Refugee Return and Resettlement in Habsburg-Occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1878–79

This paper examines efforts to return and resettle refugees in Bosnia and Herzegovina following the occupation—but not annexation—of the Ottoman provinces by Austria-Hungary in 1878. After three years of violence that forced hundreds of thousands of mainly Orthodox Christian refugees to Habsburg territory, the occupation held out new hope for success where earlier attempts at return and resettlement had failed. The paper argues that having established the refugee question as a benchmark of the efficacy of Ottoman rule not long after the start of the violence, Austro-Hungarian authorities placed high priority on refugee return when the provinces came under their own administration. The ability to solve the refugee question successfully would bolster an eventual Habsburg claim to sovereign power in the provinces. Moreover, at a time of growing territorial nationalism across the Balkans, the return of Christian refugees to the largely Muslim provinces would represent the continued viability of the imperial model of the multi-ethnic state. Nevertheless, the paper shows that the occupation did not immediately overcome many of the obstacles to return and repatriation that had existed while the provinces were under direct Ottoman administration. Like the Ottomans before them, Habsburg authorities were alarmed by their inability to monitor and control voluntary return, and dismayed by the low numbers of official" refugee returns; the new bureaucracy was often unable to solve larger structural problems that inhibited the process. An end to the violence proved to be a necessary, albeit insufficient condition for return.