ABSTRACT
In the predawn hours of July 31, 1878, advance units of the Habsburg Imperial Army crossed into the Ottoman province of Bosnia and Herzegovina at four points from adjacent Austro-Hungarian provinces. The Imperial troops were charged with fulfilling the first part of the Empire’s mandate from the Congress of Berlin to “occupy and administer” the province that had been under Ottoman governance for over four centuries. They were the vanguard of hundreds of thousands of the Emperor’s subjects, both military and civilian, who contributed over the next 40 years to Austria-Hungary’s governance and development of the province. This chapter describes the major political events and societal changes during Austria-Hungary’s administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Imperial troops’ entry in 1878 until the historic assassination of Habsburg heir-apparent Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914.
