Abstract

This article examines the writings of Vasa Pelagić (1833–1899), a prominent 19th-century Bosnian Serb educator, in the context of nationalist indoctrination. In his 1867 guide for teachers in Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Old Serbia, and Macedonia, Pelagić explicitly advised that children be educated to identify as Serbs from a young age. The text illustrates how education was used for indoctrination, meaning also that Serbs lacked a national and ethnic unity in 1867.

Quote:

“Every teacher must first teach their own students, and then all the other village children who can speak: so that when anyone asks them, ‘What are you, young man?’ the youth immediately answers: ‘I am a Serb.’ It would be good if some kind people could be found to donate to the children for whom this instruction is intended…”

Weak identity

This emphasis on explicit identification indicates that, in 1867, Serbian national and ethnic unity was weak; the population across Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Old Serbia, and Macedonia was fragmented, and collective Serbian identity was far from consolidated. Pelagić’s efforts reveal a conscious attempt to overcome this fragmentation through educational means.

Source

(“Guide for Serbian-Bosnian, Herzegovinian, Old Serbian, and Macedonian teachers…”, Belgrade, 1867, p. 45)

References

¹ Vasa Pelagić, Rukovođa za srbsko-bosanske, ercegovačke, starosrbijanske i makedonske učitelje (Belgrade: 1867), 45.

² Dušan T. Bataković, Serbia and the Balkan Front, 1870–1914 (London: Hurst & Company, 2005), 22–24.

³ Jelena Subotić, Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 15–16.

⁴ Sabrina P. Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milosevic (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002), 43–45.

⁵ John Lampe, Balkans into Southeastern Europe: A Century of War and Transition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 102–105.