Greetings from Old Dubrovnik (Ragusa)

Part 1 of our weekend armchair travels is here…

…and today I’ll take you to Dubrovnik, once known as Ragusa, and the ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’. Although damaged in both WW2 and the Yugoslav conflicts of the early 1990s, it has been rebuilt—only to be ‘Disneyfied’ courtesy of G.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series.

As it happens, I shall introduce these weekend travels with a few lines from an academic article by my late Ph.D. supervisor, Karl Kaser. Entitled, ‘Dubrovnik's Compromise with its History', Anthropological Journal on European Cultures vol. 10 (2001): 125-41. (If you wish to read the entire text, drop me an email, would you?)

Milan turns to look into the setting sun. On the horizon an international airline plane is beginning its descent into Dubrovnik's airport. In the summer season Milan runs a small Konoba, a small terrace restaurant in the centre of the old city. In the winter he goes fishing with his friends and does repair work on his house where he lives with his wife—his grown-up sons left the city a long time ago and rarely come back. Milan immigrated to Dubrovnik decades ago from the area behind the coast, Herzegovina, which is mainly populated by Croats. The city, which calls itself the ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’, saw its economy boom from the sixties of the 20th century and offered well-paying jobs. But the war between the formerly amicably allied peoples of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995 brought this development to an abrupt halt. Even Milan, no longer young, was conscripted into the Croatian army. The dignity of the city, awarded ‘world cultural heritage’" status in 1979, was at stake and it was necessary to defend it against its Montenegrin and Serb attackers. Dubrovnik and its suburbs where extensively destroyed during the fighting; these wounds have since largely healed over.

Satisfied, Milan turns his eyes away from the horizon. He knows that he can expect guests today, probably English or German tourists, and asks his wife to begin the necessary preparations in the kitchen. His Konoba is two stones' throws away from the Rector's Palace, the former centre of power of the wealthy Dubrovnik noble republic. In front of the palace, pale, corpulent, camera-hung tourists from the north are getting ready for a tour. A local guide, Vesna, is trying to acquaint them with the former greatness of the city—with mixed success. She is also not young anymore. Like most people in the city, she cannot live from her small pension alone. She speaks reasonable English and is happy to be able to put aside some money from her job for her grandchildren.

Vesna, Milan and Dubrovnik's many tourists contradict the historical and cultural text represented by the old town, formerly known as Ragusa, city of trade and shipping. They are actors in a new interpretation—or updating—of readings of the ‘frozen’ museum-like text of today certain historical developments have forced into compromise with its great past. [continued below]

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Dubrovnik, or Ragusa, Before the First World War

‘Dubrovnik and its suburbs.’

A view from ‘the other’ side.

Locals wearing their ‘national costume’.

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On ‘Tourism’, by Kaser (2001)

From the mid-18th century, European doctors and scientists were convinced of the healing properties of sea air and cold sea water. For increased effect, they thought the water should be salty and wild. Healing could only be achieved if the body was made to feel the full force of the ocean. Around 1750, a certain run on coastal resorts began (Corbin 1994: 83, 102). Seaside tourism was to develop out of this in the second half of the 19th century, as railways linked inland cities to the coast more quickly and efficiently.

Dubrovnik was included in this process which offered the city an opportunity for a new economic boom. Accessible from Sarajevo by train, the city saw a steady increase in the number of tourists at the beginning of the 20th century, even before World War One. Within a short time, Dubrovnik was able to secure itself a position as an international tourist centre on the Adriatic. The annual number of visitors rose from 23,260 in 1925 to 58,050 in 1938. The share of foreign tourists was approximately 80 percent in 1938 (Abramic 1963: 125). After World War Two, the flood of visitors increased dramatically. The number of overnight stays rose from 77,707 in 1946 to an almost unbelievable 5,868,240 in the record year of 1985 (Kobašic 1994: 187). Tourism thus became the city's leading economic factor by a large margin. It also became attractive to people from nearby regions looking for work, such as Milan who was introduced at the beginning of this article.

Today, Dubrovnik shares in the modern (or post-modern) tourism trend away from a standardized mass industry towards the creation of an illusion of individuality within the industry. Further components of this growing attitude to tourism are interest in the local people, the satisfaction of historical nostalgia and the discovery of cultural heritage. No longe sea, sand and sun, but the availability of culture and nature increasingly determine decisions on travel destinations. Cultural tourists want to discover for themselves what has already been discovered by others and to recover an idealized and seemingly lost past. Potential tourist destinations have reacted with major investments in museums. The historical past is being industrially marketed in a conflict-free, readily accessible version (Boissevain 1996: 49-52).

Dubrovnik has not had to invest in this trend: it represents it. Where else is there a ‘museum’ in which people live and work so realistically? Where else is a rich cultural tradition so obvious? The demand for a conflict-free version of historical tradition was seen in the rapid removal of the scars of the 1991/1992 war in the old city centre. The average western European tourist has no understanding of these ‘Balkan wars’, anyway. Dubrovnik has successfully been able to position itself as a destination for cultural tourism; the lack of sandy beaches is no longer seen as a flaw.

It is no longer the sea that brings prosperity, but the continental tourists who enjoy the much-publicized ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’ and its Mediterranean backdrop. In the nineties of the 20th century, some 80 percent of European tourists came from central, western and northern Europe (Boissevain 1996: 48). This led to the city's definite reorientation away from the sea and towards the continent. This tendency is underpinned by the fact that since 1992 Zagreb—a city far to the north if viewed from Dubrovnik—has been the capital not of a Yugoslav republic but of a Croat state and has therefore received increased significance as a point of orientation. This is added to by the current debate on whether Croatia belongs to ‘Europe’ (meaning Central Europe), a discourse that is linked to a derogatory view of the ‘non-European’ Balkans. From a Dubrovnik perspective, this attempt to turn away from the Balkans seems strange when the road distance to the southern Austrian city of Graz amounts to some 750 kilometres, to Bosnia-Herzegovina only ten and about 40 km to the Yugoslav-Montenegrin border. Despite bad road conditions, the Albanian capital Tirana can be reached faster by car than Croatia's own capital.

With its tourist and spatial reorientation, Dubrovnik has entered into a compromise with its history. What was once an expression of the existing power and prosperity of a social elite has become a medium for ensuring an economic basis for its inhabitants. Of course, many other cities in the northern Mediterranean have also made this compromise.

To be continued…