ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s, when Senija Milišić outlined a research agenda for, as she put it, “the emancipation of Muslim women in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” she recommended that future generations of historians begin their inquiries in 1878. 1 Even if recent scholarship has shown that the Ottoman period was also a time of deep change in the lives of Bosnian women, 2 her suggestion has not lost its relevance. As a matter of fact, the shift from Ottoman to Habsburg rule had major consequences for Bosnia, affecting every domain of political, economic and cultural life. Several generations of historians have drawn up detailed anatomies of the four decades of Habsburg rule in Bosnia. Nevertheless, there are few pages dedicated to the consequences of this transition for Muslim women, and on how they were able to navigate such a transition. The first of two dedicated to the Habsburg period, this chapter will focus on three points. First of all, it addresses Bosnia’s place in the Habsburg Empire, both within its administrative machinery and its imaginary. Secondly, the chapter will address the impact of Vienna’s educational policies on the Muslim female population and how, despite enormous difficulties, by the eve of the Great War they had managed to produce a thin cohort of Muslim women educated according to Habsburg standards. Finally, after the state school, the chapter will focus on another institution deeply associated with the Habsburg period, and which lies at the heart of this book: the voluntary association. Special attention will be devoted to the (albeit limited) role of Muslim women within it.
