We, of tomorrow: a history of the young Bosnian student networks

This PhD-thesis is about the Young Bosnian movement, a short-lived network of student activists in the university towns of Zagreb, Belgrade, Vienna and Prague. Young Bosnia has become known in global history as the association behind the 19-year old assassin Gavrilo Princip, who shot Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914. This assassination led to the outbreak of the First World War.
Guido van Hengel goes beyond these well-known historical facts, and focuses instead on the question of what it meant to be young in Austro-Hungarian Bosnia before the Great War. Bosnia in 1900 was a country with a small elite, almost no bourgeoisie, and a large percentage of poor peasantry. As one would expect, the newly developed Austrian education system resulted in some important social changes. New social dynamics brought with them emergent forms of social strain. Peasant students in particular obtained access to the higher, urban ranks of society. This sudden upward mobility influenced their political awareness.
“We, of tomorrow” is a book about social networks in the realm of education, about youth subcultures and the image of young people at the beginning of the 20th century in Europe’s most puzzling peripheral region. This study shines light on the rise and fall of young Bosnian student networks stuck between tradition and progress, between Balkan and Europe, and between the present and the future.