Bosnia: A Short History

Front Cover
NYU Press, 1996 - 360 pages

The most comprehensive narrative history of Bosnia available in English

This updated edition of Noel Malcolm's highly-acclaimed Bosnia: A Short History provides the reader with the most comprehensive narrative history of Bosnia in the English language. Malcolm examines the different religious and ethnic inhabitants of Bosnia, a land of vast cultural upheaval where the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans, and the Austro-Hungarians overlapped. Clarifying the various myths that have clouded the modern understanding of Bosnia's past, Malcolm brings to light the true causes of the country's destruction. This expanded edition of Bosnia includes a new epilogue by the author examining the failed Vance-Owen peace plan, the tenuous resolution of the Dayton Accords, and the efforts of the United Nations to keep the uneasy peace.

What went wrong in the country where Christians and Muslims mingled and tolerated each other for over five centuries? It was a land with a vibrant political and cultural history, unlike any other in Europe, where great powers and religions-the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans; the faiths of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam overlapped and combined. In this first English-language history of Bosnia, Noel Malcolm provides a narrative chronicle of the country from its beginnings to its tragic end. Clarifying the various myths that have clouded the modern understanding of Bosnia's past, Malcolm brings to light the true causes of the country's destruction: the political strategy of the Serbian leadership, the conflict between the city and the countryside, the fatal inaction and miscalculations of Western politicians.

Putting the Bosnia war into perspective, this volume celebrates the complex history of a country whose past, as well as its future, has been all but erased. At last, here is the guide for the general reader seeking a comprehensive and accessible account of the war in the former Yugoslavia.

From inside the book

Contents

Bosnia to 1180
1
The medieval Bosnian state 11801463
13
The Bosnian Church
27
War and the Ottoman system 14631606
43
The Islamicization of Bosnia
51
Serbs and Vlachs
70
War and politics in Ottoman Bosnia 16061815
82
Economic life culture and society in Ottoman
93
Bosnia 19141941
156
Bosnia and the second world war 19411945
174
Bosnia in Titoist Yugoslavia 19451989
193
19891992
213
19921993
234
Notes
273
Glossary
317
Bibliography
323

The Jews and the Gypsies of Bosnia
107
Resistance and reform 18151878
119
Bosnia under AustroHungarian rule 18781914
136

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About the author (1996)

Noel Malcolm is a British columnist, writer and editor who was born in 1956. He was educated at Cambridge University and was a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge from 1981 to 1988. Malcolm left teaching to become the Foreign Editor of the Spectator and a political columnist for London's Daily Telegraph. Malcolm has written Bosnia: A Short Story, which puts the Bosnia-Hercegovina conflict into historical context and Kosovo: A Short Story, which outlines its history from medieval Serb state into modern times.

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