Gewalt als Faktor der Desintegration im Osmanischen Reich – Formen von Alltagsgewalt im südwestlichen Kosovo in den Jahren 1870-1880
Violence as a Factor of Desintegration in the Ottoman Empire – Forms of Everyday Violence in Southwestern Kosovo between 1870 and 1880

Summary/Abstract: this article different forms of every day violence in the region of Western Kosovo around Prizren, Peja/Peć and Gjakova/Đakovica are analysed by interpreting Austro- Hungarian consular reports from Prizren in the years between 1870 and 1880. It is argued that the military, political and economic decline and social disintegration of the Ottoman Empire can also be seen in the social living together of Muslims and Christians in Kosovo. Their relations were marked by different forms of violence which were a consequence of the political and social disintegration in late Ottoman Kosovo. Firstly, the population showed a harsh violent resistance against the Ottoman reforms of the Tanzimat after 1860 which tried to centralise the administration of the region. At the same time, parts of the Muslim population saw their pre-emptive and dominant legal and social position threatened by the reforms which aimed at legally equalising Nonmuslims and Muslims. In the studied period, parts of Muslim population groups increasingly reacted with violence against the Christians. It is argued that violence within the regional population, though, has to be seen rather socially than merely religiously motivated whereas ethnicity hardly played a role at all. The violence increased after 1875/76 in the context of the Hercegovinian and Bulgarian uprisings as well the Serbian/ Montenegrin-Ottoman war 1876 and finally the Russian-Ottoman war 1877/78.

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