Carmichael, Cathie The Habsburg Garrison Complex in Trebinje. A lost World

Trebinje is a town in Herzegovina, the south-eastern part of the federal state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. After the imposition of Habsburg rule over Ottoman Bosnia in 1878, a new garrison was established in the old citadel. This innovative book tells the story of the garrison in times of peace and war. Using a micro-historical approach, the author traces the history of a non-European style colonial project in the heart of Europe. The Austro-Hungarian administration quickly transformed Trebinje into a tree-lined town dominated by the army. Hospitals, cisterns, schools, roads and railways were built and trained soldiers wrote new works on botany, geology or archaeology in their spare time. As in many similar cases, the Habsburgs' "civilising mission" was accompanied by ruthless violence against those who resisted the new foreign occupiers. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914 led to increased persecution of the Orthodox population. Border villages were burnt down and people were publicly executed. The infrastructure slowly collapsed, food shortages and news of military defeats left the Habsburg population in distress and they quickly left the country at the end of 1918. However, the tragic violence is described alongside reports of daily life in the Trebinje garrison complex. By personalising historical events, the narrative reveals the perspective of the people who found themselves in the small town: the ordinary soldier, the convicted "insurgent", the professional officer, the cook, the shepherdess, the hotelier or the journalist. The author has focussed on the experiences of several soldiers by closely reading their diaries and memoirs.