Distinguished scholar James D. Tracy shows how the Ottoman advance across Europe stalled in the western Balkans, where three great powers confronted one another in three adjoining provinces: Habsburg Croatia, Ottoman Bosnia, and Venetian Dalmatia. Until about 1580, Bosnia was a platform for Ottoman expansion, and Croatia steadily lost territory, while Venice focused on protecting the Dalmatian harbors vital for its trade with the Ottoman east. But as Habsburg-Austrian elites coalesced behind military reforms, they stabilized Croatia’s frontier, while Bosnia shifted its attention to trade, and Habsburg raiders crossing Dalmatia heightened tensions with Venice. The period ended with a long inconclusive war between Habsburgs and Ottomans, and a brief inconclusive war between Austria and Venice. Based on rich primary research and a masterful synthesis of key studies, this book is the first English-language history of the early modern Western Balkans. More broadly, it brings out how the Ottomans and their European rivals conducted their wars in fundamentally different ways. A sultan’s commands were not negotiable, and Ottoman generals were held to a time-tested strategy for conquest. Habsburg sovereigns had to bargain with their elites, and it took elaborate processes of consultation to rally provincial estates behind common goals. In the end, government-by-consensus was able to withstand government-by-command.
Industry Reviews
James Tracy’s Balkan Wars is an impressive, even masterful, work of historical reconstruction by an expert on early modern history who brings a lifetime of expertise in the field to bear. Tracy has distilled the complex situation on the Balkan frontier between the Venetian, Ottoman, and Habsburg empires with great skill and clarity. His contention that this region presents a clear example of the so-called clash of civilizations challenges the dominant historiographical narrative, which has sought to overturn this binary model in favor of one that emphasizes the fluid nature of relations in this period. The book will undoubtedly elicit significant scholarly debate.
