FEUILLETON The foreign factor and the construction of the Albanian nation (4): Kallay's mission to transfer the "spirit of the West" to the Balkans

Writing for Kosovo Online: Dragan Bisenic

What Pashko Vasa attempted, Baryaktar refers to as "organizing history", and elsewhere as "shaping" and "recreating history".

Although Vasa did not have a specific definition for what the "Albanians advocated for", he trusted more in the excavations he undertook than in their confusing aspects. The uncertainty about the "people" and "ethnic affiliation" should not lead to a linear development culminating in nation-states.

In other words, while nationalist fervor in the Balkans was highly effective, the discourse revealed by different Balkan nationalisms was not limited to the ideals of the nation-state "per se".

Challenging the alleged inevitability of the Balkan nation-state and the apparent inter-community antagonisms, Isa Blumi criticizes the "myths of the region regarding common identities and the particular significance of ethnic nationhood". Taking into account Vasa's loyalty to the Ottoman administration, as well as the Albanian nationalist goals specifically, someone's collective identity might not be so straightforward as each respective community or ethnic unit tries to maintain certain but contradictory interests, Baryaktar notes.

Albanianism as a religion

As will be evident in the following sections, Vasa's identity linked to Albanian nationalism did not ultimately lead him to sever all ties with the Sublime Porte. Regarding ethnonationalism in such a context, it not only contributes to constantly changing interests but also establishes different agencies in the discourse of modernization.

Baryaktar concludes that Vasa "created a mythological Albanian identity" to "resolve the religious question of the Albanians". His mythological statement is: "The religion of the Albanians is Albanianism".

His enthusiasm was directed towards discovering the "eternal Albanian" in the future, if not beyond it. Inheriting the theories of his compatriots, he was very aware that myths were necessary for establishing a nation that was not yet recognized in European circles. Therefore, Vasa enhanced what he borrowed from the Pelasgian-Illyrian theory to channel knowledge into political Albanianism against the Greek threat at the time. In the end, he committed to adding essential bricks to the myths of Albanian nationalism.

The fact that myths did not appear in a uniform perspective must be sought within the "childish nationalism" of Vasa's historical writing. Nevertheless, successors of Albanian nationalism, such as Sami Frasheri and Faik Konica, carried out the construction of pillars, thereby reinforcing political Albanism.

The political manifesto of the Albanian Renaissance by Sami Frasheri, "Albania – as it was, is, and will be. Thoughts on saving the homeland from its dangers", emerged during the time of the Albanian League of Peja (1899 - 1900). In it, he presented a future government with a liberal, modern constitution that included European civil rights. The days of the Ottoman Empire were numbered, and the Albanians could only rely on themselves if the empire were to collapse.

The Albanians were not Ottomans, and they had to fight for their own rule regardless of religious affiliation. The situation in the Empire and changes in European politics must be taken into account. Bektashis saw the future of their people in adapting to Western European patterns and created an almost complete national-historical image that formed the basis for the historiography of Albania by the later president of the Albanian Academy of Sciences, Aleks Buda, after 1945.

Recent research by the Albanian historian Raimo Beluli and the Hungarian historian Krisztian Csaplar-Degovics has now shown that Lajos von Thalloczy played the most significant role in the endeavor for the Albanians to become a nation.

The key factor in this was the appointment of Benjamin Kallay as the finance minister of the Dual Monarchy in 1882. Due to uprisings, Austria-Hungary could not immediately realize its annexationist ideas towards Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Berlin Congress of 1878, although it had the right to do so after the decision of the Triple Alliance in 1881. The uprising in Herzegovina in 1882 was directly related to this foreign policy defeat of the Habsburg Monarchy and its failure in new Balkan conquests.

Kallay had the same political profile as the Croatian Ban Khuen-Hedervary but with much more refined governance skills. Both aimed to prevent the political unification of the Serbs and the Croats and thus prevent the breakdown of the dualistic structure of the monarchy, but the means used to achieve this goal were different. Kallay considered the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina as the main enemies, while Hedervary in Croatia used them against the consolidation of Croatian national opposition.

The purpose of Kallay's regime in Bosnia and Herzegovina was administrative and technological modernization, with simultaneous efforts to create an artificial nation, whose basis would be the Muslim feudal nobility. For this undertaking, his most important collaborator would be Lajos Thalloczy, who, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, specifically from Sarajevo, would transfer the same methods and goals to the Albanian population.

Relying on Muslim beys was a reflection of the situation that existed in Hungary after 1867. For Muslim agas and beys, Kallay claimed that they were the "state-forming element" familiar with the land and people and the only ones capable of ruling. Although, as a professional historian, Kallay considered the Serbian population as a part of the Serbian nation in his books on the Serbs, in political practice, he adhered to the Hungarian idea of separating the concept of the "political nation" in society from the ethnic affiliation of its population and defining the nation based on the first concept.

The spirit of the East and the spirit of the West

Kallay defined the ideological foundation of his policy in the study "Hungary on the Border of the East and West" from 1883. In it, he started from the premise that there is a contrast between the "spirit of the East" and the "spirit of the West" in two geographic parts of Europe.

The spirit of the East is characteristic of the peoples from India to the Adriatic Sea, and it manifests itself in the characteristic traits of these peoples: "Sturdy resilient ability in passivity but a lesser degree of persistent and effective energy. A lively inclination for speculative observation; on the other hand, disdain for the demands of practical life, cunning in group relations of public and private life as the only natural means of the weaker against the stronger, cruelty towards humiliated and hated foreigners... Lack of patriotism embracing the entire state as a comprehensive concept of political, legal, and national unity, and instead, the greatest enthusiasm for the birthplace, tribe, for nationality in the narrowest sense".

In contrast, the "Western spirit" is the spirit of the Roman Empire. In it, various nations "bound themselves with the mighty bond of common state and private law, united in a single political nation, feeling the same, and enthusiastic about the same goals. A legal state and a political nation – these are truly the most distinctive creations of the Roman spirit. Even today, they constitute the most important elements in the state formation of the Western world" (Tomislav Kraljacic, Kallay's Regime in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1882 – 1903, Veselin Maslesa, Sarajevo, 1987).

This philosophy fundamentally rested on the mission system of Baron Jozsef Eotvos. He came from one of the most prestigious Hungarian aristocratic families and was one of the most important representatives of the Hungarian Romantic school. The February Revolution of 1848 in Hungary marked the short-lived triumph of his progressive ideas.

His collected works in 17 volumes were published in 1891, and one of his most important works is "Guarantees of Power and Unity of Austria" from 1859, where he attempted to find a compromise between personal union and ministerial responsibility on one hand and centralization on the other. Transmitting these ideas, Kallay took it upon himself to transfer the "spirit of the West" to the Balkans and suppress the prevailing "spirit of the East".

Continuation tomorrow - Albania gains primary importance for the Monarchy.