The Herzegovinian Uprising of 1852-1862 and the Limits of Empire

In the winter of 1852, Ottoman officials arrived at the limestone plateau east of Trebinje with a disarmament mandate and a military escort. They met Luka Vukalović - gunsmith, elected clan captain, and the son of a headman the community believed had been poisoned for knowing too much - and received the answer that would define the next decade of Western Balkan history.What followed was ten years of armed resistance by the Orthodox Serb communities of Eastern Herzegovina against the Ottoman Empire’s most determined effort to impose centralised administrative control on a people who had governed themselves for four centuries. Vukalović’s uprising survived two major Ottoman military campaigns, outlasted three diplomatic settlements, and produced at Grahovac in 1858 the most consequential military engagement in the western Balkans between the Crimean War and the Russo-Turkish conflict - a battle that broke an imperial army, forced European intervention, and secured the de facto independence of Montenegro.Drawing on the rich detail of the insurgent decade, [title] traces the uprising from its origins in the čifluk agrarian system through the guerrilla campaigns of the karst highlands, the diplomatic manoeuvres at Dubrovnik, and the eventual settlement that changed the map without resolving the grievances. It is the story of what a community can sustain when the alternative is losing what it is.