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This is a comprehensive comparative view of the way the phenomenon of Byzantium has been treated by the historiographies of the polities that have emerged from its remains - Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey - from the Enlightenment to the present day. Synthesising a sprawling mass of material largely unknown to academic audiences, it highlights the important place Byzantium's representations occupy in the identity building and historical consciousness in that part of Europe. The diverse interpretations of the Byzantine phenomenon across and within these historiographic traditions are scrutinised against the backdrop of shifting geopolitical and cultural contexts, in constant dialogue and competition with each other and in communication with extra-regional, western and Russian, academic currents. The book will be of value to medieval historians, Byzantinists and historians of historiography as well as students of and specialists in modern politics, cultural and intellectual history.
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. On the Road to the Grand Narratives: 1. Precursors: The historiography of the enlightenment; 2. The century of history: Byzantium in the budding national-historical canons; 3. In search of the 'scientific method'; 4. Between Byzantine studies and metahistory; 5. Byzantium in Ottoman and early Republican Turkish historiography; Part II. Metamorphoses of Byzantium after World War II: 6. From Helleno-Christian civilisation to Roman nation; 7. Towards 'Slavo-Byzantina' and 'pax Symeonica': Bulgarian scripts; 8. How Byzantine is Serbia?; 9. Post-Byzantine empire or Romanian national state?; 10. In the fold of the 'Turkish-Islamic Synthesis'; Epilogue and conclusion.
About the author
Diana Mishkova is Professor of History and Academic Director of the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia. She is the author of Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making (2018) and Domestication of Freedom. Modernity and Legitimacy in Serbia and Romania in the Nineteenth Century (2001), and editor of many collective volumes, including European Regions and Boundaries. A Conceptual History (2017), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, vols 2 and 4 (2014, 2017) and We, the People. Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe (2009).
Summary
A comprehensive comparative view of the way the phenomenon of Byzantium has been treated by the historiographies of the polities that have emerged from its remains - Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Turkey - from the Enlightenment to the present day. Reveals its importance in both identity building and identity politics.
