When I was in third grade, my mother first signed me up for the coveted position of Junior Docent at Gadsby’s Tavern Museum in my hometown of Alexandria, Virginia. In this position, I donned an 18th-century lad’s outfit and did my best to immerse visitors from middle America and beyond into Alexandria’s centuries of history. The Junior Docent epitomized a certain approach to built heritage ubiquitous in the United States and, in an altered form, in western Europe.
Alexandria is one of the older European settlements in the US, having been founded in 1749. Its eighteenth- and mid-nineteenth-century wealth, mostly derived from coastwise trade in tobacco, enslaved people, and other commodities, resulted in an impressive collection of Georgian and Federal-style townhouses, churches, and other buildings. Through a circuitous history, these buildings were mostly preserved in a Sleeping-Beauty-esque condition until the town grew again in the fifties; by then, the historic preservation movement was already in full swing. Alexandria’s old brick edifices were agreed to be priceless testaments to the past, and gradually, a rigorous historic preservation and heritage regime developed. This regime encompasses everything from apple-cheeked Junior Docents to construction codes which strictly prohibit the demolition or major alteration of historic buildings. Importantly, the historic preservation regime as it exists today does its best to be non-partisan and non-ideological.
While the countries of western Europe are far older than Alexandria, I see Alexandria’s principles of scientific, non-ideological historic preservation reflected in Germany, France, Italy, and elsewhere. These societies, sharing broadly liberal humanist values with America’s “coastal elite”, seek to preserve historic built heritages for their own sake. The EU and its member states dedicate billions of Euros to the maintenance of historic built landscapes every year. The logic of historic preservation decrees that a medieval church should remain standing even if its parish has died out, that certain ancient crafts should continue to be practiced even if they are unprofitable and inefficient, and so on.
Logically, historic preservation should acquire even more significance in places where heritage is thought to bear more heavily on everyday life, like the Balkans. In popular and academic literature, the Balkans (specifically former Yugoslavia) are construed as a place where history is somehow more alive than it is in deracinated Western Europe and America. However, the preservation of built heritage is gone about in a markedly different, and less sentimental way than it is in “the west”.
Upon entering Bosnia, I was keen to keep an eye on the architecture—knowing that Bosnia was, compared to the US, Germany, and even Romania, poor, I expected to see buildings which were more traditional and “authentic” than anything I’d seen before. I was disabused of this orientalist notion by the five-hour drive from the border to Mostar. The rural housing stock appeared more modern than anything I’d seen in Europe. The houses along the road, in various states of construction, were unmistakably modern. The traditional farm cottages which I had expected were few and far between. The same applied to Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and mosques.
Of course, I would be remiss not to mention the devastation wrought upon Bosnia by war 30 years ago. 90% of the mosques in Serb-held territory were demolished, and churches across the country were also targeted, albeit to a lesser degree. Countless buildings were destroyed by shelling and combat across the country. However, I don’t believe that the war is the only reason for the newness of rural Bosnia.
Historic preservation in the west fundamentally is derived from a nagging insecurity with modernity—a fear that beauty and memory will be swept away by the crass pursuit of profit. This insecurity comes out of a mature and totalizing capitalist modernity, but the ability to preserve old buildings is ironically ensured by the profits of capitalism. Bosnia, having only been introduced to capitalism thirty years ago (on top of recovery from a devastating war), finds itself in a delayed entry to capitalist modernity and thus a delayed entry to western attitudes of historic preservation. If people are still living rurally, why bother ensuring that their houses fit into an imagined prelapsarian landscape? If there’s money, why not build?
There are plenty of exceptions, of course. We visited Mostar and Sarajevo, which are recovering from wartime destruction and have rebuilt near-facsimiles of their Ottoman-era old towns, which, aside from drawing in many tourists, testify to the endurance of Bosniak identity despite efforts to the contrary. However, in Bosnia, historic preservation initiatives cannot afford to be nonpartisan and preserve buildings “for their own sake”. Far from being a neutral, scientific enterprise, heritage is a living expression of national identity. It can mean precise reconstruction in one place and new-builds elsewhere. Thus, when the Catholic Croats of Mostar decided to rebuild their Franciscan church in the newly segregated postwar city (with an old town dominated by mosques), it was not a facsimile, but a behemoth whose campanile loomed over the minarets. In general, the built heritage of the Balkans is flexible and adaptable based on political exigencies. It can be all-important—like the Serbian monasteries of Kosovo, or the Old Bridge of Mostar—or expendable, like the unremarkable, small farmhouses of the countryside. I would argue that this doesn’t constitute an entirely different ethic of historic preservation than that of “the west”. It might just be a more honest reflection of the western model.