UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Friday 17 February 2:30 – 4:00: Panel F2: Development and Nationalism in South-East Europe

Irina Marin (UCL - SSEES): ‘Slippages of imperial inclusion: the case of the Banat military border’

Much of the explosive potential of the Balkan region goes back to premodern times and can be said to be a long-term consequence of historical flurries of population reshuffling (whether they be colonisations, wartime migrations or deportations), which only added to the initial cultural complexity of the region, the result being a chafing conglomerate of peoples scattered across the borders of several empires. By the 17th century, the Habsburg monarchy, the most eclectic of these empires, was struggling to enforce centripetal policies within its boundaries, thus trying to regroup in the face of growing external threat. One of such policies was the setting up of the Military Confines, a militarised border region meant to buffer Habsburg territories against the Turkish threat. Population dislocation and social transformation were the direct consequence of this enterprise evidencing the tremendous metamorphic potential of the new strategic formation.

In the present paper I propose looking at precisely these transformations and their impact on local ethnic hierarchies within the Temeswar Banat, in comparison with the situation of similar border regions established on Croatian and Transylvanian territory. I will be considering the duality inclusion-exclusion when analysing the extent to which the recruiting of hitherto non-visible/non-vocal ethnic groups (the case of the Serbs and Romanians) facilitated their access to the inceptive national discourse of the time and thus, in a rather self-defeating way, engendered centrifugal tendencies. The present paper seeks to examine the social impact of this strategic institution on an underprivileged border population, previously excluded from direct participation in the affairs of the Habsburg state, as well as map the metamorphoses this population underwent following its change of status upon inclusion into one of the most representative and closely supervised institutions of the Habsburg Empire. The focus will be on the paradox of the military confines as a frontier region enjoying privileges and attention that had previously been bestowed only on the heartland territories of the Habsburg crown and on the unanticipated consequences that this special status eventually gave rise to.