engleski

Croats, Serbs or simply Karaševci? Three ethnic/national identities within a small communitiy from Romanian Banat after 1990

Karaševci is the ethnonim of the Catholic South Slavic population that live in seven villages (approximately 8, 000 inhabitants), in the region of Banat - Romania. Considerably much has been written about this ethnic, linguistic and religious oasis. However, the almost complete absence of documents written prior to the seventeenth century as well as the loss of the local tradition related to their national identity promoted the appearance of various theories, formulated in the eighteenth through to the twentieth century, in connection with their origin and language, the region and the historical period they migrated to Banat. In this paper, the author analyzed in a historical perspective the changes in the ethnic/national identity of the Karaševci that occured in the period after 1990, trying to assess to which extent these changes were related to the war in ex-Yugoslavia and the creation of the independent Croatian state. The influence of the above-mentioned theories about their origins on the ethnic/national awareness of contemporary Karaševci were also dealt with, especially the thesis that they are Serbs because they speak an archaic Serbian dialect. The paper is a contribution to the study of the mechanism of reasserting ethnic/national identity by small ethnic groups. The research is based on published data, interviews with members of the local community, and available literature.

Karaševci; ethnic/national identity; Croatian national minorities; Croatian state; Croatian nation; Serbian language; Serbian nation; postcommunist period

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