Empires and Peninsulas: Southeastern Europe between Karlowitz and the Peace of Adrianople, 1699–1829, ed. Plamen Mitev, Ivan Parvev, Maria Baramova and Vania Racheva
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: This volume gathers together twenty-eight papers delivered at a conference at the University of Sofia in 2009 by thirty scholars, mainly based in Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, but also from Austria, Bosnia, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Turkey and the United States. The editors cast the period under study in terms of a return to Europe, meaning that the south-east of the continent was steered ‘back onto the rails of a common European history’. Not all contributors argue this or even address this theme, the premisses of which have not gone unquestioned (see e.g., Halil İnalcık, International History Review xix (1997), 904–07). As such, the volume is something of a curate’s egg—a miscellany of more or less useful contributions, rather than a systematic attempt to rethink the eighteenth-century south-east’s relations with, or position in, Europe. Still, there are numerous good individual papers. Habsburg–Ottoman relations are a main theme: besides an overview paper on this topic by Charles Ingrao and Yasir Yılmaz, there are contributions on border disputes (Jovan Pešalj), military captivity (Will Smiley), Habsburg partition projects (Boro Bronza) and social modernisation (Harald Heppner for the Habsburgs, Marlene Kurz on the Ottomans, and a separate study on Crete by Manos Perakis). Some papers signal new sources or elaborate on those already known: Plamen Mitev presents a Description géographique et historique de la Turquie d’Europe (1829). Dean Sakel shows how a Greek-language chronicle from sixteenth-century Istanbul was subjected to ongoing revisions through the eighteenth century. Dzheni Ivanova uses the History of Silâhdar Mehmed Ağa to discuss the theme of banditry. Sergey Murtuzaliev presents V.A. Potto’s five-volume, Russian-language interpretation of The Caucasian War in Different Essays, Episodes, Legends and Biographies, which appeared in St Petersburg and Tbilisi from 1885–91 with the aid of a grant from Emperor Alexander III. Of papers which reinterpret already well-known sources, that of Dimitris Michalopoulos focuses on the Vision of Agathangelos, attributed to a thirteenth-century Sicilian monk but widely translated, adapted and disseminated in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, functioning as an apocalyptic political tract. Giacomo Brucciani’s contribution is noteworthy for challenging prevailing views as to the absence of national sentiment in pre-nineteenth century Orthodox South Slav written culture. He probably goes too far the other way in emphasising the links between the church hierarchy and the peasantry, but his interpretation is significant and should provoke debate. Other papers provide surveys of topics such as the role of Ayans (Muslim notables) in eighteenth-century Rumelia (Maria Shusharova), the use of Greek language in Serbia (Ifigenija Draganić), the Greek War of Independence (Elpida Vogli), and the alleged ‘revival of the nation-state’—a rather inapt term for developments in Serbia from 1804 to 1829 (Suzana Rajić).
Source: The English Historical Review
DOI: 10.1093/ehr/cet028
Author: Alex Drace-Francis
Institution: University of Amsterdam
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2313404108