The religious, national and political identity of Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina

The identity of the Croats in BiH is real, and is still being created today, in contact with, rejection of, and mixing with other and different identities, both with Islamic-Bosniak, Orthodox-Serbian, Sephardic-Jewish, and in recent times in contact with, rejection of, and mixing with the identities of modern and post-modern European and world societies. The identity of the Croats in BiH is therefore impossible to single out in a completely pure form as a separate entity and observe it separately without taking into account its historical dimension, which means the influence of other identities, just as it is impossible to observe any other identity in BiH separately. , because all of them together make up the identity of BiH society. In this way, the identity of the Croats in BiH is manifested as a concrete, historically realized identity. It is therefore also a fundamental component of the overall BiH identity, and it can therefore be fully explored as a separate concrete historically realized identity only if other identities that have significantly influenced and influence its formation are also explored at the same time. However, the existence of such a “mixed” Croatian identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina has come into question today for the following reasons: 1) advocates of the so-called “pan-Croatism” strives to completely exclude the Croatian identity in BiH from the entirety of BiH-identity and integrate it into a single all-Croatian identity; 2) proponents of the thesis about Bosniaks as the “fundamental people” in BiH do not want to recognize this specific, historically realized Croatian identity in BiH. They believe that it was “imported” from Croatia, that it is “someone else’s” and therefore it should be deleted. The goals of this project are: 1) to investigate the historical, cultural, social, religious and national complexity of BiH society and to find in it the fundamental features of the religious, national and political identity of Croats in BiH, while at the same time specifying those (essential and non-essential) determinants of other identities that make it to a significant extent they co-determine; 2) to investigate where and in what way, that is, whether the Catholic-Croatian component of the whole identity of BiH society is still manifested and recognized at all, then where are the causes of its current state and in general the perspective of its survival, or revitalization, and under what conditions. 3) investigate whether the preservation and revitalization of the Catholic-Croatian identity in BiH can be achieved exclusively within the overall BiH identity or whether it is possible to achieve it by completely separating it from the totality of the BiH identity and attaching it only to the Croatian identity.