Covers the formation and histories of new states in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Bosnia, through their final subjugation by the Ottomans

"This is history as it should be written. In When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans, a logical advancement on his earlier studies, Fine has successfully tackled a fascinating historical question, one having broad political implications for our own times. Fine's approach is to demonstrate how ideas of identity and self-identity were invented and evolved in medieval and early-modern times. At the same time, this book can be read as a critique of twentieth-century historiography-and this makes Fine's contribution even more valuable. This book is an original, much-needed contribution to the field of Balkan studies." -Steve Rapp, Associate Professor of Caucasian, Byzantine, and Eurasian History, and Director, Program in World History and Cultures Department of History, Georgia State University Atlanta When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans is a study of the people who lived in what is now Croatia during the Middle Ages (roughly 600-1500) and the early-modern period (1500-1800), and how they identified themselves and were identified by others. John V. A. Fine, Jr., advances the discussion of identity by asking such questions as: Did most, some, or any of the population of that territory see itself as Croatian? If some did not, to what other communities did they consider themselves to belong? Were the labels attached to a given person or population fixed or could they change? And were some people members of several different communities at a given moment? And if there were competing identities, which identities held sway in which particular regions? In When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans, Fine investigates the identity labels (and their meaning) employed by and about the medieval and early-modern population of the lands that make up present-day Croatia. Religion, local residence, and narrow family or broader clan all played important parts in past and present identities. Fine, however, concentrates chiefly on broader secular names that reflect attachment to a city, region, tribe or clan, a labeled people, or state. The result is a magisterial analysis showing us the complexity of pre-national identity in Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia. There can be no question that the medieval and early-modern periods were pre-national times, but Fine has taken a further step by demonstrating that the medieval and early-modern eras in this region were also pre-ethnic so far as local identities are concerned. The back-projection of twentieth-century forms of identity into the pre-modern past by patriotic and nationalist historians has been brought to light. Though this back-projection is not always misleading, it can be; Fine is fully cognizant of the danger and has risen to the occasion to combat it while frequently remarking in the text that his findings for the Balkans have parallels elsewhere. John V. A. Fine, Jr. is Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

The Balkan Peninsula is often referred to as the "powder keg of Europe," but it is more accurately described as the "melting pot of Europe." In The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula: Their Medieval Origins, Alexandru Madgearu discusses the ethnic heterogeneity in modern-day Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia and traces its history. Madgearu examines the historical evolution that led to the genesis of several conflicts in the Balkans. The affected areas and associated events have transformed the Balkan Peninsula into an intricate ethnic mosaic, where no single group of people has the majority. The various ethnic and religious differences these groups possess have survived the many occupations of this land over the years, whether by the Roman, Byzantine, or Ottoman Empires, and then became manifest when the modern Balkan states were created. With the dissolution of the strong outside forces once dominating the area, the Balkan states-prompted by political propaganda and nationalist ideologies-then used history to support territorial claims, defend ethnic-cleansing actions, and justify conflicts with other countries. The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula argues that the current ethnic structure is the basis for the solution of the disputes between the Balkan states and that history should be used to explain, not legitimize, the conflicts. Book jacket.

"Ben Shepherd ... uses Austro-Hungarian Army records to consider how the personal experiences of many Austrian officers during the Great War played a role in brutalizing their behavior in Yugoslavia. A comparison of Wehrmacht counter-insurgency divisions allows Shepherd to analyze how a range of midlevel commanders and their units conducted themselves in different parts of Yugoslavia, and why"--Jacket.

This volume builds upon the new worldwide interest in the global Middle Ages. It investigates the prismatic heritage and eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries while challenging the temporal and geographic parameters of the study of medieval, Byzantine, post-byzantine and early-modern art. Contact and interchange between the Latin, Greek, and Slavic cultural spheres resulted in local assimilations of select elements that reshaped the artistic landscapes of regions of the Balkan Peninsula and the Carpathian Mountains. The specificities of each region, and in modern times, politics and nationalistic approaches, have reinforced the tendency to treat them separately, preventing scholars from questioning whether the visual output could be considered as an expression of a shared history. The comparative and interdisciplinary framework of this volume provides a holistic view of the arts of these regions by addressing issues of transmission and appropriation, expanding and theorizing cross-cultural contact, while also putting on the global map of art history the rich artistic production of Eastern Europe.

In the historiography of trade in the Middle Ages, there is a wide current of theoretical consideration referring to the ways contemporaries perceived trade. The present work pays specific attention to how trade functioned within the range of the influence of the Ottonian Empire and Byzantium, from the 10th to 12th centuries. This book attempts to verify these concepts in the extensive available source. The manner of circulation of goods and the phenomenon of accumulating goods is a significant product of the present book, demonstrating how imperial influences that perceived through the prism of generative centres on the peripheries of Europe. This volume is the English translation of Handel interregionalny od X do XII wieku. Europa Środkowa, Środkowo-Wschodnia, Półwysep Skandynawski i Półwysep Bałkański. Studium Porównawcze (Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika,Torun 2016).

Available for the first time in English--an essay with important insights on the sources of totalitarianism, intolerance, and racism