Invoking the mandate of the Congress of Berlin, Austro-Hungarian troops marched into Ottoman Bosnia-Herzegovina in the summer of 1878. By the end of the year, they had occupied the town of Trebinje and the Herzegovinian countryside bordering Montenegro. The Habsburg soldiers encountered fierce resistance along the way, but nonetheless continued to portray themselves as liberators from “the Turkish yoke” who inaugurated a new “civilizing mission” in this province.

As Cathie Carmichael notes, the 1878 conquest introduced some of the main social dynamics facing the new Austro-Hungarian rulers, “namely environmental extremes, local lines of division, and antipathy from a population who had been largely sidelined by international diplomacy” (72). Her book chronicles in exquisite detail the development of Austro-Hungarian rule in Trebinje, focusing particularly on its new military structures that left an enduring mark on the Herzegovinian and Montenegrin borderlands.

After outlining the environmental and social dynamics of eastern Herzegovina in the first two chapters, Carmichael follows the evidentiary trail left mostly by the Habsburg incomers as they tried to manage local society and impose their own vision upon it. Chapter 3 reconstructs the careers of Djuro Babić and Anton Galgóczy, two officers who implemented plans for a new regional infrastructure, and thus illuminates the inner workings of the Austro-Hungarian administration in its formative years. The local resistance to the imposition of conscription in 1882 presented a major challenge to Habsburg designs. Though quickly subdued, the anti-conscription uprising remained a warning sign cited by later Austro-Hungarian officials as they continued to plan “ever greater military construction as well as solid economic growth” (109).

Carmichael’s account excels in describing the resulting social life in Trebinje, its garrisons, and the wider countryside at the turn of the twentieth century, which are explored in Chapters 4 and 5. A variety of soldiers’ experiences emerges in this account. Many conscripts dreaded the drudgery and the tedium of military service, leading to frequent attempts at desertion or emigration abroad. For the small elite of ranking officers, local life could be more engaging and profitable. At some points, Carmichael’s discussion blurs the difference between peacetime and wartime, for example by conflating different pre-1914 and post-1914 media policies (143) or seeing the sadness of wartime holidays as continuous with the “monotonous” prewar years (138–40). Accompanied by an outstanding selection of illustrations (many drawn from previously untapped archival sources), the book offers a wealth of insight into regional foodways, evolving customs, interactions between soldiers and civilians, and the production of scientific knowledge in eastern Herzegovina.

The final two chapters make it clear just how destructive the eruption and the conduct of World War I were on the ground, leading to violent ruination of existing social relations. While Austro-Hungarian offensives sputtered on many fronts, in Herzegovina they provided cover for mass atrocities and expulsions. Habsburg officers as well as local Catholics and Muslims often blamed Serbian Orthodox communities for the 1914 assassination and for a variety of WWI setbacks, thus driving communal divisions that would be hard to overcome after the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918. Eclipsed by the rise of new regimes in the remainder of the twentieth century, the earlier Habsburg-era world is painstakingly restored in Carmichael’s account.

“How can we reach this distant world shaped by different values?” Carmichael asks in her introduction (15). She offers an extended answer focusing mostly on sources—letters, diaries, artwork, consular papers, government records, feuilletons, memoirs—but when it comes to the underlying methodology, Carmichael brings up “humanization” and “empathy” without defining what that means in practice (13). The intent to “humanize” this Habsburg periphery is surely well-intentioned, and it does furnish “copious, sometimes devilish detail” throughout this account.

But gesturing toward humanity requires more critical consideration of what Namwali Serpell called “the banality of empathy.” Given the “decidedly one-sided [reconstruction] from the words of the incomers” (14), it remains unclear whose empathy is being sought, to whom it is being directed, and, most importantly, toward what analytical purpose. For example, some local issues are illustrated by citing a certain “Rifat-effendi Gozdović,” which was the Bosnian-sounding pseudonym of Reinhard Günste, a Habsburg officer stationed in Herzegovina. This kind of colonial impersonation was common at the turn of the twentieth century, but it is a highly fraught medium for discussing local perspectives, which are sometimes rendered as exotic (127, 132, 164–65). While English-language scholarship on Habsburg Bosnia-Herzegovina has substantially grown over the past two decades, it still tends to prioritize perspectives that are seen as “European,” often at the expense of actual writings of Muslims, Jews, Orthodox, Catholics, and other inhabitants of this land.