Central European countries formerly under Austria

>Whenever someone says that the Ottomans helped the development of the Balkans

no one ever says that, not even turks

>The Ottoman Empire didn't care so much about the Balkans
>What is the most reliable supply of slavic sex slaves
>what is the immediate vicinity of istanbul
> springboard against invasions against kuffars
>Can tax and exploit the most people since the majority are kuffars and have to pay the additional jizya tax
>some of the most fertile lands in the empire

It was one of the most important areas for the turks actually.

It's common knowledge.

>common knowledge
More like a common lack of knowledge of the medieval balkans

I heard that on this board more than once.

someone must have been trolling

*Eastern European

Ottomans blocked the Balkans from the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution (or "evolution" as Rodney Stark terms, it, as it was a steady accumulation of technology beginning roughly with the 1100s wool trade in England).
While Europe was advancing in military and other technology, building advanced new ships and telescopes and increasing in education and knowledge, the Muslims were stuck in the past. In 1509 at the Battle of Diu, just 18 Portuguese ships destroyed a fleet of 150 Muslim vessels, because the Europeans had cannons and the superior navigability of galleys, cogs and caravels.
By being held back so long from Western knowledge, the Balkans suffered.

Ottomans weren't so big on innovation like Austrians, at best Balkan bros had any luck of help from the Ottomans, was if some dude from a small forgotten village rose through the administration and became a Grand Vizier, then he would remember his birthplace and build bridges, give special privileges to his people, etc. Serbs and Shiptars for example always benefited when someone from their lands rose highest in the Ottoman court.

>>Central European countries formerly under Austria
Industrialized technologically advanced civilized countries with with a rule of law and prospering high culture

Kek, you do realize Ukraine was under Austrian rule do you?

Yeah and that was the only relevant part of Ukraine especially compared to underdeveloped R*ssian part.

Russian part was industrialized, West Ukraine was rural

We are talking about pre-USSR times.

>Red Sea
Nigger what

Yes, nigger, the Ottoman empire stretched all the way to the Red Sea, just google any map of the Ottoman empire from that period.

Here in America I was taught Ottoman empire was just Constantinople + Romania. I chrcked wiki and apparently you were right.

>Here in America I was taught Ottoman empire was just Constantinople + Romania
I should take this as a joke but I honestly can't tell anymore.

But Galicia was extremely poor and rural during Austrian times. Russian Ukraine did in fact have some industry. I'm not sure if it was truly developed in a Western sense but something did exist there.

The Ottomans have FUBAR'd the Balkans.

Russian part had Donbas and Kiev.

This.

>The Habsburg Empire was also late in building railroads compared to Germany.

>The first section of a new steam locomotive railway from the Austrian capital Vienna to Kraków in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria operated by the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway company opened in 1837. Designed by Franz Xaver Riepl, it was financed by the banker (((Salomon Mayer von Rothschild))). The line then was the second solely steam-powered railway on the continent, after the inauguration of the Belgian Brussels–Mechelen railway line in 1835.
>By 1913, the combined length of the railway tracks of the Austrian Empire and Kingdom of Hungary reached 43,280 kilometres (26,890 miles). In Western Europe only Germany had more extended railway network (63,378 km, 39,381 mi); the Austro-Hungarian Empire was followed by France (40,770 km, 25,330 mi), the United Kingdom (32,623 km, 20,271 mi), Italy (18,873 km, 11,727 mi) and Spain (15,088 km, 9,375 mi).[75]
These were cut out from 1 minute worth of wikipedia searches, i can link you to some more formal articles if you are interested in further reading and learning

>The Habsburg Empire was also late in building railroads compared to Germany. Certainly not as bad as the Ottoman regions but still inferior to the West.
*

>Austria-Hungary failed to create transportation networks necessary for the development of industries and markets throughout the empire. Unlike imperial Germany, the Habsburgs were hostile toward the idea of building railway systems in the provinces, and remained fixated on their own metropolis. The whole of Austrian Bohemia was served by only one line throughout the 1860s. Emperor Francis opposed further construction "lest revolution might come into the country." Railways were owned privately in Austria-Hungary before 1881, and only gradually acquired by the state interest until the outbreak of World War One. Viennese banks – wrote Clive Trebilcock of Cambridge – were tapping the eastern grain-plains [of Galicia] in fully colonial style.[2]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Austrian_Galicia

The idea wasn't that they didn't any have railways at all. The point was that for a long period they were slow in building them compared to Germany and this is true. Showing statistic from the very late period of the empire, 1913, doesn't change what happened in late 19th century.

Literal Bosnian Muslim here, I hear this a lot from right-minded people who don't care so much for religion. The Austrians brought tram cars to Sarajevo, railroads connecting the major towns, even some macadam roads instead of dirt. In almost 500 years the Ottomans didn't develop shit except for funding a few mosques and bridges I guess.

>63,378 km/540,858 km2=0.117 (Germany)
>43,280 km/676,615 km2=0.064 (A-H)
German railroad density was almost twice of theirs.

Balkans were always savages

Considering we have just been quoting parts of our posts and present no arguments, let me rectify this issue and clarify my point. for i think it may actually be fairly similar to yours.
Austrian investment in railroads, especially initially, and then later in the pre war decades, was both aided by and contributed to economic development and integration. It is unrealistic to imagine that all parts of the empire, especially geographically isolated regions such as zadar and transylvania, and historically underdeveoped regions like galacia, could recieve infrustructure to the levels of previously more developed regions in western europe such as in the rhine and the UK. The hostile political climate and eventual split of the realm also provided a less then adequate environment for infrastructure development and general growth. Furthermore, various costly mobilizations and wars in the mid 19th century lead to large parts of the railline being privatized, combined in part with the aforementioned fear of the peasantry as you mentioned(the habsburg relations with peasantry in eastern and central europe is a very interesting topic, i could talk about it for days). However, even with these issues, at the turn of the twentieth century and with some degree of stability the empire's infrastructure and general economy pull far above its historical setting, with the aforementioned 2nd largest rail system contributing to an economic growth that was the 2nd largest in europe, only behind germany's.
In conclusion, the general point that i am getting at is that no system is perfect, and the Austrian empires rail system was comparatively strong in most regions compared to their relative historical economic standing, and should not be blamed for the regions current economic problems.

a big part of this was that
a - austrians only wanted to build infrastructure that facilitates state and military functioning, connecting gowerment and buerocratic centers and military bases with istrian and dalmatian harbors and such

b - hungarians screwed up whole projects just so a railway would go trough a magyar speaking town instead of a croat or czech one, and other such nonsense, actively sabotaging development that didnt siut some nationalist plan of theirs

c - both sides acted like two brothers fighting over who gets a new psx while screwing over all the subjugated populations whenever they could afford it

d - a good third of A-U territory was swamps and mountains

some of the greatest infrastructural achievements in the empire werent even about building stuff, austrians practicaly manufactured whole regions of arrable land or mountain passes, one of the greatest problems was to ''terraform'' the empire, as in, dig kilometers upon kilometers of canals, divert whole rivers, drain swamps the size of baranja and so on

still, they did do more in a few decades than ottomans did in 500 years thats true

Thanks for this good read, user

Roach need not apply

Bulgarian here. So much this. All the ottomans did was appoint beylerbeys to exploit the non muslims and convert orthodox churches into mosques. Also Ottoman agriculture was so primitive that they had to import most of their food and many breeds of livestock(especially sheep) from the balkans. The only settlements that grew in the balkans were majority muslim market cities like Pazardjik or Dobrich that were more like slums than actual cities.

What's even more laughable is that Bulgaria was far more industrialized by the 19th century than the ottoman middle east or Asia Minor due to private bulgarian entrepreneurs creating light industry enterprises(mainly textile) in places like Plovdiv and Kotel. Even fuckin newspapers(Dunavski Lebed) and high literature(novels, dramas like Izgubena Stanka by Dobri Voinikov) were developed by bulgarians before the turks.

That's what always makes me laugh, that the Balkans were the asshole of Europe but the jewel of the Ottoman empire. Pretty much shows how bad that empire was.

Oh, and I forgot, by the mid 19th century the average bulgarian, vlach, serbian, etc. was far more literate than the average turk or other muslim mainly because so many schools based on the european model were established in the balkans.

To be fair in the early ottoman empire Levant was just as wealthy but by the industrial revolution it too had degraded into a shithole.

Geeze, I didn't even know that it was that bad. Thanks, user.

Are you sure about this, though? Seems unlikely since Christian education was kind of being actively suppressed and Muslim communities could usually afford to send the few brightest kids in the village to madrasa where they would undoubtedly read and write. Yeah probably there were way more Serbs and Bulgars who were literate in Beograd and Sofia and other cities, but they also made up a majority of the peasantry in the region so their rate of illiteracy was probably higher. In many places Slavic Muslims were the wealthy landowning peasant class and Orthodox Slavs were basically serfs.

A lot of things and knowledge about Balkan are lost or forgotten, while the rest of Europe progressed Balkans went the other way

That was true until the late 18th century, and even before that, many christian children were enrolled in so-called "cell schools"(kiliino uchilishte) established by monks where they could learn to read and write and basic mathematics. However during the bulgarian national revival, Bulgarian intellectuals and businessmen who recieved a european level education in mainly Russia and AustroHungary were massively funding the building of Bulgarian secular schools up to the high school level.

>few brightest kids in the village to madrasa where they would undoubtedly read and write
The thing is that their education wouldn't be secular and wouldn't go farther than memorizing hadiths. Meanwhile Bulgarian schools during that time already were teaching various modern subjects like natural sciences, secular literature and history. Many of the schoolbooks were even published by Bulgarian intellectuals(the most famous being Petr Beron's "Fish textbook" of the 1830s, a book focused on teaching biology and science, pic related)

While its true that Rich Muslims could get a good higher education in the Empire(Due to the availability of elite colleges like the Robert College in Constantinople), they had much worse lower education than Christians.

Also Bulgarians schools were popping everywhere by the mid 19th century, including in small cities. In fact, some the most important centres of the Bulgarian National revival were the towns of Kotel, Vratsa, Koprivshtitsa, and Tryavna and they seldom had populations of more than 5000 people. It was the large cities that weren't the centres of the national revival becaue of their higher muslim and jewish population.

>In many places Slavic Muslims were the wealthy landowning peasant class and Orthodox Slavs were basically serfs.
Probably in Bosnia, but in Bulgaria the Muslims were either landowning janisseries and their harems, beys and their harems, and peasants. The urban population consisted of muslim craftsmen, and greek, armenian, and jew traders. The wealthy peasants, poor peasants rich traders and intellectuals were Bulgarian. There were also rich bulgarian land owners by the 18th century(chorbadjis) but they were despised as proturkish exploiters by the antiottoman rebels and intellectuals. In fact, the bulgarian national liberation back then was very leftist in nature. Some of our most famous national heroes were anarchists and saw the bulgarian liberation as a rebellion against the decadent Ottoman aristocracy and bourgeoisie.

Why did you convert from the egalitarian ascetic bogomilism to the oppressive opulent islam? They must've used some hardcore taqiyya on you guys.

Where did they print their books? Hungary?

There was a statute in Hungary that allowed rich landowners and cities to build their own local railway lines on their properties, with several special priviliges like tax-exemption or even financial aid. This made the railway lines expansion rate second in Europe. It had nothing to do with deliberate sabotage of development or any nationalist agenda.

>i-it's the Ottoman's fault!
>says part of the world that was irrelevant before and after them

Relevance and development are two separate things.

>Balkans were not relevant
Nigga they only were relevant before and after the Ottomans shut them out of the world

In Wallachia or Besarabia mainly. The first bulgarian publisher was in Bolgrad.

dont want to defend ottomans but
austria had problems with its multiple cultures so they had to let them get away with lot of shit without pissing them off
so you have decentralization = you have some shades of liberty = you have free market = you have capitalism and healthy economy

From what I've heard, bogomolism and islam are really the same, since they reject both jesus as the son of god

no one let anyone get away with anything in austria, ever

there was no ''freedom'' in the austrian empire, there was a bit of luft, a longer chain, thats all, no freedom, ever

the things you are refering too, the different people and the ''shit they get away with'' that was systematicaly cultivated and encouraged

without that, and without those people, the turks would have buttraped vienna like a lost baby in the middle of a cheeze pizza fest

and there was never any decentralisation, there might have been multiple centers, but never any decentralisation, ever

wrong. In islam the head of the religion is khalif which can live richly and rule over all muslims. Also descendants of muhammad are privileged(historically).

In bogomilism there is no religious head and it rejects right to rule based on bloodline and aristocracy in general. It was an unorganized religion.
In bogomilism all women are considered equal to men and can lead masses while women in islam are considered a little more than livestock. Bogomilism rejects slavery and is tolerant while islam embraces it and is expansionist. Bogomilism considers the material world a satanic creation while islam considers the material world Allah's perfect creation. Last but not least, there is no genital mutilation in Bogomilism.

>tfw skoda doesn't make arty any more
fuck

>islam the head of the religion is khalif

Chaliph is not the head of the religion, it’s just the title that has historically been given to the rulers of various Muslim empires. Caliphate as an institution has virtually no scriptural basis (read Abd Abdel Raziq to learn why)

>Also descendants of muhammad are privileged(historically).

Only among Shias. Sunnis, on the other hand, have even killed descendants of Muhammad multiple times throughout history.

>Bogomilism rejects slavery and is tolerant while islam embraces it

Slavery is illegal in literally every single Muslim country (unless you consider the way foreign workers are treated in some Gulf states as a form or slavery)

Stop spreading your taqiyya, walid.

The fact is islam is an extremely despotic religion where the ruler is also the religious authority. Mullahs, khalifs, muftis all have secular as well as religious power. They can issue fatwahs, call for jihad, taqfir, and appoint qadis.

>Slavery is illegal in literally every single Muslim country (unless you consider the way foreign workers are treated in some Gulf states as a form or slavery)
Slavery has always been a central part of all islamic society and has been abolished due to wester infleunces, not islamic revelation. Are you denying that khalifates, including the ottoman one, didn't trade kuffar slaves and didn't kidnap women to be sex slaves(inb4 harems privileged)? If you don't, are you saying all the medieval and early modern khalifates are not True Muslims(TM)?

Even in sunni religion, if you can attest relation to muhhamed's tribe you are treated as privileged and honorable. Some Sunni Sahih hadiths call descendants of Muhammad to be automatically sinless.

Dude wtf why did my ancestors convert to Islam, god damn it. bogomilism sounds great
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

You learn something new every day, thank you guys. Yeah memorizing hadiths and reading the Quran still make a person literate, but I'm assuming that they (Bosnian Muslims) didn't learn Latin or Cyrillic script unless they lived close to Croatia or in towns with lots of Serbs.

>you
C'mon user it wasn't me personally. But actually what I think happened is that Catholics and Orthodox would fight constantly, and Bosnia was kind of No Man's Land. Sometimes Greek/Serb controlled, sometimes Croat/Hungarian controlled. Catholicism was seen as being a Hun slave, Orthodox was seen as weak. Neither side could force itself on the population, until Islam came and rekt shit. Due to the centuries of conflict and forced conversions, religious belief was lukewarm in Bosnia and so the population willingly converted to Islam. And the rest is history.

>irrelevant
Weren't like half or more of the Roman emperors after Nero from the Balkans? And it was the prime recruiting ground for Roman troops from the Dominate to the Muslim conquests.

Islam even now in Bosnia is kind of disorganized, and people are moreso cultural Muslims than actually Muslim (like people in the US). People were definitely more religious before WWII, but before modern roads and communications you really had to allow people some leeway in their way of life if you wanted them to listen to you. I think that the way women were treated and life was lived in Bosnia at the time is much different from how women in, say, Mesopotamia or Somalia were treated, among other things.

All memes aside you are right, Islam is at heart a warrior's religion, and advises moderation in the perfect material world. The biggest defect really is the genital mutilation thing.

Meli, is that you? Just stop, you're an embarrassment.

Who's Meli?

Just someone I know who might've posted that cringeworthy comment, that's all.

Thanks for the info. The more you know.

I never knew bosnian medieval history that much except that there was a massive bogomil population(even the nobles) and that it was a kind of an independent petty kingdom after the fall of the nemanjic dynasty. I didn't know that croatia and hungary were sperging out there even during medieval times

>Bosnia is kind of disorganized, and people are more so cultural Muslims than actually Muslim
So like bulgarian muslim converts I guess except in recent years due to erdogan's proxy party in bulgaria trying to radicalize and turkify them. Some bulgarian muslims want to be accepted as Bulgarian and are patriots, while others consider themselves turks.

Germany was more densely populated so this is not surprising. Look at rail kms per 1,000 inhabitants and you'll see that the difference isn't very large: 0.94 vs 0.84

Yeah lots of sperging out going on. Almost all of what we know about the Bosnian bogomils comes from Church records or Catholic clergy opinions, so of course it's very clouded. The whole godless sex-maniac gender-equal stuff is probably half fabrication, I can't imagine any pre-modern society where women are even hypothetically viewed as being equal to men. For some reason the Hungarian kings often had the popes' ears, maybe because of being on the eastern frontier of Catholicism, so when Bosnian nobles and people wouldn't accept Hungarian rule and pay tribute to either the Hungarian kings or the popes, they were labeled heretics and campaigned against mercilessly.

Kind of, I guess. Bosnians are far enough away that none of us call ourselves Turkish (some butthurt Serbs and Croats will though), but there are some fuckheads here who outdo each other in sucking Arab cock, thinking that by selling out and enslaving themselves to sheikhs, they'll bring the country back into prosperity. They're a shitty minority though, most Bosnians see visiting Arabs and say "look at those fucking gypsies/tuskavci*"

*literally "dirty people" as in dirt-covered, or dark skinned

Yeah on second though since bosnian bogomils retained the fuedal structure of rule it wasn't that egalitarian, but It could've been still more ascetic and against noble abuse of power.
Since bogomilism originates from Bulgaria, the Bulgarian orthodox clergy was extremely active in prosyletizing and writing theological tyrades against it. A good portion of suviving bulgarian medieval literature consists of spergouts against the bogomil theological view of the world(we had to study these writings in high school).

Aren't most bosnians pro-Turkish and proud of the of ottoman empire?

>Kind of, I guess. Bosnians are far enough away that none of us call ourselves Turkish (some butthurt Serbs and Croats will though), but there are some fuckheads here who outdo each other in sucking Arab cock, thinking that by selling out and enslaving themselves to sheikhs, they'll bring the country back into prosperity. They're a shitty minority though, most Bosnians see visiting Arabs and say "look at those fucking gypsies/tuskavci*"

Very interesting. Do many bosniaks want to see the ottoman empire restored due to seeing themselves as rulers over serbs?

Unfortunately Bulgarian muslims(mostly gypsies but also a lot of turks) a lot of time threaten to finish what the ottomans couldn't and reclaim bulgaria as rightful land of the Ummah. Bulgarian muslims also g

>It's the mountains man, whether Appalachia or Balkans, something about the low air pressure turns people vile.
>Switzerland

That's a load of shit. Even in Muttland we know about the Ottomans.

Pretty much every movement in history that's claimed to be egalitarian or has been recorded as promoting anarchy and breakdown of the social order by its enemies has been mostly bullshit. Like the Dulcinians in Italy or the French Revolution, both of which devolved into banditry and looting soon enough. The Bogomils were certainly more settled though. Didn't know that about the theological tirades by Bulgarian clergy. Do you have links to any English translations of that? I'm interested.

Not at all. I'd say that a good amount watch Turkish tv programs (exclusively soap operas), but all the ones I know of are over 40. I think the impetus for that is that they actually lived through the worst days, during the war, and remember it best, and lost the most. Most rural Muslims still go to town fairly often, they're not as rural as Serbs are in Bosnia, but some hold some stupid affinity with Turkey. There's even a bar in the village next to mine that was renamed "Turkish Bar" and doesn't serve alcohol anymore. Not sure how prevalent this is, but I've also been clubbing and the music is all western-influenced club shit, edm, turbofolk (they even played Gangam Style once in 2013, I remember) and people get fucking hammered. My cousin, our kinsman, and I once drank 30 beers and 18 jager shots together for my birthday (not sure who had how much of what), and nobody batted an eyelid. It has a similar puritan/degenerate dichotomy as the US. Girls will go out at night with headscarves covering their hair, modest blouses and jeans and sneakers, but in their backpacks they have stilettos and slutty dresses and makeup and shit. They get all dolled up and go out drinking, but they have to be careful about what they actually do (no grinding, no making out in the club, etc.) because there's a 100% chance that twenty people who know you will see you. It's easy to get a girl to go for a walk in the park and get a blowjob (especially visiting from the US), but it's impossible>>

...

Its kinda the same here in bulgaria. The rural muslims however are more conservative than the general population(as in not clubbing or drinking alchohol and going to mosques) but they don't wear headscarfs. meanwhile urban muslims, especially gypsies are just as degenerate if not more than christians. Also, I've talked to a few turks who claim that they eat pork and almost consider themselves a different ethnicity from regular turks. A good portion of these same people often proceed to claim how they're more virtuous than kuffars at one day, then sdrink themselves the next. One thing that bulgarian muslims are is that they're more family focused and less likely to be ashamed of their bulgarian culture, while most bulgarians have an extreme inferiority complex and are eager to emigrate assimilate. themselves.

Here is the most famous anti-bogomi text. I hope you can read cyrillic.
bg-patriarshia.bg/reflections.php?id=573

>but there are some idiots who think that the Turks were the best for giving us Islam
They must be pretty historically ignorant especially since their ancestors converted mostly to escape the jizya. You have to be pretty devout to consider that a gift. I thought bosnians glorified the ottoman empire due to bosnian vezirs and janisseries having more influence in it.

Yes that includes you yodeling faggots too

>How did that happen?
gommunism

Hell yeah, more than half the Muslims I know eat pork. Not pulled pork, but pork pate for a quick meal. Nobody cares but old grandmas who try to buy the expensive chicken pate or beef liver pate shit. Almost everybody drinks too, beer and rakija (mostly plum, sometimes other fruits, brandy) and red wine+coca cola and white wine+mineral water, mostly. They always consider themselves better than non-Muslims, but the only way I'm fairly sure that they are is in hygiene. Everybody washes their hands, almost every man is clean shaven.

I can, but I'll have to try hard to parse Bulgarian. Slowly but surely I'll be able to do it. Thanks user.

Of course they're historically ignorant, isn't everybody? I've had conversations with people who smugly use the fact of Bosnian viziers, as if that means that we ruled over the Ottoman Empire. Fuck it does, they just use it to rationalize their Stockholm Syndrome. The faith to me is neither here nor there, but it has, like Bogomilism before it, preserved our political independence, such as it is. It's not so different from US rednecks having their own Great Awakening, literally believing in sacrificing snakes and the healing touch, that keeps them culturally and economically in the fucking stone age but hey, it keeps them independent from the elites on the coasts, right? XD Stupid either way. Or even for a more related example, Serbs and Bulgars not converting out of spite, dooming their descendants to slavery and serfdom for no actual reason but their devotion.

>zem(ya) vs. zemlja [interesting]
>bogon(ye)mil [made me laugh, great pun and like typical classy medieval documents, starts with insults and assumptions]
Still it's hard to parse and I read Cyrillic slowly. I'll have to translate to Latin as I read but I'll get through it, thanks!

Gommunism doesn't explain the difference between Czechia and Bulgaria.

...

Fugg I didn't take too close a look. I didn't put the London part there, if that matters.

Austria is in the mountains

Well bulgarian muslims eat all kinds of pork. Considering that turks also drink yeni raki, its not difficult to imagine bulgarian muslims drinking alchohol.

Or even for a more related example, Serbs and >Bulgars not converting out of spite, dooming their descendants to slavery and serfdom for no actual reason but their devotion.
It was a matter of honor, devotion and ethnic pride even back then. Also, its not like ottomans were considered culturally superior to balkandjis back then, so converting was not seen as an advancement of status, but rather abandoning your community. Even if we did suffer and the bulgarian identity and religion was on the brink of getting wiped out, it payed off and we achieved our freedom in the end.

>Of course they're historically ignorant, isn't everybody?
Most bulgarians aren't, at least when it comes to our history. I think this has to do with us not havingmuch to be proud about today, so we take pride in our past.

Yeah, the tirade is full of logical fallacies like the author saying that its god's law not judge others(in relation to bogomils criticising the church for opulence, exploitation and corruption), but at the same time throwing insults at the bogomils.

That's quite the argument, any sources for that?

Well that is true. Like we talked about before, there are reasons that Bosnian communities converted pretty much en masse while Serb and Bulgarian ones didn't. But we are both right, the communities as a whole held onto their honor and devotion, and individuals rarely converted because it was social suicide. You had to be in a big town or city to not be ostracized as a Muslim in Christian-majority rural areas, and to do that you had to be pretty wealthy. There were still Serb and Greek and Bulgarian Muslims, but very few and far between, as you say, they rarely converted. Same reason now that Bosnians didn't convert when the Ottomans left, and Serbs didn't convert for hundreds of years living under Austrian rule in the Military Frontier. Islam became a strong, ingrained faith for Bosnians.

I don't think that any of the cultures or religions were close to being wiped out. The fact that they survived almost completely intact says a lot for Ottoman tolerance, actually. Abusive, exploitative, undeveloping? Sure. But they were indeed tolerant, let you believe any damn thing you wanted so long as you paid up. Actually if they'd poured more resources into developing their provinces they probably would have gotten further with turning subjects into Muslim Turks.

Yes but it's the same as in many situations. A lot of Bulgarians are proud of the Bulgarian empires and the strength of Bulgaria when it gained its independence. The first case was a state ruled by a foreign people that eventually assimilated into the native population, the second was achieved by a lot of foreign backing. There's no shame in taking pride, but sadly neither of our peoples had the population or position to do anything really wild. In Bosnia people talk about the Handschar division and how Bosnian Muslims survived pretty well in the chaos of WWII, but without the Germans the Chetniks and Ustashe would've fucking annihilated and assimilated us. Best thing Himmler ever did was praise Islam.

I'm seeing lots of anecdotes and "common knowledge" in this thread. Any book recommendations out there on the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans?

High quality academic debate, for sure. I never liked how history classes imply that history was polite and bleached and academic, because of the way the subject is taught. They should show more of the Pompeii graffiti and stuff like this, highest ranking clerics during the Western schism or Avignon papacy calling each other demon worshipers and satanists (unironically), a serious churchman starting a dissertation on Bogomilism like a post on /b/ (without the traps of course).

I have one that's a novel of fiction, but it's great. The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric, starts with the forced recruitment of a Christian Bosnian child for recruitment into the janissaries, and how he remembered the town Visegrad where he and a bunch of other kids waited in dreadful weather to be barged across with the soldiers, and upon becoming vizier he orders a bridge to be built there. The building of the bridge and its life up to WWI frame the story of many characters. It offers glimpses into the lives of people in eastern Bosnia/western Serbia from the early modern period to the 20th century. I know the above reads like the description on the back of the book but I swear I wrote it myself. It's a great novel.

I don't have any nonfiction recommendations, sorry to say.

From what I get Balkaners have a strikingly different view of the state than most western Europeans. Like most Europeans see the state as a institution to promote the common good and common goals of the people, for Balkaners it is just a suppression instrument to keep people down and rob them. This could be very well related to their experiences with the Turks.

Vreme Razdelno(Time of Violence) by Anton Donchev describes the islamisation attempts with the threat of massacres on bulgarian villages by a janniserie against his own relatives, while the local beys cooperate reluctantly.

Pod Igoto(Under the Yoke), Hushove and Chichovtsi by Ivan Vazov is a novel that portrays life and society during the late ottoman rule in bulgaria.

user, I'm from Trebinje. I know Ivo Andric, lol, but he's not a Historian. I ask because I grew up around this kind of rhetoric, and only recently have I realized I have never learned this from a reputable historical monograph or something.

>I don't think that any of the cultures or religions were close to being wiped out.
Most of the larger cities in Bulgaria were massacred, sometimes multiple times due to rebellion, and as a result were largely depopulated from bulgarians and replaced by greeks, jews, various muslims, gypsies and some armenians. During the 500 years of rule, the bulgarian population barely grew twice due to constant massacres and kidnappings, while other rural areas in europe had 10 times more people than in late 14th century. So in general terms bulgarian culture was definitely on the decline. It was in real danger of getting extinct due by the 18th century to not only turkish assimilation and massacres, but also because of assimilation into the greek culture due to it being seen as superior. Only during the national revival starting in the late 18th century did bulgarian culture regain its prestige.

>let you believe any damn thing you wanted so long as you paid up.
actually it was in the Ottomans' interest for the balkan population not to be entirely converted, since it could be taxed more with jizya and extra levy taxes, something which was forbidden for muslims to do to other muslims. To add to that, christians were forbidden from carrying weapons and that made possible rebellions against muslim rule far more impotent.
Finally, the turks definitely forcefully converted strategic areas like areas near trade centers, forts, and strategic roads. That's why there are small pockets of land in bulgaria thouroughly islamized, while the rest barely has any muslims.

>implying Swiss are not very evil except they hide it better