Xavier Bougarel, Nadživjeti Carstva: Islam, nacionalni identitet i politička lojalnost u Bosni i Hercegovini, drugo izdanje, Udruženje za modernu historiju, Sarajevo, 2023, 408 pp.

This review examines Xavier Bougarel’s Nadživjeti Carstva: Islam, nacionalni identitet i politička lojalnost u Bosni i Hercegovini (2nd ed., 2023), a comprehensive study of Bosnian Muslim political identity from the late Ottoman period to the post-Dayton era. Bougarel’s central argument challenges teleological narratives of nationalism by proposing that Bosnian Muslims historically developed their collective identity not through a sovereign national project, but through strategic loyalty to existing imperial and state structures. Rather than conceptualizing Bosnian Muslims as a failed nation, he interprets their political behaviour as a rational response to demographic vulnerability, institutional dependency, and shifting imperial power.

The book traces this logic across three major transitions: the Austro-Hungarian occupation, the disillusionment with Yugoslav unitarism, and the violent search for security during the Second World War. Bougarel’s interpretation reframes Muslim agency within broader post-imperial dynamics, offering a non-ethnocentric lens on identity formation in the Balkans. Methodologically, the work relies on elite discourse, political publications, and institutional texts rather than archival microhistory, which allows for a wide interpretive synthesis but also produces analytical blind spots regarding internal diversity.

Bougarel’s study is a valuable contribution to historiography, nationalism studies, and Islamic politics in Southeastern Europe. It challenges conventional narratives and prompts new discussions on sovereignty, minority politics, and continuity in post-imperial spaces.