Good News- and 26 Croatia & Slovenia History Reads
A curated selection of Eastern Adriatic history books
Dear readers,
First: thank you all. Your collective support has helped the TLS newsletter reach over 100 subscribers. OK, I know many Substack authors have thousands (and a few, millions) of subscribers. Yet as mine is only 10 months old, and rather varied, I’m happy and grateful to achieve this milestone now.
If you’d like to expand this ‘Christmas miracle,’ feel free to recommend the TLS newsletter- but only to a friend or colleague who you feel would really appreciate its diverse and often eclectic coverage. Or, you can join the ranks of the paid subs, or think about it for future. I’m in no rush.
1 January 2024 will bring news on future innovations here. Until then, thanks once more, Happy Holidays, and enjoy today’s curated list of valuable history books on Croatia and Slovenia, with links embedded.
It follows a recap of my 2020 monograph. (Just scroll down to the book lists areas if you’re already familiar with my tome- which, of course, makes a nice gift for basic history of these Adriatic neighbors, from prehistory to 2020).
When I wrote my History of Croatia and Slovenia textbook (Greenwood, 2020), I was asked to write a ‘bibliographical essay’ in the back-matter, to elucidate sources used in the research, aside from print and digital articles. I won’t repeat that section, but rather relist the most worthy titles, for your reading pleasure- and for history buffs you may know.
About the History of Croatia and Slovenia
My own book belongs to the histories of modern nations series, a long-standing one from the commissioning publisher, Greenwood (which, along with parent company ABC-CLIO is now owned by Bloomsbury). The first link to it above is to the publisher’s site, whereas the second is to the Amazon site.
While this series generally caters to an upper high school and undergraduate-level audience, I tried in my structure and writing to appeal both to this target market, and also a more advanced one, drawing on my own academic experience in Byzantine and Ottoman studies, and life experience in the modern Balkans. Thus the book draws on a larger context and peripheral actors, ranging from the usually-forgotten Avars, and Mongols who invaded from the east, to the Venetians, who colonized the Adriatic coast from the west. And there are fascinating vignettes about the tradition of Adriatic piracy (the Narentines), the Dalmatian language, Early Modern Croatian contributions to science, and more.
Being the much larger country, Croatia gets relatively more coverage than does Slovenia. However, there is still plenty of coverage of Slovenia and Slovenes of note. This was an issue I knew about while researching but the paucity of sources (not to mention territorial losses Slovenia suffered to Italy) made it more difficult. Yet even on that last front, the future holds good news, as future TLS coverage will show.
While some reviewers have wanted less medieval focus and more on the modern (1990s) wars, I felt the latter has been ‘done to death’ anyway by the media, though I did cover it to some extent, and link to plenty of books below that cover that period of great detail. The opinion of these reviewers reminded me again of the degree to which outsiders ti any country associate it with what is most repeated or commonly-known in the media. However, in the greater sweep of history, the importance of Croatia’s medieval alliance with Hungary and often important role in defending the Hapsburg Empire from Ottoman campaigns really cannot be overstated for the overall history of Europe, though it is usually ignored. Of similar epoch-shaping import is the relationship with Venice, particularly before, during and after the 1204 Fourth Crusade against Byzantine Constantinople, in which the Croatian coastal cities were the first victims of greedy Crusaders.
In any case, from prehistory through the ancient Illyrians and Romans through o the Byzantines, Venetians and Hapsburgs, I think the book provides a unique and varied context for the later chapters of what many already know something about already, the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav periods. For quality-control purposes, I’m aware that a few typos exist in the book- I would be happy to revise it, but this is outside of my control unless the publisher seeks to do so.
Book List- Ancient and Medieval Period
John Wilkes, The Illyrians, Wiley-Blackwell (1995).
Stephen Williams, Diocletian and the Roman Recovery, Routledge (1997).
John V.A. Fine, The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to Late Twelfth Century, University of Michigan Press (1983).
Walter Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567-822, Cornell University Press (2018).
Paul M. Barford, The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe, Cornell University Press (2001).
Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250, Cambridge University Press (2006).
Robin Harris, Dubrovnik: A History, Saqi Books (2006).
Robert A. Kann, A History of the Hapsburg Empire, 1526-1918, University of California Press (1980).
Paul Fodor and Geza David, Ottomans, Hungarians and Habsburgs in Central Europe: The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest, Brill (2000).
Book List- General Histories
Ivo Goldstein, Croatia: A History, McGill-Queen’s University Press (1999).
Marcus Tanner, Croatia: A History from the Middle Ages to the Present Day, Yale University Press (2018).
Branka Magas, Croatia through History: The Making of a European State, Saqi Books (2007).
Marilyn Cvitanic, Culture and Customs of Croatia, Greenwood (2010).
Jill Benderly and Evan Kraft, eds., Independent Slovenia: Origins, Movements, Prospects, MacMillan (1996).
Oto Luthar, The Land Between: A History of Slovenia, Peter Long (2008).
Book List- Modern Bibliography- More Good Books
Mark Biondich, Stjepan Radic, the Croat Peasant Party, and the Politics of Mass Mobilization, 1904-1928, University of Toronto Press (2000).
Fitzroy Maclean, Eastern Approaches, Penguin Group (1949).
John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country, Cambridge University Press (2000).
Susan L. Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945-1990, Princeton University Press (1995).
Book List- Works on the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s
Sabrina P. Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005, Indiana University Press (2006).
Marcus Tanner, Croatia: A Nation Forged in War, Yale University Press (2001).
John B. Allcock, et al., Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO (1998).
Cathie Carmichael and James Gow, Slovenia and the Slovenes, C. Hurst (1999).
Geert-Hinrich Ahrens, Diplomacy on the Edge: Containment of Ethnic Conflict and the Minorities Working Group of the Conferences on Yugoslavias, Woodrow Wilson Center Press (2007).
David N. Gibbs, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Vanderbilt University Press (2009).
Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War, Penguin Books (1999).
Brilliant survey, Chris! I laughed out loud when I saw “Diocletian and the Roman Recovery” on the list, because I ordered that book on Amazon back in 2014 while living in Vienna and it got lost in the mail. But I miraculously found a copy of it at a gift shop near the ruins of Carnutum. I love Split (quondam Spalatum), and there’s that famous Croatian sculptor (a contemporary of Rodin) who has a villa dedicated to his works across the bay there. Such a wonderful place. I wrote a short story back in 2015 called “The Retirement of Diocletian” which is a gothic story in which he’s made out to be an eminence gris running affairs even though he’s ostensibly merely “tending his cabbages” in Dalmatia.
Congratulations Chris on reaching the 100 subscribers mark! Excellent progress in ten months. Your list of books on the Eastern Adriatic looks very interesting, but especially your own of course. Good luck in building your TLS subscriber base in 2024!