The Bridge On The Drina

What is culture and how does it differ from national identity? For many people, their identity is bound up with a mixture of their National identity and cultural/religious identity. It is because these blurred lines that there are many issues between cultural communities found in mixed culture towns. In Ivo Andric’s novel The Bridge on The Drina a little town called Visegrad tries to find a balance between its national identity, of being part of the Ottoman Empire, and the two separate religious cultural groups in the town. Visegrad has many ups and downs throughout the novel as the two factions of the town via for power and control of their surroundings and to better their lives.

Though the Ottoman Empire was an actual Muslim empire,

it was still home to many different faiths and many of them were refugees running from religious persecution; for example the Spanish Jews. It was the official stance of the Ottoman Empire not to harm any of the other religious groups in the empire, for as long as they were law abiding and paid their taxes, it was worth it to the empire to allow them to seek asylum in their territories. As for the Christians of the Ottoman Empire, they were second-class citizens who paid more taxes and whose children were stolen, and forced to convert to fill the Sultan's Janissaries . In Ivo’s book the man behind the building of the bridge the Grand Vezir was one of the these children forced to leave his Christian home to convert and later on he became the second most powerful man in the entire Empire. It was his horrific experience of being dragged away that caused him to build the bridge so as to make the journey a little bit less stressful for the youth taken. The novel he describes the town as a “particularly painful spot in that hilly and poverty-stricken district, in which misfortune was open and evident,” and that he hopes by creating this bridge he will not only help future Janissaries but also improve the general welfare of the town . It is partially due to their second class status, and the taxes that accompanied that status, that were what cause some of these polar shifts between balanced times and times of chaos.
When issues in Visegrad were at an all time high it had absolutely nothing to do with a national identity issues.

The issues stemmed from the fact that one group in the town was Christian and the other Muslim, Islam being the state’s official religion. Even though there are similarities between the two faiths they always seem to be at odds with each other. The Christian’s second class status led to many uprisings and more importantly to some it lead to a general mistrust of the Muslim population whether they were wealthy or not. Much of the Christian population was made up of farmers and peasants because they could not obtain the higher ranking positions in the empire without converting, their lower wealth status lead to people using their power of authority to force the Christians into hard labor the Ottomans own version of serfdom . In Ivo Andric’s book, the best example of how this second-class status affected the poor Christian serfs is during the building of the Vezir’s bridge; not only were there harsh condition and superstitions surrounding the bridge, there was also a period of 2 years where none of the workers got paid. When the Vezir commissioned the bridge “he laid down his first requirements and what he therefore expected from the local Turks and demanded from the rayah – the Christian serfs,” notice how he expects from Turks yet demands from Christians . This wording clearly defines class expectations, how the Christians were of a lower class and were expected to work harder for their wages and the Turks, local Muslims, were given more areas to gain leeway, and were more likely to be designers and guards then heavy duty laborers . The Christians also feel that, “ a bridge is no good to the poor … but only for the Turks; we can neither raise armies nor carry on trade,” commented how the benefits were all for the Turks and yet the Christians seemed to be doing all the heavy lifting to build the bridge that made the Turks even more prosperous . The

bridge had become a symbol of the growing divide between the middle and upper class Turks and the lower class Christian peasants and serfs. The Christian, “resented this unpaid and pointless forced labour,” because there were more profitable things they could be doing in this time like ploughing their fields for the upcoming year, and at least with that activity the Christians knew there’d be some form of profit . Their resentment grew so much that they became certain that the bridge was nothing more than the work of the devil and no good would come from its completion . These superstitions fueled by exhaustion, anger at forced labor, reach its boiling point with the fact that they’d not seen any wages since the start of the project. Later it was found out that Abidaga, the overseer sent by the Vezir, had stolen all the wages sent by the Vezir feeling that the money was better spent by him then by some Christian peasants . The bridge on the Drina is a great example of exploitation of a lower class group based upon their cultural identity and how conflicts between cultural groups within towns can result in superstitions, and resentment forming in the down trended cultural group.
Though mostly the above issues occurred because of different cultural/religious identity groups clashing against each other’s wills, the importance of the society’s national identity is also a key indicator of times when the two groups were able to work together. Though the conflicts tend to occur more often in Ivo Andric’s novel a great example of the town came together as one, was the natural disaster of the flood. How the town Visegrad came together to help revitalize after such devastation had occurred is a ray of hope in the darkness of cultural conflicts. In the novel Andric explains how “at irregular intervals between twenty and thirty years came great floods which were afterwards … used as a date from which to reckon time, to calculate the ages of citizens,” these floods were lasting memories for the citizens of Visegrad and were some of the few stories these members had that were basically the same . The town during these floods band together to take care of everyone in order to survive. The elders and religious leaders of the community, “having wakened and moved to safe quarters all their fellow citizens. Turks, Christians, and Jews mingled together,” not bickering and commemorating past floods in order to pass the time . It is these moments that bind everyone in the community together, Andric writes it nicely when he says “the flood was recalled as something great and terrible, near and dear to them; for nothing brings men closer together than a common misfortune happily overcome,” because it is this horrible event that ruins many lives and lands brought them together is survival . Because of winter being right around the corner and much of the store supplies and houses were in either ruins or disrepair, “every man in the town set to work at once to repair the damage… in that ill-fated town in which the waters had destroyed or at least damaged everything.” The way to bring the issues of cultural identity clashes to a standstill, or at least a ceasefire, as proven in the aforementioned example of the Visegrad floods, it to find a common enemy or goal for the cultural groups to band together against or for.
However, all of this being said Ivo Andric’s novel took place Visegrad years ago - how accurate is this fight for balance between national and cultural identity today? After reading Huntington’s post cold war piece it, has become clear that these issues are still in play today only difference being that western ideals are truly taking over most of what is left on the national identity aspect of life. Huntington piece looks at the world through cultural a cultural lens saying that there is no national identity left except for that of the western idealism. Huntington makes an agreement that all the wars and issues in the world today are stemming more from a cultural identity side then a national identity because in some of the cases the cultural identity and the national identity are one in the same.
As both Huntington and Andric have shown in their articles, finding a balance between cultural and national identity is not easy and there is a continuing war between the two. Ivo Andric novel shows examples of how in the past Yugoslavia there was a constant war between loyalty to the Ottoman Empire (the national identity) and their own religious affiliations (cultural identity) and how it was this war that caused so many issue in the town of Visegrad. Whereas Huntington’s article refers to more modern issues and how western idealism, a more common form of national identity, is in an intense war with not only cultural/religious identities but also with National identities that are completing with western idealism. Even though they are writing about different time periods the conclusion is the same, the conflict between national and cultural identity is the source of conflicts both large and small scale around the world.