ofbalkanist discourse. This was exemplified in British and Americantravel writing on Macedonia (the latter starting to form a significantpercentage of the traveloguessold on the Britishmarket).Here, a groupof reporters, many of them young men, began playing more systemati-cally on the motifs of intrigue, discord and violence, as well as on theregisters of suspense and romance, conscious of the region's reputationas a threat not merely to the safety of the travelling personage but tothe peace of an entire continent. The Balkanswere, to cite two of thosewriters, 'hotbeds of outlawry and brigandage, where you must travelwith a revolver in each pocket and your life in your hand', and wherethe rivalries surrounding this 'hell-pot of anarchy' would inevitablycreate 'a grave crisis for ... .1Europe'.49Even though the condemna-tion of Ottoman rule had become pronounced,50 the indigenouspopulation failed to receive preferential treatment.The late nineteenthcentury was the period, in short, when 'Balkan' emerged as thegeographical designation for these emerging nations, but also beganhovering somewhere between geographical expression and evaluativejudgement.

48 There is something in the comment of the Hungarian who reputedly exclaims to Crosse,'[y]ou Britishers are rash in your impatient criticism of a state which has not come to its fullgrowth. It is hardly thirty years since we emerged from the middle ages, so to speak; andyou expect our civilisation to have the well-worn polish of Western States' (AndrewF. Crosse, Roundabout heCarpathians, dinburgh and London, I878, pp. I96-97).49Harry de Windt, Through avageEurope.Being theNarrativeof a 3ourney hroughoutheBalkanStates and EuropeanRussia, new edn, London and Glasgow, c. I908 (hereafter, de Windt,SavageEurope),p. iI; John Foster Fraser, PicturesfromheBalkans,new edn, London and NewYork, 1912, pp. 29I, 290. For other examples of such commentary on Macedonia, see JohnL. C. Booth, Troublen theBalkans,London, 1905; Frederick Moore, TIheBalkan Trial, rptedn, New York, 197 I; and Reginald Wyon, TheBalkansfromWithin,London, 1904.

50 Robert Macfie's ['Andreas'] WithGypsies nBulgaria,Liverpool, i 9 i 6, and Upward's EastEnd of Europeare two very rare examples of early twentieth-century texts that still offer apro-Ottoman stance.



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ANDREW HAMMOND 6I9An important feature of the period, and the final one for our theme,was the growing interest of travellers in Austro-Hungarian imperialismin the Balkans. The Habsburgs had long desired stability in the regions

south of their empire, although, like Britain, had tended to prefer acurtailing of Russian interest in South-East Europe to actual territorialacquisition. With the events of the I87os, however, the time seemedripe for a more aggressive policy. At the Congress of Berlin, Austriagained the right to administer not only the Ottoman territories ofBosnia and Herzegovina, a lucrative region contiguous to AustrianDalmatia, but also the sandzak of Novi Pazar: a slice of what is nowsouthern Serbia that would gain the 'imperialists' a powerful footholdin the central Balkans. In I 908, with both Serbian pro-Russianism andthe Young Turk Revolution threatening their position, Austria finallypushed through the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and, withno real opposition forthcoming, looked set to become the major powerplayer in South-East Europe. All this found wide coverage in Britishtravel writing of the period and, moreover, the mood amongst travellerswas generally favourable to Austrian occupancy, at least until Austria'srelations with the new, ambitious Germany became more ominous.Although the Ottoman presence in the Balkans proved increasinglydifficult to justify, this support for Austro-Hungarian colonialism showshow the denial of self-rule to a Balkan people was still being attemptedin British travel writing by the turn of the twentieth century.

William Miller's Travels and Politics in the Near East (I898) is anexample of how this late justification of Empire worked. In a mannertypical of the period, his broad, extensive survey of the Balkanpeninsula finds very little to admire: on the one hand, progress withinsuch Ottoman territories as Albania and Macedonia is being held backby internal strife and barbarous administration; on the other, indepen-dent states like Serbia or Bulgaria, even though their perceived religiousand racial unity are believed to legitimize independence, are tormentedby the 'Oriental methods'51 of the indigenous governments. The onlyregions to gain Miller's wholehearted approval are those under whathe considers the propitious rule of Austria,52 a view exemplified by hischapters on Bosnia-Herzegovina, where in 'perhaps the most remark-able experiment in the government of an Oriental country' (p. xiv) theAustrian occupation is seen to be methodically eradicating the historical

51 Miller, Travelsand Politics in theNear East, London, I898 (hereafter, Miller, TravelsandPoaitics),p. 464. Future references to Miller's volume will be given in the text.52 This tendency to support the independence of certain regions while denying the nationalaspirations of others is summarized in Miller's comment that '[t]here seems to be no reasonwhy those independent Balkan states, whose subjects are mainly of one race and religion,should not continue to preserve their independence. But it is obvious that a Great Power,which is impartial in its treatment of conflicting races and creeds, is alone qualified togovern those debatable lands [. . .] where national unity is impossible' (ibid., p. 503).



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620 THE USES OF BALKANISMiniquities of Bosnian and Ottoman culture. When representing theshortcomings of the past, Miller's reliance on the signifying practice ofbalkanism recalls, yet again, that practice's kinship with colonialdiscourse.53 The region is defined by its lack of those features thatcomprise the Western nation-state, with Miller evoking primitiveagriculture and undeveloped industry, as well as an abject failure todevelop either the communications or the governmental systemrequired for a successful modern economy. This portrait of backward-ness, itself an argument for colonial rule, is augmented by the author'sconstant discovery of discord. His Bosnia is that recognizable place ofWestern fantasy where 'fanaticism' (p. go), 'lack of law and order'(p. 122) and 'the animosities of rival creeds' (p. I 03) have led to a 'reignof anarchy which four centuries of Turkish rule had failed to whollyquell' (p. go). With the presence of such animosity, barbarism is almostinevitable. Miller makes reference to the usual mixture of vendetta,violent crime and bloodshed, problems which at one point lead to adirect comparison between some 'weird-looking aborigines' along theauthor's route and their 'barbarian' forebears 'who struck terror intothe hearts of the old Roman legionaires' (p. I 32).It is into this condition of lack that Miller brings the plenitude ofAustro-Hungarian imperialism. Befitting the duality of Bosnian pastand Austrian present, symbolic of the wider duality of South-EastEurope and the West, Miller constructs the imperial project as anentirely benign occupancy, whose tolerant 'respect' (p. I I 7) for nativeways is the clear antithesis of the imputed depravity afflicting otherparts of the peninsula. In the first instance, the occupation is doingmuch to end the discord and savagery which has ravaged Bosnianhistory, the author creating the impression that an improved system oflaw and a hard-working civil service have produced a significantly'greater security of life and property' (p. 96). At the same time,backwardness is being gradually eroded through the institution of landreform, modern husbandry, road and rail networks, healthcare,education and trade; in short, all those 'solid material advantageswhich impartial European administration alone can bestow upon sucha composite country'.54 As St Clair and Brophy also argue in the

53 The connection is no better illustrated than by a comparative reading of Miller and anexample of Austro-Hungarian imperial propaganda, such as J. de Asboth's An OfficialTourthroughBosnia and Herzegovina:With an Accountof the Histoy, Antiquities,AgrarianConditions,Religion,Ethnology,FolkLore,and SocialLifeof thePeople,London, I890. The two agree on theextent of past shortcomings in the region and on the improvements of Austrian rule.54 Miller, Travelsand Politics, p. 9I. These 'advantages' are contrasted to the 'barren andimpracticable glories of the great Servian idea ', the dream Serbia had of regaining theterritories, like Bosnia-Herzegovina, that composed its medieval Empire. This ambitionmade Belgrade one of Austria's major opponents in the region, and is presumably thereason why Miller is so disparaging of Serbian self-government (see ibid., p. 9 I).



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ANDREW HAMMOND 62IBulgarian context, Miller acknowledges that the 'powers of self-government' (p. I I8) may well be awarded to Bosnia after a time, butclaims that for now, the Austrians having 'expended large sums ofmoney and a great store of energy in reclaiming this beautiful landfrom barbarism', the idea that it 'should [... .] be allowed to go back tobarbarism is an absurdity of which even the Concert of Europewould not be guilty' (p. 128). Indeed, so enamoured is Miller of thesuccesses in Bosnia, that he actually advocates further appropriation ofthe sandzak and Macedonia, an expansion which including as itwould both Thessaloniki and the major communications channel of theVardar valley -might have brought Austrian power all the way to theAegean. At this point, it should come as no surprise to find that hispromulgation of foreign imperialism is not the detached appreciationof empire that it seems, but yet another instance of that ongoing Britishobsession: routes to the Far East. As Miller himself writes in a chapteron Thessaloniki (Salonika),

the development and security of Macedonia is a European, as well as aBalkan, question. I am told, by a person who has seen the plans, thatAustrian engineers have surveyed the line from Sarajevo to Mitrovica,which is alone lacking to complete the chain from WesternEurope by wayof Bosnia and the Sandzak [sic]of Novi-Bazar to Salonika and the Aegean.If that line be completed [... .] Salonikawill become the greatest port in theNear East, and the quickest route to India will be through the valley of theVardar. (pp. 388-89)

In such passages, one finds Miller's call for the possession of the centralBalkans to be 'in the hands of the only civilized power which issufficiently strong and sufficiently near to hold it' (pp. I86-87)becoming an essential feature of Britain's own imperial strategy, andone which like British support for Ottoman rule -is reliant on theongoing subjugation of indigenous Balkan populations.55 It would bewrong to infer that all the travel books of the period were as explicitlypro-Austrian as Miller's. But there were few which questioned Austria-Hungary's right to be in either Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovinaor Transylvania, and their tendency to represent these parts of theBalkans as rather quaint, picturesque and ultimately peaceful regions

55 Evans's argument that Austria should advance in the region in order to ensure thatRussian ambition is checked amounts to the same subjugation: see Arthur J. Evans, IllyrianLetters.A RevisedSelectionof Correspondencerom the Illyrian Provincesof Bosnia, Herzegovina,Montenegro, lbania,Dalmatia, Croatia,andSlavonia,Addressedo the 'ManchesterGuardian' uringthe rear1877, London, I878, pp. 69-70.



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622 THE USES OF BALKANISMresulted, finally, in the very same exoneration of Austro-Hungarianhegemony.56To conclude, this essay has attempted to introduce the patterns ofsupremacy that underlie the British concept of the Balkans. My aimhas been to show how types of personal and national activity- socialrelations, state alliances, financial policy formed a framework ofpower with which travel writing's knowledge of the Balkans wouldinterconnect, the two forming a tradition of significationand practicewhich manufacturedthe region as one suitablefor domination. This isnot to say that a writer like Lear was conscious of the imperialistbentof his work,57or that a political observer like Miller was anything butprofoundlyconvinced of the benefits of imperialrule. It was simplythatBritons felt themselves part of a genuinely superior culture, whosevalues, traditionsand assessmentsthey naturallyadvocated when facedwith what was to them the pronounced inferiorityof the Balkans.This binarist method of seeing and scripting South-East Europe hadtwo (whatwe could term) political results. For Britain,such representa-tion reinforced the fundamental rightnessf those creeds that stoodbehind Victoriansociety, governmentand law, entrenchingthe systemsof power in circulation by constructing the Balkans as a poignantexample of what happens in their absence. For the Balkans, thesignifyingpracticesof balkanism created a region whose 'disunion andbarbarism'58 ould only warrant Great Power interventionand control,a control easily justified as a beneficial 'civilizing'mission. In fact, thepolitical implication of the motifs that travel writers included in theirwork is heightened when noting what they chose to leave out. In theVictorian and Edwardian periods, the historical awareness thatunderpinned national formation elsewhere on the continent waspointedly absent as an area of study in travel writing, as was any real

56 For other examples of explicit support for the Austrian occupation of the westernBalkans: de Windt, SavageEurope,pp. 83-85, I IO- I I; Dunkin, Landof theBora, pp. I 92-95;Munro, RamblesandStudies,pp. 390-95; J. M. Neale, Notes, Ecclesiological ndPicturesque,nDalmatia, Croatia, stria,Styari,witha Visit oMontenegro, ondon, i 86 i, pp. vi, 94; and FrancesKinsley Hutchinson, Motoring n the Balkans along theHighways of Dalmatia, Montenegro, heHerzegovina ndBosnia,London, I9IO, pp. 226, 260.57 This is not to say, either, that a traveller was necessarily unconscious f the politicalimplications of denigratory representation. For example, Patrick O'Brien reveals a perfectawareness of those implications in his critique of the customary denigration of theRomanian principalities, a region O'Brien wants to be kept out of Russian hands. 'LetEurope be made to believe that these Principalities are barbarous tracts', he writes,'inhabited by a set of profligate semi-barbarians, and the crime of seizing upon them will beoverlooked in the thought of the good which may be thus done to the cause of civilisationand virtue' (O'Brien, journal ofa Residencen theDanubianPrincipalities,n theAutumn nd Winterof i853, London, I854, p. 74).58 Muir MacKenzie and Irby, Travels, , p. 86.



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ANDREW HAMMOND 623consideration of regional literature, language and religion.59 Theinclusions and exclusions of balkanist signification, emerging from theself/other dynamic informing an imperial age, measured the peninsulanegatively against the West's standard for nationhood, and in doing sosurrendered it to Western control. And although this control rarelyinvolved the direct settlement of territory, the term 'absentee colonial-ism'60 springs insistently to mind. Certainly, in the common tropesbalkanism shared with colonial rhetoric, in the common comparisonsbetween the Balkans and colonial Africa, India, Ireland and the SouthSeas,6' and particularly in the positions of influence Britons wouldcommonly gain in the Ottoman 'Near East' within the army, policeforce, local administrations and government62 there are clear linksto the nation's treatment of, and behaviour within, its actual colonies.It is the arena of power-knowledge, to return to my openingcomments on balkanism and postcolonialism, that is so important toanalyse in any study of Western discourse on South-East Europe. Thisessay has only managed briefly to address one small aspect of the topic.There is much work yet to be done, for example, on the conjunction ofrepresentation and power during the twentieth and twenty-first centu-ries, when the West has achieved an uninterrupted engagement withSouth-East European economic and political realities. Here, Westernconceptualization (which is far from the unified paradigm that somesuggest) has interacted with complex and shifting patterns of power,including venture capitalism, German and Italian expansionism, ColdWar diplomacy and the post- I989 involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo.In analysing such events, one quickly discerns that the wider signifyingtradition of which balkanism is a part, and which is known as colonialdiscourse, can exonerate a much wider range of political manifestations59 As Minchin, a reasonably uncommon supporter of the region's national movements,recognized, the question of whether a people 'possess[ed] a language, a literature, a past' oftheir own had direct relevance to whether they would also possess 'a future of their own'(Minchin, Growthof Freedom, . I 79). Most travel writers of the period denied the Balkanpeoples all of these. St Clair and Brophy offer an illustration of such denial when they claimthat the 'Rayah [... .] has no history and therefore no fatherland' (St Clair and Brophy,ResidencenBulgaria,p. 307).60 See Johannes Fabian, Timeand the Other.How,AnthropologyVlakes ts Object,New York,

I983, p- 69.61 Such allusions exist in almost all travel texts of the period. Henderson and Upward, oldcolonial hands in India and Nigeria respectively, are particularly interesting for theircontinual comparisons between the travelled environment in the Balkans and those of theirformer residences comparisons that also involve a clear sympathy for Austria and thePorte. See Henderson, BritishOfficer nd Upward, East End.62 For examples of the very real command and influence that both individuals and nationalcommissions have gained in the Balkans, see Arnold, FromtheLevant, , pp. 220-2 I; H. C.Woods, WashedbyFourSeas.An EnglishOfficer'cTravelsn theNearEast, London and Leipzig,

I908, p. 105; Strangford, EasternShores,p. 207; Fanny Blunt, Reminiscences, ondon, I9I8,pp. 45, 93-94, I88-89, 192-93, Robert Graves, StormCentresof the Near East: PersonalM1emories879-I929, London, 1933, pp. 200, 204, 253.



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624 THE USES OF BALKANISMthan merely settlementcolonialism.The importanceof the criticalstudyof balkanism, wouldsuggest, ies in exactlythis fact: t entailsboth the analysisof non-colonialelationsf powerand the analysisofthese relationswithin urope,opicsthathave rarelybeen addressednpostcolonialcriticism.If such a focus is pursued more vigorously,Fleming'snotion that scholarship n balkanism ould 'contribute'othe wider debates on culturaland racial discoursemight well bevindicated.63

63 See Fleming, 'Orientalism', . 123 I .

the uses of balkanism

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