I think what I said was misconstrued. When Bosnia was an independent kingdom, it was Catholic. We can therefore assume that it was ethnically Croat, as Bosnia is (or at least was) a geographical, rather than ethnic unit. Bosniaks were Catholic until the Ottoman conquest.
No we can't. Your seem to have a highly distorted view of history. Calling a hypothetical catholic population of Balkan Slavs "Croats" solely based on religion is ludicrous and anachronistic. Croats as a national identity didn't emerge until the early 19th century. As evidence, I'd like to present that Dalmatia
wasn't even considered part of Croatia until the integration of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia in th 19th century. Dalmatians were considered culturally and linguistically different, even more so than today, but nationalism and a number of historical events changed that. Bosnia
never had a majority catholic population. They had catholic kings who married into the Serbian royal dynasty, but they never considered, nor called themselves Croats. This is a bogus notion invented in the 19th century by Croat nationalists in response to Serb nationalism. In all official documents the Bosnian kings referred to themselves and their people as
Dobri Bosnjani. What that means no-one is absolutely certain, but as Noel Malcom said, the only thing we can be certain is that they were a South Slavic people who lived in Bosnia.
The Ottomans introduced the Jizya (extra tax on non-muslims). As most people in Bosnia were rural peasants, they could either not afford to pay the tax, or wanted better opportunities, which being a muslim allowed in the Ottoman Empire, so many Bosnians/aks converted to Islam. At the time, Bosnia was known in the west as "Turkish Croatia". Religion doesn't change ethnicity. I am agnostic and hate it when people divide themselves on ethno-religious lines. The reason that the Bosniaks became a separate identity was due to 3 major factors: 1) religious differences led to cultural differences, which in turn led to a separate identity. 2) The Turks tried to persuade the Bosniaks that they were a separate people to stop the bosniaks collaborating with Austria. 3) Under the millet system, Bosniaks were equal to Turks and superior to Croats and Serbs. This also led to Croats and Serbs thinking that Bosniaks are Turks. I don't mean to say that Bosniaks should go Catholic again, I don't care about religion, I just think that Croat-Bosniak unity stabilises the whole region and is good for both parties. I also think its stupid to think of Bosniaks as Turks. And its not so much "coveting". I don't see Bosnia as a prize, just as a legitimate part of Croatia.
No. Again, highly distorted view of history. It doesn't work that way. While it is true that most of the Bosnian population were peasants, the people who converted (not
en masse as some think, this is a misconception, conversion was a process which happened over a span of centuries, not years or decades) most were the land-owners and they did this so they could keep their lands. That's why Bosnia had such a huge population of
begs (beys/lords),
agas and so on. They could all trace their lineage back to the old Bosnian nobility, which was
not uniformly catholic. Some were catholic, some were orthodox, but arguably most were member of the Bosnian church, which was alive and kicking even in the 15th century after a crusade or two. The reason the Bosnian kings converted to catholicism was to avoid the wrath of the Hungarian king and a papal crusade, but many, up until the last few kings secretly remained members of the Bosnian church and often had to present to the pope evidence of their fidelity to the church. The Bosnian church is one of the most misunderstood sects in Europe. Their portrayal has been marred by papal, Serbian and Croat nationalist writers. Recent studies have shown that they were actually not a manichean heresy, but a pre-Schism isolate church which over time acquired some "heretical" notions, but in no way had "patarene", "bogumil" or "cathar" influences until the 13th-14th century, by the time it was already established as the majority religion in Bosnia.
The reason so many converted to Islam was because they felt like they were stuck between a rock and a hrad place: most of the nobility that followed the Bosnian church converted to Islam, while the church had shrunk significantly from persecution at the hands of the catholic church and loss of influence among the last few Bosnian kings. It was pure necessity and survival which made these people make a
choice. Thus, they were never forcibly converted as some nationalistic writers who want to bring them "back into the fold" like to think wishfully.
Bosnia is not, nor has it ever been a
legitimate part of Croatia, hell, until the 15th century the Bosnian kingdom owned Croatia from Dubrovnik to Zadar and was a far more powerful state at the time. We could argue endlessly about this, but these arguments are anachronistic and completely illogical. The fact of the matter is: Bosnia and Herzegovina is an independent, sovereign state with a multiethnic population and is, nor will it ever be part of Croatia or Serbia, who have already done enough damage by persuading Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs that Bosnia wasn't their country, which is why we are in the state we are today. Not that I blame Croatia and Serbia
today, it's all ancient history now. I just wish some people would realize that too and move on.
