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The Serb
Democratic
Party and the
Bosnian War

Adis Maksić
Ethnic Mobilization, Violence,
and the Politics of Affect
 Adis Maksić

Ethnic Mobilization,
Violence, and the
Politics of Affect
The Serb Democratic Party and the Bosnian War
Adis Maksić
International Burch University
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

ISBN 978-3-319-48292-7    ISBN 978-3-319-48293-4 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-48293-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932893

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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To the memory of my father and Džemka
 Prologue

In October 2004, I stood in a crowd of nearly 35,000 spectators who

filled Sarajevo’s Olympic Stadium to watch a World Cup qualifier between
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro. The recent political his-
tory of the two countries ensured that this would not be an ordinary soc-
cer game. For home fans, the event was an opportunity for expressing
anger and animosity that stemmed from the involvement of Serbia and
Montenegro in the 1992–1995 Bosnian War. Upon hearing the sound of
the visiting side’s National Anthem, most of the crowd reacted by whis-
tling or turning their backs to the field. Yet, the bits of the tune that fought
through a concert of whistles were also creating a moment of irony. The
Anthem was Hej sloveni (Hey, Slavs), the same one that the people in the
stands would only a dozen years earlier greet with thunderous ovations.
Then, it was the Anthem of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,
a former common state of the two sides that were now facing off on the
soccer pitch.
I believe that we can learn much about national self-understandings by
pausing to think about a diversity of sensibilities that a performance such
as Hej sloveni can mobilize in a single audience. The challenge here is to
understand how contextual positioning can alter the meaning of a song, a
symbol, or a speech act so that it produces widely different affective expe-
riences. For Bosnians of all ethnic backgrounds, Hej sloveni had a recog-
nizable tune, having been performed innumerable times in the past. Until
the early 1990s, it represented a national self. When played in 2004 as an
anthem of Serbia and Montenegro, many associated it with the resented
ethnic “other.” The meanings of each performance were also affected

vii
viii PROLOGUE

by previous usage. Lurking in the background of the intense anger and

animosity that the playing of Hej sloveni triggered in the context of the
2004 soccer game were the more pleasing emotional imprints of the times
when the Anthem mobilized no less intense feelings of national pride.
This is why many of those same people who whistled and turned their
backs to Hej sloveni would approve of it with nostalgia when situated in a
performance that memorializes the lost times of the Yugoslav state. This is
why an activist of the Bosniak ethno-national SDA party recently told me
that he was proud of his involvement in armed mobilization of Muslims
in his village near Sarajevo and the role in “bringing down Yugoslavia,”
only to add a short time later that he still got “chills” upon hearing Hej
sloveni, and lament the destruction of Yugoslavia. Hej sloveni here testifies
to the existence of two eras in which Bosnians had two radically different
national self-understandings, neither of which was more “real” and natural
than the other.
One of the larger arguments of this work is that to understand con-
flicts fought in the name of an identity we must dispose of the assumption
that collective self-understandings are arranged into a stable hierarchy.
Rather, we need to analyze the dynamic sociopolitical processes that
produce their evolution across space and time, the processes in which
the political elites often have a decisive influence. As I researched these
processes, I began recalling the experiences of Bosnia’s turbulent polit-
ical developments of the early 1990s that produced the evolution of
national self-­understandings of myself and my family. I decided to briefly
share some of them here for several reasons: to reveal my positionality as
a researcher, to illustrate the dynamics of ethno-politicization examined
in this study through the actual experiences of one Bosnian family, and
to offer a representative example that shows the evolution of identities
over time and space.
For the latter purpose, I begin with generational differences. My
maternal grandparents hailed from two villages in Eastern Herzegovina,
a deeply ethnicized area with an extensive history of intercommunal
conflict. Both were Muslims who narrowly escaped the murderous
campaigns of Serb Četnik forces during World War II. My grandfather’s
father and brother were not so lucky. The Četniks murdered them by
throwing them into a deep natural pit. After World War II, my grand-
father spent time in prison for being affiliated with Mladi Muslimani
(Young Muslims), an underground organization that fought for greater
religious rights of Muslims in the communist Yugoslavia. One of his
 PROLOGUE ix

prison mates was Alija Izetbegović, the future Bosnian Muslim leader
and president of Bosnia. My paternal grandparents were also devout
Muslims from Herzegovina, albeit without the comparable suffering.
If we subscribe to the traditional understandings of ethnicity, my fam-
ily would seem as a prime candidate for the perpetuation of ethnic self-­
understandings across different generations. Both grandparents had a
strong sense of ethno-religious belonging, with one grandfather having
connections to a dissident Muslim movement. Yet, a seemingly unre-
markable event, their move from Herzegovina to the Bosnian capital
of Sarajevo, disrupted this continuity in ways that marginalized old and
produced new axes of identification. My parents were born in Sarajevo
at a time when Bosnia was undergoing urbanization and industrializa-
tion, which resulted in a large influx of people from mono-ethnic villages
into the flourishing multi-ethnic cities. It was also a time when the com-
munist regime promoted “brotherhood and unity” of Yugoslav peoples
while discouraging the main set of practices that differentiated them—
the religious expression. In a sharp contrast to the field of socialization
of the deeply ethnicized Herzegovinian environment, many of my par-
ents’ childhood friends, classmates, teachers, neighbors, and colleagues
were non-Muslims. Since there was no language barrier that followed
ethnic lines, there was little to prevent these interactions from grow-
ing into dense and emotionally felt ties that could define a community
to which my mother and father felt a sense of belonging. Such expe-
riences, in conjunction with the regime’s policy of “brotherhood and
unity”, helped them acquire a strong sense of being a Yugoslav. Despite
the wishes of their parents, and in contrast to the deeply felt Yugoslav
identity, their awareness of belonging to a Muslim ethno-national cat-
egory was only vague and passionless. My father, a former student of
the Muslim Madrasa, joined thousands of other Bosnians of all ethnic
backgrounds in embracing the ruling ideology and becoming an active
member of the communist party.
Being born to the parents with such self-understandings meant that I
would be even further distanced from those of my grandparents. Indeed,
growing up in Yugoslavia of the 1980s, I did not have any sense of belong-
ing to a Muslim ethno-religious category. I was simply a Yugoslav and a
Sarajevan. I can say with confidence that most of my primary school class-
mates, who I can retrospectively identify as a mix of ethnic Serbs, Croats,
Bosniaks, and several others whose ethnic background I am still unable to
ascertain, felt the same. I can recall only two traces of ethnic practices that
x PROLOGUE

connected me to the era of my grandparents. One was a prayer from the

Koran that my grandmother taught me and instructed me to recite every
night at bedtime. Another was the marking of the Muslim Eid holiday by
spending the day at my maternal grandparents’ house. Moreover, I didn’t
experience these practices as indicators of ethnic belonging. The Koranic
verse was something to be recited for good luck as protection against
evil spirits. The Eid celebration was not so much my holiday as that of
my grandparents. In contrast, November 29, the Yugoslav Day of the
Republic, was one of my favorite times of the year.
It was the process of ethno-politicization in Bosnia analyzed in this
study that radically restructured my own conception of collective belong-
ing in ways that linked it to those of my grandparents and, hence, to the
field of meanings of rural Herzegovina of the early twentieth century. I
vaguely recall the dramatic January 1990 exit of the Slovenian delegation
from the 14th congress of the Yugoslav League of Communists as the first
challenge to my idealistic perception of Yugoslavia as a natural country
and an indisputable reality. My father, a committed party member, reacted
to the event by lamenting what he perceived to be the Slovenian attempts
to secede from Yugoslavia, and praising Serbia’s party leader Slobodan
Milošević for what he saw as a resolute struggle to protect the country
against separatism. I recall his enthusiastic statement that in hindsight
seems surreal: “this Milošević, he is good, he is tough.” The congress
marked not only the demise of the party-state regime but also the emer-
gence of new political actors and narratives that began to question the
interpretations of history and national identity that I theretofore held as
simple, undeniable truths. In the following months, I remember hearing
more and more about nationalist movements that were gaining mass sup-
port in some parts of Yugoslavia. Yet, since a label “nationalist” came with
such negative connotations in my microworld that it was akin to an insult;
my parents and I perceived the nationalists as little more than an outlier
comparable to a marginal underclass, or even a criminal, group.
I recall the first event that genuinely destabilized the perceptions that
my parents and I held as the taken-for-granted truths as the moment of
emotional disturbance. The event was a friendly soccer game held in the
spring of 1990 between Yugoslavia and the Netherlands in Zagreb, the
capital of the then-Yugoslav republic of Croatia. We gathered to watch
the broadcast, only to hear our Anthem, Hej sloveni, drowned in whis-
tles and boos by what was formally the home crowd. We watched in
shock as the insults directed at our team continued for the duration of
 PROLOGUE xi

the game. In the following days, the event seemed like the only topic
of conversations. The reaction was the same by everyone, including
my grandparents—­ outrage at Croat nationalism, which at the time
seemed to only reenergize our love for Yugoslavia.
Yet, only more disturbance was on the way. I was spending the summer
of 1990 on the Croatian coast with family when the Croatian TV broad-
cast the event of the lowering of a Yugoslav flag in Zagreb and the rais-
ing of the historic checkerboard flag that the new nationalist Croatian
government restored as the republic’s official symbol. I remember my
uncle Mirsad’s outrage, accentuated by a hope that the Yugoslav People’s
Army (JNA) would forcibly remove the Croatian nationalists led by Franjo
Tuđman. Indeed, whomever we perceived to be the enemy of Yugoslavia
was the enemy of ourselves. In the summer of 1990, Tuđman was the vil-
lain. When the object of this study, the Serb Democratic Party of Bosnia
and Herzegovina (SDS BiH), first emerged in July 1990, the event did not
leave any memorable emotions precisely because we did not feel it to be a
threat to Yugoslavia at the time.
The summer of 1990 also brought to my immediate environment the
passions of the campaign for Bosnia’s first multi-party elections, which
were held in November. We were suddenly learning about the resurgent
Ustaše and Četnici movements, and hearing new narratives that questioned
our deeply ingrained binaries of historical heroes and villains. My percep-
tions of Ustaše and Četnici had been formed by the regime’s official his-
torical narratives that portrayed both movements as the fascist, murderous
hordes that the heroic Yugoslav partisans defeated during World War II to
restore the rule of the good over evil. I also recall my grandparents’ stories
of the Četnik atrocities they experienced in eastern Herzegovina. Yet, the
regime’s portrayals seemed to have left a mark, insofar as I never associ-
ated Ustaše with Croat nationalists, or Četnici with Serbs. For me, and for
many others, both movements simply belonged to the negative side of the
Partisan self/Fascist other binary that grounded the dominant narrative
of the World War II events in Yugoslavia. They also belonged to the past.
While I wondered how Ustaše and Četnici could possibly reappear in the
present, the inertia of what I held as a natural order of history assured
me that such forces of evil did not stand a chance. Indeed, most people
in my surroundings were convinced that either a reformed communist
party or the “reformists” of the Federal prime minister Ante Marković
would soundly win the elections. My grandparents, however, expressed
their intent to vote for the Muslim ethno-national party, SDA. I recall my
xii PROLOGUE

grandfather’s explanation that Muslims needed to unite behind an ethno-

national Muslim party because Serbs would vote only for Serbs and Croats
would stick with other Croats. When responding to my mother’s disagree-
ment, he seemed to be at peace with the differences between a man social-
ized in a Herzegovinian village in the 1930s and 1940s and his daughter
raised a couple of decades later in the urban bastion of “Brotherhood and
Unity”: “you vote for whom you want, I will vote for SDA.”
Despite our expectations, the victory of the three ethno-national par-
ties—SDA, SDS, and HDZ—in the November 1990 elections demon-
strated that ethnicity was once again a powerful axis around which most
Bosnians congregated. More importantly, the victors quickly acted to turn
their interpretations of the world into hegemonic understandings, margin-
alize all other axes, and ensure that ethnicity would reign supreme. As the
Communists and other non-national parties faded from the media spot-
light, many of the narratives that had dominated the public discourse for
over four decades disappeared. The new regime worked to destigmatize
ethnic nationalism, delegitimize “brotherhood and unity,” and overpower
a sense of Yugoslav belonging with ethnic solidarity. Political conversations
increasingly referenced the wants, needs, and deeds of Serbs, Muslims,
and Croats, as if these ethnic nations were somehow natural, undisputed,
and well-defined entities. As I heard more of this ethnic “we” and “they,”
it seemed to obscure the Yugoslav “we.”
My family’s resilient refusal to identify with any political community
other than a Yugoslav one began to unravel with the violent escalation
of the political crisis that took place in the summer of 1991. In late June,
Slovenia declared independence, a decision that triggered a JNA attempt
to seize border posts in Slovenia and, hence, secure the international
­borders of Yugoslavia. The results of this operation came as the biggest
disturbance to our perceptions of Yugoslav reality to date. JNA, our army
that, as I was taught to believe, was invincible, suffered a defeat at the
hands of the Slovenian territorial defense forces. An even bigger shock was
the decision of the federal government to give up on Slovenia and entirely
withdraw from the republic. It left us wondering how a Yugoslav army
could just let a chunk of Yugoslavia go. For me, it represented a confusing
dismemberment of a territorial imaginary that Yugoslav communist meta-
narratives, map representations, and the oft-repeated motto “from Triglav
to Đevđelija” (the former being a mountain in Slovenia, the latter a town
in Macedonia) had turned into an emotionally felt place of the homeland.
 PROLOGUE xiii

The devastating Croatian War, which followed a brief confrontation in

Slovenia, seemed to move people in my microworld from a state of denial
to a growing acceptance that Yugoslavia was no longer a country that we
knew. As we watched the TV footage of the destruction in Croatia, I recall
my mother arguing with my father that JNA was becoming a Serb nation-
alist, rather than a Yugoslav, army. My father, a Captain First Class of
the JNA reserves, continued to believe that the army was only protecting
Yugoslavia against the separatists. Yet, the progression of the war seemed
to prove him wrong. In the fall, JNA decided to remove a five-pointed red
star as its symbol, which it had carried from its inception. An even bigger
shock came with the TV footages from the front line near Vukovar that
showed JNA troops fighting alongside soldiers that carried the Kokarda
insignia of the Četnici. What we thought to be unthinkable was becoming
a reality in front of our eyes. On the one side, there were the Croat and
Slovenian separatists. On the other was JNA, which was becoming unrec-
ognizable. My father finally became critical of Milošević, while my mother
became more forthright—JNA was turning into a Četnik army.
By the fall of 1991, my family seemed to have begun a process of con-
stituting new collective self-understandings in place of the old Yugoslav
ones, which were crumbling along with the country. The disintegration of
Yugoslavia was forcing us to increasingly think about alternative identifi-
cations, a process that began to take a toll on personal relations between
my parents and their friends and colleagues of Serb ethnic background.
In November, SDS organized a plebiscite that asked ethnic Serbs who
lived in Bosnia whether they supported the party’s policy of remaining
in a shortened Yugoslavia without the Slovenes and Croats. The occa-
sion marked a first major political disagreement between my father and
one of his best friends, Duško, who was an ethnic Serb. Duško argued
that everyone should participate by voting for Bosnia to remain in what
was left of Yugoslavia, either on a regular ballot or on a separate ballot
that was designated for non-Serbs, while my father believed that such a
rump state would not be a “real” Yugoslavia. At about the same time,
my mother, a head nurse at a pediatric hospital, was coming home with
stories of the divisions at her workplace that followed ethnic lines, with
her Serb colleagues congregating and speaking silently, or abruptly ending
conversations when non-Serbs approached them. Sometime in late 1991,
ethnic differentiations began to penetrate my school life as well. I recall
the talk of students having a right to take ethnic holidays as days off, with
each choosing a holiday that was her or his own. My parents told me that
xiv PROLOGUE

a Muslim holiday, Bajram (also known as Eid), was the one that I may
be able to take off. I also discovered that many of my classmates were
somehow different from me in this regard, with some marking Christmas
rather than Bajram. My best friend Damir was the same, however, as his
grandparents also told him that his holiday would be Bajram.
Parallel to the radicalizing ethnic differentiations, the Yugoslav republic
in which we lived, Bosnia-Herzegovina, was acquiring new relevance as a
source of a political identity. In December 1991, my father brought me
a sticker that featured a modified symbol of the Medieval Kingdom of
Bosnia, a blue shield with six lily flowers. It was a symbol I hadn’t seen
before, but which would in the following weeks frequently show up in
newspapers and magazines, and eventually come to represent what i felt to
be my new nation. We began hearing more and more about Bosnia’s long-
lost history as a state, a discourse that was challenging our entrenched
perceptions of Bosnia as little more than a Yugoslav republic in which we
lived. With the growing realization that Yugoslavia as we knew it had been
lost, the idea that we could reconstitute a sense of national belonging by
identifying with the part of Yugoslavia in which we lived was gaining in
emotional resonance. By March 1992, it had convinced my parents to
attend the Bosnian independence referendum, and vote “yes.” When they
cast their votes, they did not see it as a contribution to Bosnia’s secession
from Yugoslavia, or to Muslim ethno-national interests. Quite the oppo-
site; they did so to resist the nationalists who dismembered Yugoslavia
from absorbing the republic in which they lived. At least, in the latter case,
they had little more of a say. Even after the referendum, they still clung on
to the hope that some form of Yugoslavia would be restored.
In late March 1992, we began hearing rumors that Serb nationalists
had been planning an attack on Sarajevo as a way to decapitate the Bosnian
state in its infancy. My father dismissed them, confidently asserting that
JNA, or what was left of it, would act to prevent any violence in the c­apital:
“Maybe there will be problems in some villages in the countryside, but the
Army would not allow it in Sarajevo, no way.” However, the events in
our immediate surroundings quickly proved him wrong. On April 4, on
the eve of Bosnia’s international recognition, we woke up to an armed
checkpoint near Vrbanja, a bridge that is located in front of the building
in which I lived. I remember walking by the checkpoint that day without
disruptions, observing four individuals who wore the red blue and white
Serb ethnic insignia on their blue uniforms. I later understood that those
were the policemen of the nascent police force of the Serb Republic of
 PROLOGUE xv

Bosnia-Herzegovina, a Bosnian Serb statelet unilaterally proclaimed by

SDS. The next day, on April 5, I found myself among tens of thousands of
ordinary Bosnians who gathered in front of the building of the parliament
of Bosnia-Herzegovina to demand a peaceful resolution to the crisis. As I
was leaving the gathering, I heard gunshots and saw a scene of thousands
of people falling to the ground. After making it home, I saw that TV
Sarajevo broadcasted the event, and learned that the shots were fired at the
crowd by SDS gunmen located in the nearby “Holiday Inn.” The Bosnian
police restored order by entering the hotel and capturing the gunmen.
However, the worst part of the violence was still to come. A group of
protesters branched off to forcibly remove the checkpoint near Vrbanja
Bridge, the same one that I walked by a day earlier. I watched from my
window as Serb policemen opened fire from the checkpoint, sending into
a panicked retreat the unarmed crowd that had begun crossing the bridge.
Some of the protesters were pulling back with them several others who
had fallen to the ground. We would later learn that two of them, Suada
Dilberović and Olga Sučić, were dead. They are considered by many today
as the first fatalities of the Bosnian War.
The events of April 5 marked the beginning of continuous armed con-
frontations in the part of Sarajevo in which I lived. While there was a lot of
military activity in my neighborhood, which happened to turn into a front
line, we saw and heard very little of the ethnic dimension of the conflict.
An armed group loyal to the Bosnian government established a post at one
of the corners of our building closest to the Vrbanja Bridge. Some mem-
bers of the group wore uniforms, others were in civilian clothes, and all
wore the blue shield with lilies of the medieval Bosnian kingdom. Some of
them were our neighbors. Their non-Muslim names—Vlatko, Narcis, and
Mladen—belie the Muslim ethnic label that SDS was at this time attach-
ing to its enemy. On the other side of the bridge was the area patrolled by
the loyalists of SDS. Despite their self-identification, I don’t remember a
single instance of anyone in my surroundings referring to these formations
as Serbs. When people talked about them, they used the term Četnici. It
only made sense to differentiate the two, as there were more than a few
ethnic Serbs who fought against them. While the month of April 1992
marks the beginning of violence in Sarajevo, the conflict was kept at a
relatively low intensity. Damir and I stopped attending school, but we
walked freely around my neighborhood, and even spent time with armed
groups that were congregating near our building. The sporadic skirmishes
and shelling became a daily occurrence, but they would most often begin
xvi PROLOGUE

after dark and cease by the morning. In addition to the paramilitaries and
the police, the streets were also patrolled by JNA, an armed force that I
still felt as my own. The sight of its vehicles, some of which still bore the
five-pointed red star, continued to trigger memories of the mighty virtu-
ous army born out of the anti-fascist resistance.
These emotional memories would radically change with the traumatic
events that took place on May 2. It was early afternoon when several loud
explosions shook our building. My parents and I looked through the win-
dow only to see a column of JNA tanks on the opposite side of the Vrbanja
Bridge whose guns had been turned in our direction. It was the beginning
of a five- or six-hour-long firefight that wrecked destruction to our neigh-
borhood and marked the beginning of the full-blown siege that would
terrorize Sarajevo for three and a half years. We spent the first three hours
or so hiding in the basement together with our neighbors, ducking in fear
with each of the countless explosions of JNA tank shells that were hitting
either our building or the nearby parliament complex. With thunderous
vibrations, the smell of dust and gunpowder, and the screams of horrified
women, for the first time I feared for my life. It was dusk when several sol-
diers, who wore the blue Bosnian shield broke open the back door of our
building, loudly told us that the upper floors were on fire, and escorted us
to a safer shelter in the neighboring building. Parallel to the events in our
vicinity, another battle was taking place near the JNA headquarters in the
old part of the town that had been besieged by the loyalists of the Bosnian
government. My uncle Mirsad, the same person who in the summer of
1990 pleaded for the JNA to remove the nationalist Croat government,
was now part of the besieging force, fighting for an independent Bosnian
state. On May 5, we learned that he died during the battle, in the explo-
sion of a rocket-propelled grenade fired by the JNA.
My parents and I eventually survived the battle of May 2 physically
unscathed, but our emotional dispositions were fundamentally changed.
The trauma shattered old and produced new perceptions: of Bosnian sol-
diers, who managed to hold off the JNA on May 2, as our army and
guardian, and of JNA as a despised foreign force. This rapid restructur-
ing of heroes and villains was also helping us reconstitute our national
“self.” The confusion caused by the loss of Yugoslavia gave way to a clear,
intense Bosnian identity. In the following weeks, our sense of belong-
ing to a Muslim ethnic nation also grew amid the news of widespread
ethnic cleansing and the killings of Muslims throughout Bosnia. Everyone
who could conceivably be perceived as an ethnic Muslim now became
 PROLOGUE xvii

a potential target of Serb nationalists. As this raised our awareness of

Muslim ethnic background, the Koran prayers my grandmother taught
me, the holidays I marked, and the beliefs and lifestyles of my grandpar-
ents acquired new meaning.
After the events of May 2, the besieging Serb nationalist forces intensi-
fied their indiscriminate shelling of Sarajevo. In their interpretation, they
were fighting against Muslim fundamentalists who were guilty of attempt-
ing to secede Bosnia from Yugoslavia. In September, one of the thou-
sands of shells they fired at the city killed Damir, my best friend who
only a few months earlier had no awareness of his Muslim ethnic back-
ground. His death came four weeks after another tragedy, caused by a
shell that exploded meters away from my mother, myself, and several of
our acquaintances. It killed a child, a woman, a man, and left my mom
permanently handicapped. I was more fortunate, with only a small piece of
shrapnel piercing through my leg. I watched as the blood poured through
a tear in the fabric, and covered several letters of a large inscription on
my sweatpants. It was a word that signified a lost nation and a dying
identity—“Jugoslavija.”
 Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who helped me on

this journey: to those who encouraged me, who inspired me, who assisted
me with research, who read my work and offered comments. First and
foremost, I want to thank my mother, Esada, whose steadfast and energetic
encouragement was the wind in my sails. I would like to thank my incred-
ible advisor Gerard Toal, for guiding me to this road. I was fortunate to
have met him and learn so much from him, about politics and about life. I
also thank Robert Donia for his priceless comments, encouragement, and
for generously sharing his treasured knowledge on the Bosnian conflict.
I thank Giselle Datz and Joel Peters whose stimulating classes and com-
mentaries have left a large imprint in this work. Special thanks are due to
Sead Turčalo for hours of thought-­provoking conversations, and for selfless
research assistance without which this road would have been considerably
more difficult. I thank Sean Henneghan for his generosity during my two-
year stay in Washington DC that allowed me to focus my time on academic
endeavors. I am also thankful to those many individuals who contributed
with research collection, stimulating conversations, words of encourage-
ment, and assistance in dealing with distractions. A distinguished mention
is due to Edina Bećirević, Natalie Borecki, Mario Bukna, Emira Kasumović,
Jordi Martin, Sudbin Musić, Samira Nuhanović, Natalia Peral, and
Mirela Vasić.

xix
 Contents

1 Understanding the Dynamics of Ethno-Politicization   1

Beyond Ethnic Identities: From Groups to “Groupness”    6
Agents and Meanings: The Discursive Politics of Identity  12
Notes  19
References  19

2 Ethnic Nationalism as Bodily Pedagogy: Affect,

a Regime of Feeling, and Discourse Coalitions  21
Defining Affect: Bodies Beyond Discourse  26
Synthesizing Discourse with Affect: Toward a Regime of Feeling  29
Political Parties as Discourse Coalitions  40
Mode of Inquiry: The Threefold Approach  44
Data Gathering  49
Notes  52
References  53

3 Riding the Tide of Nationalism: The Collapse

of Yugoslav Party-State and the Emergence of SDS  55
New Opportunities and the Emergence of SDS BiH  57
Notes  85
References  85

xxi
xxii Contents

4 Contextualizing Agency: The Discourse of SDS

in a Spiral of Polarization  87
Concluding Remarks 107
Notes 108
References 109

5 Networks of Circulation: The Origins

and Modalities of SDS BiH 111
Organizational Repertoire 113
Notes 142
References 142

6 Circulation Technologies: Money, Media,

and Guns of SDS BiH 145
Concluding Remarks 165
Note 166
References 166

7 Feeling the Nation: The Master Frame of SDS BiH 169

Master Frame 171
Notes 184
References 184

8 Making an Ethnic Group: SDS’s Voter Mobilization

Frames in the 1990 Election Campaign 187
Cultural Awakening 191
Amplifying the Ustaše Threat 195
Neutralizing Rival Solidarities 199
Note 207
References 207

9 Nation on Alert: SDS’s Radical “Othering”

and the Priming for Violent Ethno-Separatism 211
Concluding Remarks 246
References 248
 Contents  xxiii

10 Conclusion: The Making of an Affective Community 253

Nation as an Affective Complex 257
Categories and Ethno-Nationalism 259
Rediscovering the Forgotten Sentiments 260
References 262

Index 263
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Tens of thousands of people filled Sarajevo’s main Marshal

Tito street in May 1990 for a “No-Meeting” organized
by SKBiH, which expressed opposition to a division
of Bosnia and interference of either Serbia or Croatia
in Bosnian affairs 77
Fig. 8.1 Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church leading
one of the reburial ceremonies of remains of Serbs
excavated from World War II–era pits 198
Fig. 8.2 Radovan Karadžić, Alija Izetbegović, and Stjepan
Kljuić holding a joint press conference 205
Fig. 8.3 Supporters of SDA, HDZ, and SDS holding a joint
post-election celebration in Kakanj 205
Fig. 9.1 One of numerous articles in Javnost that deployed
the Nazi Swastika in describing the anti-Serb conspiracy
by Croatia and Germany. Driving the Nazi locomotive
is Milan Kučan, the president of Slovenia, with Franjo
Tuđman sitting in the wagon behind 232
Fig. 9.2 A Javnost article juxtaposed the image of the NDH
formation in 1941 and the Croatian National Guard
parade in Zagreb in 1991 233
Fig. 9.3 Javnost cartoon of an emblem of “NDBiH.”
The NDBiH abbreviation associated the potential
independent statehood of BiH to the fascist NDH,
while the drawing of a mosque suggested that it
would be an Islamic state 234

xxv
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Threefold approach 48

xxvii
 CHAPTER 1

Understanding the Dynamics

of Ethno-Politicization

The first week of April 1992 was a defining moment in the politics of
Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). Two years of ethno-political conflict between
the three ethno-national parties that governed the former Yugoslav
Republic were culminating in widespread violence. In the capital city of
Sarajevo, rival mono-ethnic paramilitaries roamed the streets, setting up
roadblocks and checkpoints. As subsequent events would show, Bosnia-­
Herzegovina was descending into a three-and-a-half-year-long war. Amid
this breakdown of order, on April 5, tens of thousands of ordinary citizens
filled the square in front of the Parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina to pro-
test the turn of events. While the gathering is remembered today as a peace
rally, it is more remarkable as a mass expression of collective loyalties that
were incongruent with the ethnically divided elite politics. The protesters
did not mobilize due to an ethnic security dilemma, a desire to defend an
imagined ethno-national community perceived to be under threat, or an
attempt to revive an ethnic nation to its glorious heyday. Rather, the mass
solidarity came in defense of something seemingly much more banal that
was jeopardized by the direction of ethnic politics: the Bosnian1 tradition
of zajednički život (common life) in which personal relations and everyday
lived experiences routinely transgressed, reinscribed, and blurred ethnic
boundaries. The protesters braved the paramilitaries in the nearby streets
to chant against ethnic divisions and sing Bosnian folk songs while display-
ing the symbols of both Yugoslavia and BiH.

© The Author(s) 2017 1

A. Maksić, Ethnic Mobilization, Violence, and the Politics of Affect,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-48293-4_1
2 A. MAKSIĆ

Despite these and many other expressions of similar mass sentiments,

many domestic and international observers have subscribed to the eth-
nic conflict paradigm as a framework for understanding the Bosnian War.
Implicit in this conceptual framework is the notion of well-bounded ethnic
groups, whose conflict stemmed from mutually exclusive, long-­standing,
and self-evident political interests. While its advocates often make use of
nationalist protests as evidence of the politically powerful ethnic struc-
tures, they dismiss mobilization around alternative axes of collective iden-
tification, like the large protest gathering of April 5, as politically irrelevant
anomalies or outliers. The paradigm utilizes the sedimentation and politi-
cization of ethnic identities that occur prior to and during conflicts as
evidence of a conflict’s cause, and of appropriateness of the essentialist
understandings of ethnicity. Olga Sučić and Suada Dilberović, two of the
protestors killed on April 5 by armed Serb nationalists, are thus remem-
bered today as a Croat and a Bosniak woman killed by Serbs. Such eth-
nic labels are an inverse of the antinationalist understanding that led the
April 5 protesters to the streets. The ethnic conflict framework, it seems,
is capable of absorbing even the evidence against it.
This reductionism comes with both analytical flaws and political impli-
cations. First, it leads to flawed understandings of conflicts by condensing
diversities that exist at manifold levels. Many people who fall into an offi-
cial ethnic category by virtue of family background or adherence to cul-
tural traditions may not have sentiments that give rise to group solidarity.
When such solidarities do give rise to palpable ethnic groups, its members
may not see ethnicity as a primary political identity. The ethnic axis of
identification may be superseded by alternative subethnic and supra-ethnic
identifications, such as those that follow clan, regional, class, and other
axes. Even when ethnic identities are politicized, they do not come with
self-apparent political interests. The constitution of these interests is often
a subject of considerable intraethnic debates. Moreover, the reduction-
ism of “ethnic conflict” not only obscures the dynamics through which
ethnicity is promoted into a primary axis, ethnic sentiments intensified,
and the various voices homogenized, but also contributes to the ethno-­
nationalist ontological politics that seek to naturalize these outcomes as
the true or proper social order. Indeed, it is surprising that the framework
has been used so extensively for understanding a wide range of complex
and diverse cases of political conflict and violence. Evidence that it can be
both a flawed category of analysis and a discriminative category of prac-
tice is abundant. In the case of BiH, the April 5 protests were one in a
 UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF ETHNO-POLITICIZATION 3

series of acts of mass opposition to the elite-driven processes of ethnic

­homogenization that led to the Bosnian War.
In this book, I offer a way of understanding conflicts waged in the name
of ethnic nations that both accounts for the successes of ethnic nationalisms
and properly acknowledges the powers of rival mass sentiments that resisted
them. Rather than assuming the existence of politicized ethnic groups, I
expose the role of nationalist agency in the politicization of ethnicity and the
homogenization of people around an ethnic axis of collective identification.
This is a task that involves an analytical dissection of the complex dynam-
ics that make a difference between ethnic categories and ethnic groups,
between cultural commonalities and political identities, and between multi-
ethnic coexistence and ethnic war. The book grasps these intricate com-
plexities through the analytical thickness of a case study, focusing on Serb
ethno-nationalist agency in BiH that turned the majority of Bosnian Serbs
into a palpable ethno-political group primed for armed mobilization. It cov-
ers the two-year period that preceded the 1992–1995 Bosnian war, a time
that corresponds to the emergence and rise of ethno-political agents and a
sharp increase in the salience of ethnicity in Bosnian politics.
The chapters that follow will argue that the powers of visceral under-
standings and affective experience of the nation generated by ethno-­
nationalist agents were crucial for the production of palpable ethnic
communities prior to the outbreak of the Bosnian War. To advance this
argument, we need to replace the static view of identity implicit in the
commonplace depictions of the Bosnian War as an “ethnic conflict” with
a new set of conceptual tools that treat ethnic identity as a variable that
ebbs and flows. In this study, I use ethnicized conflict, ethno-politicization,
and ethnicization as three related conceptual tools useful for understand-
ing the dynamic relationship between elite politics, ethnic identities, and
the broader social conditions. The concept of ethnicized conflict signifies
a transient outcome of a dynamic, open-ended, and continuous process
of the political production of ethnic groups and violent conflict waged on
behalf of them. Ethno-politicization refers to a political process that can
potentially lead to ethnicized conflict. It happens when political agents
introduce new, or intensify existing, ethnic grievances, potentially sidelin-
ing other, non-ethnic issues. These may involve the demands for ethno-­
cultural conservation, interpretations of the economic crisis in terms of
ethnic exploitation, or claims of an existential threat against the nation.
The more such ethno-national questions dominate the political space, the
higher the levels of ethno-politicization.
4 A. MAKSIĆ

While ethno-politicization can happen through a multitude of d ­ ispersed

activities, it is primarily driven by those actors whose social, institutional,
and political positions empower them with disproportionate political influ-
ence. These are the capacities we think of when we speak of the political
elites, which may refer to the leading government officials, political party
bosses, distinguished academics, and other diverse groups and individu-
als in the position of authority. The activities of the elites on promoting
ethnicity as a primary axis of collective identification, and on defining par-
ticular ethno-political interests, are unique for their potential to rever-
berate across the social field. As the elites raise ethnic grievances, stage
rallies, debate, and make policies, they affect how people at large interpret
who they are, what their economic condition is, whom they should trust
and fear, what cultural practices should be embraced, and whose leader-
ship should be followed. The more these perceptions are informed by the
categories of ethno-national belonging, the more the field is ethnicized.
Ethno-politicization thus generates ethnicization, which is a broader term
signifying a general social condition. While ethno-­politicization refers to
active political advocacy, ethnicization also involves the effects of these
activities on the constitution of subjectivities. The levels of ethniciza-
tion rise as people internalize or intensify the politically advocated ethnic
understandings of the self and the society, and manifest them in ordinary,
everyday practices.
Yet, the relationship between ethno-politicization and the broader eth-
nicization should be seen as that of mutual constitution. The levels of eth-
nicization reflect back on the capacities of ethno-political agents to carry
out particular action by delimiting what political activities could mobi-
lize ethnic sentiments, and what policies could earn mass endorsement.
Moreover, the perpetually shifting broader social field continuously alters
power relations that constitute the elites as a distinct set of actors. Some
actors lose their disproportionate influence, others acquire social recogni-
tion that elevates them to the elite status, while yet others may have a cer-
tain middle level of influence that is neither clearly elite nor clearly outside
of the elite circle. In other words, the elite/non-elite separation is always
to a degree artificial. Despite these ambiguities and overlaps, the concept
of ethno-politicization is analytically valuable for delimiting a domain of
the most relevant ethnicizing action. It performs the much-needed work
of analytically appreciating that relatively small circles of actors have a
­disproportionate ability to generate social realities, which includes ethnic
solidarities and the conflicts waged in the name of ethnic nations.
 UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF ETHNO-POLITICIZATION 5

This book offers an understanding of the processes of ­ethno-­politicization

that led to the Bosnian War by studying the role of the Serb Democratic
Party of BiH (SDS BiH—Srpska demokratska stranka Bosne i Hercegovine)2
in the political homogenization and armed mobilization of Bosnia’s eth-
nic Serbs. SDS BiH emerged as a collective agent in the early ­summer
of 1990, a time when the various ethno-nationalist activists in BiH
were taking advantage of the collapse of Yugoslav communist regime
by organizing into official political parties. In BiH’s first free elections
held in November of 1990, the victory belonged to three leading ethno-­
nationalist parties—SDS, the Muslim ethno-national Party for Democratic
Action (SDA—Stranka demokratske akcije), and the Bosnian wing of
Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ BiH—Hrvatska demokratska
zajednica Bosne i Hercegovine). The winning parties subsequently formed
an uneasy partnership that would lead the republic through a period of
rapid disintegration of the Yugoslav federation. The crumbling of the
­federation created a fluid and uncertain situation in Bosnia, collapsing
the power mechanisms that underpinned its legal and geopolitical status.
The three ruling parties responded by advocating incompatible visions of
the republic’s future. SDA and HDZ BiH saw Bosnia as a sovereign state,
and eventually began a push for its international independence. On the
other hand, SDS accepted nothing short of either Bosnia remaining in
the rump Yugoslavia or being divided into ethnic territories. These posi-
tions were, the parties claimed, the wills of their respective nations.
While SDS, SDA, and HDZ BiH were the three dominant ethno-­
political agents in BiH, SDS stands out as an extraordinary political party.
SDS’s resources for implementing its agenda were superior to those of any
other Bosnian political party, movement, or even state institution. The
party advocated both political and physical separation of Bosnia’s ethnic
nations, despite a geographic mosaic of intertwined ethnic communities
and a large share of urban populations that did not neatly fall into any of
the three dominant ethnic categories. What Bosnia’s demographic realities
and rival political agents did not let it achieve politically, SDS BiH sought to
achieve forcibly. In the spring of 1992, it led the creation of an exclusively
Serb military force that outgunned those of the internationally recognized
Bosnian government and other opposing armed formations present on the
republic’s territory. With unmatched military prowess, the party enforced
its vision of carving out an exclusively Serb statelet on Bosnia’s e­ thnically
heterogeneous territory. As of this writing, most of its senior leadership
has been convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
6 A. MAKSIĆ

Yugoslavia (ICTY) for the crimes committed against the ethnic other. The
party’s leader, Radovan Karadžić, has been found guilty for the 1995 geno-
cide in Srebrenica in the Tribunal’s first instance verdict delivered in 2016.
Despite this, SDS’s project was a remarkable success. The statelet created
through forcible changes to Bosnia’s demographics has been legalized as
one of two entities constituting the present-day Bosnia-­Herzegovina. The
entity’s name, Republika Srpska, has enshrined the linkage of ethnicity to
territory to which its wartime founders aspired. Indeed, SDS BiH was a
main contributor to the outbreak of conflict in Bosnia, the radical deepen-
ing of ethno-national cleavages among its people, and the polity’s postwar
ethno-territorial order.
The analytical focus on SDS as an agent of ethno-politicization here
offers an understanding of how a single collective actor can secure mass
support for widespread violence in the name of “national interests” as
defined by the actor. The analysis contributes to the structure and agency
debate by examining the mutual interaction between the agency and the
social and political context within which it was situated. This means that
the focus on SDS does not exclude other relevant actors. In fact, its major
challenge is to properly situate the role of SDS vis-à-vis its political allies
and adversaries that also contributed to the structuring of Bosnia’s socio-
political environment. This involves looking at other significant agents
insofar as they influenced the dynamics of ethno-politicization and thus
enabled and constrained the activities of SDS. These are not only other
major ethno-nationalist parties that participated in the marginalization of
the non-ethnic alternatives in the 1990 elections and the shaping of the
postelection debates, but also the agents in Bosnia and neighboring Serbia
that provided crucial discursive and material support to SDS BiH.

Beyond Ethnic Identities: From Groups

to “Groupness”

The conceptual framework for analyzing SDS’s agency has so far shifted
the analytical locus from ethnic entities to ethno-political dynamics. Yet,
this move also calls for new ways of understanding the concepts of “eth-
nic nation,” “identity,” and “agency” that reflect the incessant mutual
constitution of the political processes and social entities. A point of depar-
ture can be found here in the various strands of constructivism that see
nations as constructed, unstable, multifarious, and not the primordial
givens that ethno-nationalists and other commentators claim they are.
 UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF ETHNO-POLITICIZATION 7

More than three decades ago, Benedict Anderson (2006) coined the term
­“imagined community” to argue that a nation is a socially constructed
community imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of
it. For Anderson, “a nation is imagined because the members of even the
smallest nations will never know most of their fellow members, meet them
or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their com-
munion” (p. 6). These collective imaginaries themselves vary across space
and time in relation to the broader social and economic context. Anderson
sees the nineteenth-century spread of print capitalism as a key develop-
ment that facilitated the global proliferation of national identity. In order
to maximize circulation of the print media, the capitalist entrepreneurs
expanded the print languages to include not only the scripts known to the
privileged few but also the vernacular languages of the masses. This uni-
fied the fields of communication, enabling speakers of a variety of dialects
to become aware of the existence of the millions with whom they shared
language and press. The national imaginaries were also enhanced by the
stability and sense of antiquity that the fixity of print gave to language.
Other thinkers had emphasized that nineteenth-century nationalisms
were a necessary outcome of industrialization. In Ernest Gellner’s view
(1983), the industrial age came with the need for cultural standardiza-
tion, generic employment training, and context-free communication. The
fulfillment of these functions required and resulted in the development of
large collective identities. The works of Gellner and Anderson are comple-
mentary insofar as the specific economic conditions described by Gellner
shaped the development of national imaginaries. Yet, Anderson rightly
corrects Gellner’s absorption of human agency under economic function-
alism with an emphasis on what modernity made possible rather than neces-
sary. Anderson accounts for the spread of nationalism by placing greater
explanatory weight on ideas, socially constituted categories, and political
projects. He discusses the American Revolution as precedent for some
European nationalist movements, and imperial map, census, and museum
representations as resources that fostered the emergence of postcolonial
nationalisms in societies with low levels of industrialization. Moreover,
Anderson considers the role of large-scale discursive shifts, namely, the
seventeenth-century decline of belief in sacral monarchy and privilege of
sacred texts, as precursors that autonomously facilitated the vernaculariza-
tion of the print languages.
Anthony Smith (1998) has challenged the marriage of nations and
modernity by pointing to the many cases of nationalism that antedated
Another random document with
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Other there were that this ill humour fed,
To neyther part that had good will or mind,
The duke of Yorke our cosin most vnkinde,
Who keeping close a title to the crowne,
Lancaster’s house did labour to pull downe.

49.

The stay whereof hee tooke to stand in mee,

Seeing the king of courage nothing stout,
Neyther of witte great perill to foresee,
So for purpose, if hee could bring about
Mee to displace, then did hee litle doubt
To gayne the goale, for which hee droue the ball,
The crowne (I meane) to catch ere it should fall.

50.

This hope made him agaynst mee to conspyre

With those which foes were to ech other late,
The queene did weene to win her whole desire,
Which was to rule the king and all the state
If I were rid, whom therefore shee did hate,
Forecasting not, when that was brought to passe,
How weake of friendes the king her husband, was.

51.

The dukes two, of Excester, and Buckingham,

With the marquise Dorset therein did agree,
But namely the marquise of Suffolke, William,
Contriuer chiefe of this conspiracy,
With other moe, that sate still and did see
Theyr mortall foes on mee to whet theyr kniues,
Which turnde at last to losse of all theyr liues.

52.
But vayne desire of soueraynty and rule,
Which otherwise (ambition) hath to name,
So stird the queene, that wilfull as a mule,
Headlong she runnes from smoke into the flame,
Driuing a drift, which after did so frame,
As shee, the king, with all theyr line and race,
Depriued were of honour, life, and place.

53.

So for purpose shee thought it very good,

With former foes in frendship to confeder,
The duke of Yorke, and other of his bloud,
With Neuills all, knit were then altogether,
And Delapoole, friend afore to neither:
The cardinall also came within this list,
As Herode and Pilate to iudge Ihesus Christ.

54.

This cursed league too late discouered was

By bayardes blinde, that linked in the line,
The queene and cardinall brought it so to passe,
With marquise Suffolke maister of this myne,
Whose ill aduise was counted very fine,
With other moe which finely could disguise,
With false visours my mischiefe to deuise.

55.

Concluding thus, they poynt without delay

Parliament to holde, in some vnhaunted place,
Far from London, out of the common way,
Where few or none should vnderstand the case,
But whom the queene and cardinall did embrace:
And so for place they chose Saint Edmondsbury,
Since when (some say) England was neuer mery.
 56.

Somens was sent this company to call,

Which made mee muse, that in so great a case
I should no whit of counsayle bee at all,
Who yet had rule, and next the king in place,
Me thought nothing my state could more disgrace
Then to beare name, and in effect to bee
A cypher in algrim, as all men mought see.

57.

And though iust cause I had for to suspect

The time and place apoynted by my foes,
And that my friendes most playnly did detect
The subtil trayne, and practise of all those
Which agaynst mee great treasons did suppose:
Yet trust of truth with a conscience cleare
Gaue mee good heart in that place to appeare.

58.

Upon which trust with more haste then good speede,

Forward I went to that vnlucky place
Duty to show, and no whit was in dread
Of any trayne, but bold to shew my face
As a true man, yet so fel out the case
That after trauayle seeking for repose,
An armed band my lodging did enclose.

59.

The vicount Beaumont, who for the time supplyed

The office of high constable of the land,
Was with the queene and cardinall allied,
By whose support hee stoutly tooke in hand
My lodging to entre with an armed band,
And for high treason my person did arest,
 And layde mee that night where him seemed best.

60.

Then shaking and quaking, for dread of a dreame,

Halfe waked, all naked, in bed as I lay,
What time strake the chime of mine houre extreame,
Opprest was my rest with mortall affray,
My foes did vnclose, I know not which way,
My chambre dores, and boldly they in brake,
And had mee fast before I could awake.[727]

61.

Thou lookest now, that of my secret murther,

I should at large the maner how declare,
I pray thee, Baldwine, aske of me no further,
For speaking playne, it came so at vnware,
As I my selfe, which caught was in the snare,
Scarcely am able the circumstaunce to shew,
Which was kept close, and knowne but vnto fewe.

62.

But bee thou sure by violence it was,

And no whit bred by sicknes or disease,
That felt it well before my life did passe,
For when these wolues my body once did cease,
Used I was but smally to mine ease,
With torments strong which went so nere the quicke,
As made mee dye before that I was sicke.

63.

A palsey (they sayd) my vital spirites opprest,

Bred by excesse of melancholie black,
This for excuse to lay, them seemed best,
Least my true friendes the cause might furder racke,
And so perhaps discouer the whole packe
Of the conspirers,[728] whom they might well suspect
For causes great, which after tooke effect.

64.

Dead was I found by such as best did know

The maner how the same was brought to passe,
And then my corps was set out for a show,
By view whereof nothing perceiued was:[729]
Whereby the worlde may see as in a glasse,
Th’vnsure[730] state of them that stand most hye,
Which than dread least, when daunger is most nye.

65.

And also see what daunger they are in,[731]

Which next theyr king are to succede in place:
Since kinges most part bee ielous of theyr kynne,
Whome I aduise, forewarned by my case,
To beare low sayle, and not too much embrace
The people’s loue: for as Senec sayth truly:
O quam funestus est fauor populi.

G. F.[732]
 [The good duke hauing ended his wofull tragedy, after much talke
hadde concerning discention among those that bee magistrates:
“Good Lord,” quod one, “what mischiefe and destruction doth priuy
grudge and malice rayse among all sortes of people both hye and
lowe? but especially among magistrates being the head and guide of
the commonwealth: for what mischief did the discention betwene
these two persons (being both of hye estate) bring after to both
realmes:[733] yea and the vtter ruin of most of them that were
workers[734] of this duke’s death.” “You say troth,” quoth I, “and now
for that, if I may craue your pacience a while, you shall heare what I
haue noted in the duke of Suffolke’s doings, one of the chiefe
procurours of duke Humfreye’s destruction, who[735] by the
prouidence of God came shortly after in such hatred of the people,
that the king himselfe could not saue him from a straunge and
notable death.[736] For being banisht the realme for the terme of fiue
yeares, to appease the continuall rumours and inward grudges, that
not only the commons, but most part of the nobility of England, bare
towardes him for the death of the sayde duke, he sayling[737]
towardes Fraunce, was met with a ship of Deuonshire, and
beheaded forthwith the first day of May, Anno 1450. And the dead
corps throwen vp at Douer, vpon the sandes, which may lament his
death after this maner.”]
How Lord[738] William De la pole, Duke
of Suffolke, was worthely banished,
for abusing his King, and causing the
destruction of the good Duke
Humfrey,[739] Anno 1450.[740]
1.

Heauy is the hap whereto all men bee bound,

I meane the death, which no estate may flie:
But to be banisht, [be]headed, and than drownd[741]
In sinke of shame from top of honors hie,
Was neuer man so serude, I thinke, but I:
Wherefore, Baldwine,[742] amongest the rest by right,
I clayme of thee my woefull case to write.[743]

2.

My only life in all poynts may suffise,

To shewe how base all baytes of fortune bee,
Which thawe like yse, through heate of enuie’s eyes,
Of[744] vicious deedes which much possessed mee:
Good hap with vice, long time cannot agree,[745]
Which bring best fortunes to the basest fall,
And happiest hap to enuy to bee thrall.

3.

Called I was William[746] De la Pole,

Of Suffolke duke, in[747] queene Margeret’s dayes,
That found the meane duke Humfrey’s bloud to coole,
Whose worthy actes[748] deserue eternall prayse,
Whereby I note that fortune cannot rayse
Any one aloft, without some other’s wracke:
Fluds drowne no fieldes before they finde a bracke.

4.

But as the waters which doe breake the walles

Doe lose their[749] course they had within the shore,
And daily rotting stinke within their stalles,
For faut of mouing which they found before,
Euen so the state that ouer high is bore,
Doth lose the life of people’s loue it had,
And rots it selfe vntill it fall to bad.

5.

For while I was but earle, ech man was glad

To say and doe the best by mee they might:
And fortune euer since I was a lad,
Did smile vpon mee with a chearefull sight,
For whan my king had doubed mee a knight,
And sent mee forth to serue at warre in Fraunce,
My lucky[750] speede mine honour did enhaunce.

6.

Where, to omitte the many feates I wrought

Under other’s guide, I doe remember one,
Which with my souldiers valiantly was fought,
None other captayne saue my selfe alone,
I meane not now the apprinze of Pucell Jone
In which attempt my trauaile was not small,
Though the duke of Burgoyne had the prayse of all.
[751]
 7.

[But] the siege of Awmarle is the feate I prayse:

A strong built towne, with castels, walles, and vaultes,
With men and weapon armde at all assayes:
To which I gaue nigh fiue times fyue assaultes,
Til at the last they yeelded it for naughtes:
Yet lord Rambur’s, like a valiaunt knight,
Defended it as long as euer[752] hee might.

8.

But what preuayled it these townes to winne,

Which shortly after must bee lost agayne?
Whereby I see there is more glory in
The keeping things, than is in their attayne:
To get and keepe not, is but losse and[753] payne:
Therefore ought men prouide to saue theyr winnings
In all attempts, els lose they their beginnings.

9.

Because wee could not keepe the townes we won,

(For they were more then wee might easely wyeld,)
One yeare vndid what wee in ten had done:
[For] enuy at home [and] treason abroade, did yeelde
King Charles his realme of Fraunce, made barrain field:
For bloudy warres had wasted all encrease,
Which causde the pope helpe pouerty, sue[754] for
peace.

10.

So that in Tourayn at the towne of Toures,

Duke Charles and other for their prince appered,
So did lord Rosse and I than earle, for oures:
And whan wee shewed wherein ech other dered,
Wee sought out meanes all quarels to haue clered,
Wherein the lordes of Germany, of Spayne,
Of Hungary, and Denmarke, tooke exceeding payne.

11.

But sith wee could no finall peace induce,

For neyther would the other’s couenauntes here,
For eyghteene monthes wee did conclude a truce:
And while as friendes wee lay together there,
Because my warrant did mee therein beare,
To make a perfite peace and through accord,
I sought a mariage for my soueraigne lord.

12.

And for the French kinge’s daughters were to small,

I fancied most dame Margaret his niece,
A louely lady, beautifull, and tall,
Fayre spoken, pleasant, a very princely[755] piece
In wit and learning, matchlesse hence to Greece,
Duke Rayner’s daughter[756] of Aniow, king by stile
Of Naples, Ierusalem, and[757] Scicil ile.

13.

But ere I could the graunt of her attayne,

All that our king had of her father’s landes,
As Mauntes the citty, the county whole of Mayne,
And most of Aniow duchy in our handes,
I did release him by assured bandes,
And as for dowry with her none I sought,
I thought no peace could bee to derely bought.

14.

And whan this mariage throwly was agreed

Although my king were glad of such a make,
His vncle Humfrey abhorred[758] it in deede,
Because thereby his precontract hee brake,
Made with the heyre of the earle of Arminacke,
A noble maide with store of goodes endowed,
Which more than this with losse, the duke allowed.

15.

But loue and beawty in the king so wrought,

That neyther profite,[759] or promise, hee regarded,
But set his vncle’s counsaile still at nought,
And for my paynes I highly was awarded:
Thus vertue starues, but lustfoode must bee larded:
For I, made marquise, went to Fraunce agayne,
And brought this bride vnto my soueraygne.

16.

At home[760] because duke Humfrey aye repined,

Calling their mariage aduoutry (as it was)
The queene did moue mee, erst thereto enclined,
To helpe to bring him to his requiem masse,
Which sith it could for no crime come to passe,
His life and doinges were so right and clere,
Through priuy murder wee brought him to his bere.

17.

Thus righteousness brought Humfrey to rebuke,

Because hee would[761] no wickednes allowe,
But for my doinges I was made a duke:
So fortune can both bend and smoth her browe
On whome shee list, not passing why or how:
O Lord how high, how soone shee did mee raise,
How fast shee filde mee both with prayes and praise.

18.
The lordes and commons both of like assent,
Besought my soueraigne kneeling on their knees,
To record my doinges[762] in the parliament,
As deedes deseruing euerlasting fees:
In which attempt they did no labour leese,
For they set not my prayse so fast in flame,
As hee was ready to reward the same.

19.

But note the ende: my deedes so worthy deemed

Of king, of lordes, and commons, altogether,
Were shortly after treasons false esteemed,
And all men curst queene Marget’s comming hither:
For Charles the French king, in his feates not lither,
Whan wee had rendered Rayner, Mauntes, and
Mayne,
Found meane to wyn all Normandy againe.

20.

This made the people curse the mariage,

Esteeming it the cause of euery losse:
Wherefore at mee with open mouth they rage,
Affirming mee t’haue[763] brought the realme to mosse:
Whan king and queene sawe thinges thus goe a crosse,
To quiet all a parliament they called,
And caused mee in prison to bee thralled.

21.

And shortly after brought mee forth abrode,

Which made the commons more than double woode:
And some with weapons would haue laide on lode,
If their graund captayne, Blewberd, in his moode
Had not in time with wisedome beene withstoode:
But though that hee and more were executed,
 The people still their worst against mee bruted.[764]

22.

And so applied the parliament with billes,

Of haynous wronges and open trayterous crimes,
That king and queene were forst against their willes,
Fro place to place t’adiourne[765] it diuers times,
For prince’s power is like the sandy slimes,
Which must perforce gieue place vnto the waue,
Or sue the windy sourges whan they raue.

23.

Their life was not more deare to them than I,

Which made them search all shiftes to saue mee still,
But ay my foes such faultes did on mee try,
That to preserue mee from a worser ill,
The king was faine full sore against his will,
For fiue yeares space to send mee in exile,
In hope to haue restorde mee in a while.

24.

But marke how vengeaunce wayteth vpon vice,

To shun this storme, in sayling towardes Fraunce,
A pyrat’s barke, that was of litle price,[766]
Encountred mee vpon the seas by chaunce,
Whose captayn there tooke mee, as in a traunce,[767]
Let passe my shippes with all theyr frayt and loade,
And led mee backe againe to[768] Douer roade.

25.

Where vnto mee recounting all my[769] faultes,

As murdering of duke Humfrey in his bed,
And how I had brought all the realme to naughtes,
Causing[770] the king vnlawfully to wed,
There was no grace but I must lose my head:
Wherefore hee made mee [to] shriue mee in his bote,
And on the brinke my[771] necke in two hee smote.[772]

26.

This was mine end: which was by reason due

To mee, and such as other’s deaths procure:
Therefore bee bold to write, for it is true,
That who so doth such practise put in vre,
Of due reward at last shal be most sure,
For God is iust, whose stroke delayed long,
Doth light at last with paine more sharpe and strong.
[773]

W. B.[774]
 [Whan this was sayd, euery man reioysed to heare of a wicked
person so righteously punished:[775] for though fortune in many
points bee iniurious to princes, yet in this and such like she is most
righteous: and only deserueth the name of a goddesse, whan she
prouideth meanes to punishe and destroy tyrantes. And when we
had a while considered the driftes of the king and queene to haue
saued this duke: and yet they could not: “It is worth the labour,” sayd
one, “to way the workes and iudgements of God: which seeing they
are knowen most euidently by comparing contraries, I will touch the
story of Iacke Cade in order next following, whome king Henry, with
all his puissaunce, was no more able for a while to destroy (yet was
hee his rebellious enemy), than hee was to preserue the duke of
Suffolke his dearest friend: by which two examples doth appeare
howe notably God disposeth all things, and that no force stretcheth
farther, than it pleaseth him to suffer. For this Cade being an
Irisheman but of meane parentage, of no ability,[776] and lesse
power, accompanied with a fewe naked Kentishemen, caused the
king with his army at all poynts appointed, to leaue the field, and
suffer him to do whatsoeuer hee lusted [for a time, but in the end hee
was slaine at Hothfielde in Sussex, and caried thence to London in a
cart, and there quartered.][777] In whose behalfe, seeing he is one of
fortune’s whelpes, I will trouble you a while to heare the processe of
his enterprise, which hee may declare in maner following.”]
 How Iacke Cade naming himselfe
Mortimer,[778] trayterously rebelling
against his King, in Iune, Anno 1450,
[779] was for his treasons and cruell

doinges worthely punished.

1.

Shall I call it fortune[780] or my froward folly,

That lifted[781] mee vp[782] and laide mee downe belowe?
Or was it courage that made mee so ioly,
Which of the starres and bodies grement growe?[783]
What euer[784] it were this one poynt sure I knowe,
Which shall be meete for euery man to marke:
Our lust and willes our euils chiefly warke.

2.

It may bee well that planets doe encline,

And our complexions moue our mindes to ill,
But such is reason, that they bring to fine
No worke vnayded of our lust and will:
For heauen and earth are subiect both to skill:
The skill[785] of God ruleth all, it is so strong,
Man may by skill guide thinges that to him long.

3.

Though lust be sturdy,[786] and will enclined to nought,

This forst by mixture, that by heauen’s course,
Yet through the skill[787] God hath in reason wrought
And geuen man, no lust nor will to[788] course,
But may bee stayed or swaged of the sourse,
So that it shall in nothing force the minde
To worke our woe, or leaue the proper kinde.

4.

But though this skill bee geuen to euery man[789]

To rule the will, and keepe the minde aloft,
For lacke of grace full fewe vse it can,[790]
These worldly pleasures tickle vs so oft:
Skill is not weake, but will strong,[791] fleshe is soft,
And yeeldes it selfe to pleasure that it loueth,
And hales the minde to that it most reproueth.

5.

Now if this hap whereby wee yeelde our minde

To lust and will, bee fortune as wee name her,
Than is shee iustly called false and blinde,
And no reproach can bee to much to blame her:
Yet is the shame our owne when so wee shame her,
For sure this hap if it bee rightly knowne,
Commeth[792] of our selues, and so the blame our
owne.

6.

For who so liueth in the schoole of skill,

And medleth not with any worlde’s affayres,
Forsaketh pompes and honors, that doe spill
The minde’s recourse to grace’s quiet stayres,
His state no fortune by no meane appayres:
For fortune is the folly and plague of those,[793]
Which to the world their wretched willes dispose.
 7.

Among which fooles, marke, Baldwine, I am one,

That would not stay my selfe in mine estate:
I thought to rule but to obay to none,
And therefore fell I with my king at bate:
And to the end I might him better mate,
Iohn Mortimer I caused my selfe bee called,
Whose kingly bloud the Henryes nigh had thralled.[794]

8.

This shift I vsed, the people to perswade

To leaue their prince, on my side more to sticke,
Whereas in deede my father’s name was Cade,
Whose noble stocke was neuer worth a sticke:
But touching wit I was both ripe and quicke,
Had strength of limmes, large stature, comely face,
Which made men weene my lynage were not base.

9.

And seeing stoutnes stucke by men in Kent,

Whose valiaunt hearts refuse none enterprise,
With false perswasions strayte to them I went,
And sayd they suffered too great iniuries:
By meane whereof I caused them to rise:[795]
And battayle wise to come to Blacke Heath playne,
And thence their griefes vnto the king complaine.

10.

Who being deafe (as men say) on that eare,

For wee desired release of subsedies,
Refused roughly our requestes to heare,
And came against vs as his enemies:[796]
But wee to tary[797] him sought out subtilties,
 Remoued our campe, and backe to Senocke went,
After whome the Staffords with their power was sent.

11.

See here how fortune setting vs a flote,

Brought to our nets a portion of our pray:
For why, the Staffords with their army hote,
Assayled vs at Senocke, where wee lay:
From whence aliue they parted not away:
Which whan the kinge’s retinue vnderstood,
They all affirmed my quarell to bee good.

12.

Which caused the king, and queene, whom all did hate,
To rayse their campe, and sodainly depart:
And that they might the people’s grudge abate,
To imprison[798] some full sore against their hart:
Lord Saye was one, whome I made after smart,
For after the[799] Staffords and their hoast was slaine,
To Blackeheath fielde I marched backe againe.

13.

And where the king would nothing heare before,

Now was hee glad to send to knowe my minde:
And I thereby enflamed much the more,
Refused his grauntes, so folly made mee blinde,
For this hee flewe and left lord Scales behinde,
To helpe the towne and strengthen London tower,
Towardes which I marched forward with my power.

14.

And found there all thinges at mine owne desire,[800]

I entred London, did there what I list:
The treasurer, lord Saye, I did conspire
To haue condemned: whereof when I mist,
(For hee by lawe my malice did resist)
By force I tooke him in Guyldhall fro the heape,[801]
And headed him before the crosse in Cheape.

15.

His sonne in law Iames Cromer, shriue of Kent,

I caught at Mile end, where as then he lay:
Beheaded him, and one a pole I sent
His head to London where his father’s lay,
With these two heades I made a prety play,
For pight on poales I bare them through the streete,
And for my sport made ech kisse other sweete.[802]

16.

Then brake I prysons, let forth whom I wold,

And vsed the city as it had beene mine:
Tooke from the marchaunts money, ware, and gold,
From some by force, from other some by fine:
This at the length did cause them to repine,
So that lord Scales consenting with the mayre,
Forbad vs to theyr city to repayre.

17.

For all this while myne hoast in Southwarke lay,

Who whan they knewe our passage was denied,
Came boldly to the bridge and made a fray,
For in wee would, the townes men vs defied:
But when with stroakes wee had the matter tryed,
Wee wan the bridge and set much part on fire,
This done to Southwarke backe wee did retyre.

18.

The morow after came the chauncellour,