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Serbocroatia?
There is a population in Europe that speaks one language and that actually had an incredible bad luck to settle exactly on the border of the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire. No other people is doing that.
I refer to the speakers of Serbocroatian or whatever you prefer to call it. The area of that people and language is shown here.
The referred to border per 395 AD is here:
Here you can see it as well, projected onto a map with the current political borders:
Here is a closer look:
As known, the Eastern Roman Empire was ruled with Greek culture while the leading culture west of it was the Latin one. This caused different letters on both sides of the border.
Later there was the East–West Schism in 1054 splitting the Church into Catholic and Orthodox which essentially also went along this border, which deepened the trench within Serbocroats.
And as if this bad luck would not be enough, there happened one more thing to the Serbocroats. The Turks conquered the Balkans and stopped somewhere inmidst the Serbocroats. It went forth and back, but on this map, depicting the duration of the Turkish rule, you can see that some parts where ruled by Turks for half a millenium, while others where not ruled by Turks at all.
And again this division of Serbocroats was roughly somewhere in proximity to that 395 AD border. The Turkic rule had a notable cultural impact on the society and on the people.
Essentially all conflicts between Serbs, Croats and Muslim Bosniaks can be traced back to ultimately hail from these various and repeated partitions.
I’m not sure how unique a political togetherness of Serbocroats was like it was performed by the entity of Yugoslavia, but I guess it was close to unique. We all know that Yugoslavia eventually fell apart and it did share the fate of other multiethnic states.
But it also comprised other official languages such as Slovene and Macedonian. Would a „Serbocroatia“ have had more stability than Yugoslavia?
Not as for today - I know -, but theoretically at some time in the future, are there thinkable (and wishable) perspectives for a Serbocroatian unity?
I do not just mean two (or three) different parts being together but also together forming a common entity and ethnicity.
As Germany, Hungary, Switzerland and the Netherlands show, you can well have different religions (Catholic, Protestant, Calvinist) within one ethnicity. But to my conviction you can not enduringly have two different alphabets.
If I would try to be a just architect of ”Serbocroatia”, I would say this:
All sides will have to do sacrifices for the common project if it shall work. Serbs did already dominate in Yugoslavia, so they would dominate even more within Serbocroatia, which is unpleasant for non-Serbs. So going into a political entity where they are a minority would already be a sacrifice for Croats. By adapting Shtokavian, Croats did another sacrifice for a Serbocroatian commonality. From these aspects it would be the Serbs that should do a (very heavy) sacrifice for a common alphabet. I remind that the Orthodox Romanians deliberately shifted from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet at abt. 1860. And even the Muslim Turks shifted from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin one in 1928. So I think such a shift is something that Serbs could do as well without violating all their indentity. Non-Serb Serbocroats would be very aware of such a Serb sacrifice.
The capital should be in Bosnia-Hercegovina for acknowledging the Muslim Bosniaks as part of Serbocroats as well as being somewhat neutral and acceptable in the context of a Croat-Serb competition. I’d suggest Sarajevo, as it’s geographically central within Serbocroatia and also internationally representative and known (from the Olympic Games f. i.). Unless the Bosniaks would not like to lose their big and pure Muslim city to become a pan-Serbocroatian capital. Of course becoming capital would have a notable effect on its inhabitants.
Alternatively it could also be chosen Zenica or Banja Luka for capital which is not way off. You can select smaller capitals like Brasilia and Canberra as well as Bonn in Western Germany. Even Washington is actually a small and not very important city in the context of US cities. Of course, especially smaller cities like Zenica or Banja Luka would be notably transformed in a pan-Serbocroatian sense if becoming capital. It’s then not very important how they are populated today.
A successful Serbocroatia could put an end to all serious internal conflicts. The horror of the Thirty Year’s War in Germany between Protestants and Catholics and this religious conflict was enduringly overcome in the following centuries. Modern times could even help.
Thoughts on this? - preferrably by people involved.
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Originally Posted by rothaer
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