"Defining Years of BH Past" International Scientific Conference
The international conference Defining Years of BH Past, organized by the University of Sarajevo Institute of History and sponsored by the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina began on 22 November 2019.
At the two-day conference organized on the occasion of celebrating the Institute of History’s 60th anniversary and 25 November – the Statehood Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina, more than 60 eminent scholars from 8 countries and 14 cities will present papers within 13 sessions.
On behalf of the University of Sarajevo, the participants were greeted by Prof. Dr. Tarik Zaimović, Vice-Rector for Finances, who congratulated the Institute of History on a significant anniversary, with a wish to preserve for future generations and time to come the BH statehood by organizing similar gathering.
When referring to the significance and content of this gathering, Institute of History acting director and Conference Organizing Committee president, Dr. Sedad Bešlija emphasized that the Conference is an opportunity to analyze and scientifically evaluate the phenomena, events and processes that shaped the transformation of BH society in particular periods and in continuity.
“In the overall course of BH history there are certain constants that shaped it, above all, the BH people’s consciousness of the homeland, the state and the idea of Bosnia and its statehood, regardless of the fact whether it was a part of the large empires from the mid-15th to the beginning of the 20th centuries (Ottoman from 1463 and Austro-Hungarian since 1878)” said Dr. Bešlija. The second constant, he said, concerned the anti-Bosnian policies marking the 19th and 20th centuries in particular and threatened in general the existence of the state and of the BH society on several occasions. This, he said, testified to the fact that the history of Bosnia and later of BiH was, in fact, a struggle for its survival, given the divergence of different interests in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, generating events that could be called defining from this distance. In this context, Dr. Bešlija now reminds of the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, the Cvetković-Maček Agreement of 1939, the reconstruction of BH statehood in 1943 (ZAVNOBiH - the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina), the SFRY Constitution of 1974 and eventually the dissolution of the SFRY and the independence of BiH, and the Dayton Peace Agreement signing in 1995.
This conference’s organizing activities have been running for over a year. The conference brings together eminent names and experts in the field of historiography who will present topics on groundbreaking dates and events from the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina since ancient times to recent history. Also, political, economic, cultural and social processes preceding landmark events in its history will be discussed, referring to the processes that emerged after certain important events that historiography defines as turning points for the further course of history.
