The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/History of Serbia
BOOKS OF MEDIEVAL AND MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Although the author meant to write a history of Serbia in the nineteenth century, he finally decided to cover the history of that country from its beginnings to 1914. He gives as his reasons that the "principles of strategy are eternal" and that geography has affected diplomacy in Serbia in a "strikingly similar way". He, therefore, emphasizes the geography of the home of the South Slavs and follows this admirable survey, based largely on Cvijić or Newbigin, by an account of the medieval Serbian states, borrowing heavily from Jireček, the best authority. Serbia is always the main thread of the story, although Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and Dalmatia are brought in to secure a better horizon. One chapter is devoted to Serbian medieval society, three to Turkish domination, two to the struggle for independence, four to the history of Serbia since 1815, and one, the last in the book, to the Macedonian question.
The author has not written a work essentially from primary sources, nor has he read material published in Serbian or other Slavic languages, but has produced a popular history based on secondary materials in the Western languages. He is interested in the political and geographical history of the Serbian people, not in their economic and social evolution. For this, Jireček's wonderful study of medieval Serbian society and the works of Janitch, Kessler, Jovanovitch, Nestorovitch, Krikner, and the publications of the Serbian government should have been used. Diplomatic history, which, in its details, would have illustrated the author's extensive geographical knowledge, has been inadequately handled, especially after 1875. In this period, the fundamental works of Ristitch, Rachitch, Peritch, and others are indispensable. Hence, the treatment of Serbia before the nineteenth century is the better part of the book.
In a very able manner, the author has pointed out how the geography of the Balkans has been an obstacle to South Slav unity and how modern inventions and educational forces are fast overcoming the greatest barriers after those of different religions and alphabets. But the effect of geographical obstacles should have been traced down into the time of railroad building.
The author is to be congratulated for his emphasis on the fact that "Serbia was not fully a nation before she became an empire" (p. 91), an observation which applies admirably to many medieval states. Stephen Dushan's determination to build up a great cosmopolitan land empire at Constantinople, in preference to a national naval empire on the Adriatic, is only further evidence of the obscurity of vision, on the part of the Slavs, to the role which sea power would play in future history.
In another sentence the author very aptly states a fact more evident to-day than ever before: "The victory of the Turks over the Serbs was a victory less of arms than of institutions" (p. 106). The Turks had developed a standing army and a government or polity organized for military conquest, which neither the Serbs nor Western Europe possessed, owing to the character of their feudalism and the weakness of their kings. The author will hardly be able to substantiate his position that "Turkish rule does not appear to have been as oppressive as that of a Latin conqueror might have been" (p. 120). He has given enough evidence himself that it was otherwise.
Among the more apparent defects in the work may be noted the following. The original home of the Slavs was certainly further north than that indicated (p. 9). Names such as Šafařík, Jagić, Hrebelianovitch, and others are not uniformly spelled in the book. The bibliography is good, though lacking in the works mentioned above, but the index is inadequate.
On the whole, while Mr. Temperley has written the best popular account of the history of Serbia in the English language, he verifies the truth of his own words that "Slavonic nationalities are the despair of the historian".
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1956, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 67 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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