This volume is the second of an ambitious seven-volume project under the auspices of the “Leibniz-Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung” in Regensburg. It covers two millennia and has engaged close to ninety scholars, mostly from Germany and Austria, but with a substantive international participation. It comprises three thematic foci, further subdivided chronologically into separate volumes: Power, Politics, and Statehood; Language and Culture; and Economy and Society. The first two printed volumes belong to the thematic circle of politics, the opening one covering Roman antiquity until 1300, the present one dedicated to the period 1300 to 1800. One cannot but marvel at the meticulousness and quality of this German-language tradition: the “Lexikon zur Geschichte Südosteuropas”1 and the “Handbuch”, collaborative ventures, aiming at providing an all-inclusive coverage of a period and/or region. What distinguished a “Handbuch” from a “Lexikon” (offering concise, summarizing entries, adjusted to contemporary scholarship) is that, at least in theory, it is more focused on a particular theme and provides a narrative based on the state of the art while aiming at analysis and synthesis.

The present huge tome, the result of a ten-year effort, is composed of nine sections and penned by five scholars. The editor of the volume – Oliver Jens Schmitt of the University of Vienna – is the author of the chapters on the Balkans between 1300 and 1500 (including the Ottoman conquest) and on Venetian rule (15th–18th c.), as well as the general introduction. These sections make up for over 40 percent of the total text. Markus Koller from the Ruhr University Bochum deals with Ottoman rule (16th and 18th c.). Four shorter chapters, covering Hungary to the Battle of Mohácz, as well as Wallachia and Moldavia from their establishment through the 18th c., are written by Daniel Ursprung from Zurich University. Géza Pálffy and István Soós, both researchers at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, are authors of two chronological chapters on Hungary, one between Mohácz (1526) and Karlowitz (1699), the other taking the narrative to the end of the 18th c. All chapters are organized following a similar template: review of the source material and historiography; detailed political history; territorial organization; institutional structures and their activities in different spheres (military, financial, judicial, demographic, etc.).

The magnificent bibliography alone stretches over 150 pages and covers all the languages of the region (Albanian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, Hungarian, Macedonian, Romanian, Turkish), in addition to Western works, especially German, English, French and Italian, a crowning achievement of a volume that not only cites titles but provides critical synthesis. As the editor points out, this work is aimed not only at ordering historiographical knowledge, but at its transmission, the achievement of a fruitful exchange between different historiographical traditions. There are 21 splendid colored maps, a timetable, detailed lists of the rulers of the different empires, kingdoms and principalities, a useful list of place names in the different languages of the region, geographical and personal indices.

This is not simply a valuable reference work but a book with a thesis. The whole ethos of the volume places the history of the Balkans in a general European and comparative context. The honor for this goes to the editor, who set the general aim and tone of the opus. It is perhaps the first work that presents the Balkan Middle Ages as a unitary space, not following the frontiers of present-day nation-states, a defining feature of Balkan medievistics. Following the traditional periodization of European history, the volume deals with the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, characterized by the general transition from territorial fragmentation, peaking in the 14th c., to a new imperial order. As Schmitt notes, the Balkans have lived thrice through post-imperial phases when there were intraregional attempts to order the space: after the fall of Rome (7th–10th c.), after the Fourth Crusade to the fall of the Byzantine Empire (13th–15th c.) and lastly, in the wake of 1918. The Ottoman conquest again brought in imperial rule but with outside imperial competition, from Hungary, Venice, the Habsburgs and later, Russia. The Balkans are shown to be a space with entanglements to the Mediterranean, Central Europe, the Black Sea region, and the Near East. One can discern different structural patterns of elite participation and legitimation from East to West, but what united it was orthodoxy (the Byzantine commonwealth) and the dense network of dynastic marriages.

Despite its specificities, the Balkans before the Ottoman conquest follow the general rhythms of European history (p. 55). The Ottoman conquest, on the other hand, while gradual and lasting over a century, is seen undoubtedly as a violent shock, an epochal change marked by the destruction of the local elites (either physical or by cooptation) and the collapse of a system of ideas related to the existence of a Christian empire with unbroken links going back to Rome (pp. 215–216). The phase of intensive expansion ended by the end of the 16th c., and with it the institutional continuity with the medieval Balkans. This was followed by a period of territorial stability until the end of the 18th c., but accompanied by a change in the local elites, from frontier lords to the rise of the janissary corps to provincial ayans (notables). It is against these developments in the core provinces of the Ottoman Empire that the competing forces of Venice and Hungary exerted their influence on the Adriatic and along the Danube.

There are a couple of downsides in this otherwise excellent work: one is organizational, the other conceptual. Given the analysis centered around spaces (a core Balkan one, an overarching imperial Ottoman one, the competing powers of Venice and Hungary, and the transitional vassal principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia), it makes little sense, in the eyes of this reviewer, to split the coverage of the latter into three mini-chapters, written by the same author. A single section would have shown clearer the different aspects of Wallachia’s and Moldavia’s development: the replacement of the previous Hungarian and Mongolian hegemony; the continuity of the orthodox aristocratic elites and the preservation of institutions that had disappeared or were outranked south of the Danube; the ideological legitimation of a Byzantine continuum; the adaptation and integration in the Ottoman imperial polity, and the Phanariot rule.

The three chapters on Hungary are more difficult to blend together, as they were written by three different authors (Pálffy and Soós offer excellent analyses of the historiographical controversies). But here comes the conceptual element. While Schmitt looks at the late medieval Balkans as part of a general European development despite its specificities, Ursprung is adamant as to the non-belonging of Hungary to Southeastern Europe. He emphasizes basic structural differences, having to do with Catholicism and Latin and the opening of the country to West European influences, which Hungary transmits to the Balkans (pp. 226–227). This is a surprising lack of coordination, but it also smacks of an accepted essentialization and presentism. The brief jibe of Schmitt against “postmodern studies” (p. 211) looks defensive in light of this.

But these are comparatively minor squabbles that cannot overshadow this reader’s great respect for the reviewed endeavor. What the whole scholarly community has gained is a magnificent and heavy (both literally and figuratively) achievement.

Note:
1 Holm Sundhaussen / Konrad Clewing (eds.), Lexikon zur Geschichte Südosteuropas, 2nd edition, Wien 2016.