Islam and Bosnia (Conflict Resolution and Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic States)

An exploration of the causes of the Bosnian war by academics and diplomats that offers the broadest perspective on the conflict to date.

Islam and Bosnia re-examines the conflict of the 1990s from the perspectives of international relations, conflict resolution, and history as well as psychology, anthropology, and cultural studies. Rejecting the primordialist, or "ancient hatreds," interpretation as the root of the conflict, the authors detail how a complex cultural transformation led to the erosion of what had been the common inclusionist base of a multi-ethnic state and brought about a new exclusionist nationalism. By pulling together the individual elements of culture, society, and foreign policy and analysing their interaction, Islam and Bosnia demonstrates how the secular romantic nationalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, centred on history, language, and landscape, was overthrown in favour of one that highlighted religion, race, and territory.

Islam and Bosnia shows how the Bosnian conflict bears on the wider contexts of cultural paradigms, deadly conflicts, and the formulation of foreign policy. It argues for a new perspective in foreign policy-making, one that would embrace and incorporate better and deeper knowledge and understanding of culture, history, and ideology.

Contributors include Tone Bringa (University of Bergen), Amila Buturovic (York University), John V.A. Fine (University of Michigan), Peter W. Galbraith (former U.S. ambassador to Croatia), Graham N. Green (former Canadian ambassador to Croatia), Nader Hashemi (Ph.D. candidate, University of Toronto), John M. Reid, (information commissionaire for Canada), András Riedlmayer (Harvard University), Michael A. Sells (Haverford College), Donald W. Smith (former Canadian ambassador to Croatia), and Vamik D. Volkan (University of Virginia).