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8/9/2019 Jefferson Review Libre

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kao to su, na primjer, odnos etnikogi klasnog na tritu rada u specino-me sluaju pozorine umjetnosti (prvo

poglavlje), ali i u sluaju rastue du-hanske industrije kojoj je odgovarala

jeftina enska radna snaga (drugo po-glavlje) ili pak proizvodnje i trgovinefesovima (tree poglavlje). Na taj nainoita je usmjerenost autora i autorica uovoj studiji da ensko pitanje s kra-

ja 19. i poetka 20. stoljea promotreiz perspektive ekonomski potinjene i

neprivilegovane klase, iako studija, da-kako, tretira i preokupacije bogatih slo-

jeva drutva u ovom periodu, pogotovou zadnjem dijelu studije. Na odreeninain, prvi i posljednji dio studije moguse promatrati kao dvije naizgled oprenestrane istog pitanja: dok je problematikaenskog pitanja u prvom dijelu studijezaokupljena pitanjima siromatva, radnesnage i etnike pripadnosti, posljednjidio donosi razmatranja o razliitim pri-

stupima rjeavanju enskoga pitanja izpozicije srednje ili visoke klase, kao ipitanjima reprezentacije Orijenta u dje-

lima autorica koje su pripadale razlii-tim kulturama istovremeno (dvanaesto

poglavlje). Da se obrazovanje smatralojednim od rjeenja mnogostrukih pro-blema u ovom periodu u Osmanskomcarstvu ali i da se koristilo u ideolokei politike svrhe, pokuala su objasniti

poglavlja drugog dijela studije. en-sko obrazovanje je skoro uvijek bilo u

slubi odreenog (nacionalnog) cilja:ena se obrazovala da bi mogla posta-ti majka djece u slubi nacije. U tomkontekstu treba promatrati i osnivanjerazliitih institucija za obrazovanje en-ske djece (esto poglavlje). Ovaj peri-od je svjedoio i sve veoj vidljivostiena, ali i razliitim cenzorskim poli-tikama, to je omoguilo istraivaima

da se pozabave pitanjem reprezentacijeena u popularnoj literaturi i tampi utreem dijelu studije.

Za istraivae bosanskohercego-vakog nasljea s kraja 19. i poetka20. stoljea, etvrti dio studije moe

biti posebno zanimljiv zbog toga toukazuje na potrebu da se materijal koji

je nastajao u ovom periodu, naime ra-znovrsni godinjaci, salname i asopi-si, izuava kao pokazatelj promjena udrutvu i pokuaja da se pregovara iz-

meu onoga to se percipira kao tra-dicija i novih utjecaja koji prijete dapotpuno izmijene socijalne odnose.

Nuno se namee pitanje kada mo-emo oekivati slinu studiju o bosan-skohercegovakim enama istoga pe-rioda. U svakom sluaju, ova studija

predstavlja dovoljno dobar metodolokiputokaz koji nastoji izbjei zamke ge-neraliziranja i povrnog zakljuivanja.

Denita Kari

John Jefferson, THE HOLY WARS OFKING WLADISLAS AND SULTAN

MURAD. HE OTTOMAN-CHRISTI-AN CONFLICT FROM 1438-1444,Brill, History of Warfare, Vol. 76,Leiden Boston, 2012, 514 pp.

In the course of its rapid growthand development during the 14thand15thcenturies, the Ottoman Empireunsurprisingly encountered resist-ance from the Balkan Christian stateswhich it aimed to conquer. Thereforethis process of expansion was inevita-

bly marked by almost constant border


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warfare broken up by periodical large-scale conicts with far reaching con-sequences. The battles of Chernomen(1371), Kosovo (1389), Nicopolis(1396), Lava (1415) and Varna (1444),from which the Ottomans emergedvictorious, as well as their intermit-tent conquests of important towns andstates, have understandably capturedthe imagination and roused the inter-est of generations of historians, espe-cially of those primarily interested in

military affairs.Rarely did the Christians have the

upper hand in the early struggle againstthe Ottoman Empire, and political cir-cumstances were not always favourablefor their cause. However, this did notdishearten the Balkan and Europeanrulers who were left with no choice

but to constantly attempt to defy and

oppose the Ottoman expansion. Oneperiod when Christian victory seemed

most likely came after the death of Si-gismund of Luxembourg in 1437 andculminated with defeat at the battle ofVarna in 1444 where the Polish andHungarian King Wladislaw met hisend. The period was initially marked

by Ottoman attacks seeking to takeadvantage of the political chaos inHungary following the change on thethrone, but were then countered by in-tensied activities to nally achieve theunion of the churches and to preparefor a mass scale crusade.

It is precisely the events from thistimeframe that were carefully examined

by John Jefferson in his rst book titledThe Holy Wars of King Wladislas and

Sultan Murad. The work under reviewhas in fact evolved from the authorsdoctoral dissertation project whichwas nished in 2011 at the Johannes

Gutenberg University in Mainz, Ger-many, where he currently works as aguest lecturer. Jefferson previously ma-

jored history in the United States andobtained his Masters degree in 2002from the Jagiellonian University inKrakow, Poland. This somewhat un-conventional career path for a soldierof the US Army was motivated by hisknowledge of and willingness to learnnew foreign languages, of which Latin,Polish, Turkish and Arabic were key

for the study of his chosen topic. Itis precisely this fact that presents thestrongest aspect of his work since hewas able to analyse sources, as well asread and evaluate the results of Polishand Turkish historiography which werehitherto, and for the most part still are,unavailable to many Western histori-ans because of the language barrier.

Due to the fragmented linguistic na-ture of the Balkans, a thorough study

of the complex relations between theChristians and Ottomans in the 15thcen-tury would also have required accessto the vast secondary literature writtenin Hungarian, Serbian, Greek, Bulgar-ian and Romanian. Even though the

book would have certainly been morecomprehensive if it had included, forinstance, the most important results ofSerbian historiography, embodied inthe works of Momilo Spremi, IvanBoi, Ivan uri, or Baria Kreki,

the author still managed to successfullybridge those gaps and provide a com-pelling narrative which encompassesall of the key aspects of the story.

At the core of his book rests the un-derlying question why King Wladislawdecided to charge against the Sultanduring the battle of Varna, at a momentwhen the clash was almost settled in


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his favour. To put the issue into per-spective, it is worthwhile mentioningthat it was exactly due to these kindsof delicate decisions that empires weremade or lost. The Sultan chose to standhis ground, and therefore retained his

position at the head of an ever-growingEmpire, whereas Wladislaw lost bothhis head and his kingdoms. Intrigued

by this problem ever since his studydays in Poland, Jefferson decided todedicate his future research to the quest

of its solution.This task was not a simple one.

In order to fully understand the pe-riod and actions of the main protago-nists, the author had to consult a mul-titude of primary sources in diverselanguages: Medieval Latin, OttomanTurkish, Byzantine Greek, Late Me-dieval French, Late Medieval Czech,Late Middle High German, MedievalItalian, Persian, Arabic, Old Serbian,

and Late Medieval Polish. The mostchallenging of those were the 15thcentury Ottoman chronicles which donot contain any precise chronologi-cal data and which were written witha clear agenda. Apart from the stand-ard works of kpaazde, Ner andOru, the author also used the anony-mous Gazavt- Sultan Murd b. Me-

hemmed Hn, which has recently beenmade available in an English transla-tion by Colin Imber. Historians who

wrote about these topics in the pastfailed to include Ottoman source ma-

terials in their works. One author inthe sixth volume of the usually reli-ableA History of the Crusadesevenwent as far as to inaccurately state thatthe Ottoman sources for this periodare sparse, and those which speak ofVarna add relatively little. Jeffersons

book improves vastly on this matter,often providing long excerpts of Ot-toman Turkish sources translated intoEnglish.

The author supplemented data fromthe Ottoman chronicles with a criticalapproach to the works of contemporaryWestern historians such as Jan Dugosz,Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Johannesde Thurocz, Callimachus, AntonioBonni, and Konstantin Mihajlovi, toname just a few. He also used the pub-

lished collections and compilations ofdiplomatic documents, letters, reports,

proclamations, and others, which servedas a backbone in propping up the mainnarrative and providing a chronologi-cal and geographical framework.

The book is divided into two ma-jor parts of unequal size which con-tain several chapters each. The rst

part functions as a prelude to the maintopic of the work and concentrates on

the prehistory and background of theOttoman-Christian conict until 1440.In it the author presents the institu-tions and politics of the three principalcharacters the Catholic Church, theOttoman Turks and the Kingdom ofHungary. He devotes signicant timeand space to the analysis of crusad-ing attempts of Christian powers, es-

pecially in the context of the conciliarmovements which culminated with theCouncils of Basel and Florence. TheWestern powers always consideredChurch union to be a prerequisite forany kind of military assistance to thethreatened Balkan states, but despitethe Union, which was achieved in1439, military help was usually slowto come, mostly ineffective and some-times even non-existent. The secondchapter focuses on the reign of Sultan


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Murad II and the institutions of the Ot-toman Empire, with special attentiondedicated to the military ones whichwere exemplified by the Janissarycorps, the timar system and the march-er lords (tur. u beyleri) who operatedat the borders of the Empire and tookon the initiative in the encounters withtheir Christian neighbours. The nalchapter presents the Hungarian side ofthe conict through the description ofthe roles played by the three Hungar-

ian Kings Sigismund, Albrecht andnally Wladislaw. Apart from focus-ing on their anti-Ottoman initiatives,this segment also contains a short por-trayal of the Hungarian buffer-statesystem, implemented by King Sigis-mund, which at various times includedSerbia, Wallachia as well as Bosnia.We can only express regret that the

passages about Bosnia relied heavily(exclusively?) on the second volume

of Konstantin Jireeks out-dated Ge-schichte der Serben(Gotha, 1918).This resulted in the replication of sev-eral factual errors which, however,did not crucially affect the rest of theaccount. Far from being a mistake onthe authors part, this instance is justone more example which should serveas a reminder that more works aboutBosnian history should be made avail-able in foreign languages.

The second part of the book is sig-

nicantly longer than the rst one andfocuses on the military campaigns from1440 to 1444, during the reign of KingWladislaw in Hungary, describing thestrategy, tactics and order of battle.Jefferson provides a detailed accountof the troops, mobilization, weapons,technology, and all the specic op-erations on both sides of the conict:

from the first siege of Belgrade in1440, through the wars of 1442 andthe Long Campaign in 1443, endingwith the nal crusade of 1444 whichculminated in the Christian defeat atVarna. The battle itself is the peak ofthe narrative and as such it is presentedat great length and detail, in a way thatwill be of particular interest to military

historians. The text is accompanied bya considerable number of clear and

understandable maps which show the

formations and progress of the battle,making it easier to follow the some-times complex and intricate militarymanoeuvres.

Even though it may seem in hind-sight that the Ottoman successes andconquests in the Balkans were inevita-

ble, the author is of the opinion that adifferent outcome in any one of theseclosely contested battles would haveresulted with a signicantly altered

course of events, and considers that aChristian victory in the battle of Varnawould have been followed by a situ-ation similar to the one which ensuedin the Ottoman Empire after the bat-tle of Ankara in 1402. The triumphalcampaigns of John Hunyadi in 1442and 1443 ushered a wave of optimismthat victory against the Ottomans was a

possibility, but these hopes were even-tually brought crashing down to groundin the devastating defeat at Varna which

afrmed the Ottoman domination ofthe Balkans and created conditionsfor a new ood of offensive action,opening the door for the complete in-corporation of South-Eastern Europeinto the Ottoman Empire.

Relying on his extensive knowledgeof a number of foreign languages, suc-cessfully combining the various and


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diverse available sources, John Jeffer-son has managed to produce the mostcomprehensive account of events re-garding the Ottoman-Christian conict

between 1438 and 1444 to date. His

book will certainly represent essentialreading for anyone interested in theresearch of Ottoman expansion dur-ing the 15thcentury, and it will surelycome to be considered as the standardwork for the study of the Long Cam-

paign and the Battle of Varna. Because

of the way in which it is structured andhow the arguments and the story in itare presented, the book will be of in-terest not only to specialists, who willnd a wealth of new material in it, butalso to the more casual reader seekingto understand the broader context ofthe conict between the Ottomans andChristians in the Late Middle Ages.

Emir O. Filipovi

DALMATIA AND MEDITERRANE-

AN: PORTABLE ARCHEOLOGYAND THE POETICS OF INFLUEN-CE, ed.by. Alina Payne, Brill, Leiden/Boston, 2014, xxi+469.

Knjiga pod gornjim naslovom na-stala je kao rezultat dva seminara kojisu odrani u Splitu i Firenci, na temuObject as event, odnosno svih formimobilnosti i prenosivosti arhitekturei umjetnosti na Mediteranu u kasnomsrednjem i ranom novom vijeku. Knji-ga dublje istrauje mehanizme koji su

povezivali razliite i esto meusobnoveoma udaljene arhitektonske objekte

na primjerima relacija npr. Splita i Du-

brovnika sa Istanbulom i Kairom i sl. Utom smislu, svih trinaest autora u svojimradovima fokusirali su se na podrujeDalmatinskog primorja i njegovog za-lea. Usljed injenice da je u literaturisam Mediteran esto posmatran kaogranica izmeu civilizacijskih krugo-va kranstva i islama, ini se da se uosmiljavanju teme i samom pristupuizuavanju Dalmacije krenulo od te

postavke. Stoga je teritorij Dalmacije

u radovima posmatran i predstavljenkao pogranije, kao mjesto susreta,

pri emu su isticane slinosti, meu-sobni utjecaji meu razliitim kultu-rama i civilizacijama na tom podrujuvie nego njihove meusobne razlikei suprotnosti.

U uvodnom izlaganju pod naslovomIntroduction: The Republic of Sea,(1-18), urednice knjige, Alina Payneupoznaje nas sa Braudelovim poima-

njem ranonovovjekovnog Mediteranakao jedinstvene mree kojom su cir-kulisala brojna dobra i koja je nadila-zila nacionalne granice. Obrazlauirazloge zbog kojih se, kao voditeljica

programa i glavna urednica, opredi-jelila upravo za prouavanje Dalma-tinske obale, navodi da je presudnainjenica bila ta to je rije o regijikoja obiluje arheolokim lokaliteti-ma od izuzetnog znaaja, sauvanimrimskim spomenicima, ali i mjestu na

kojem su se odigravali brojni dogaajikoji su obiljeili historiju Mediteranaod antikih vremena pa do ranog no-vog vijeka. Dalmatinska obala u ra-nom novom vijeku znatno se razliko-vala od svoga zalea zbog toga to jezalee esto mijenjalo vlast te prela-zilo iz osmanskih u mletake ruke i sl.Fokus na Dalmaciju pruio je nekim

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