Charles W. Ingrao is Professor of History at Purdue University
Slavic Review
The Peace of Passarowitz, 1718. Ed. Charles Ingrao, Nikola Samardž
ic, and Jovan Pesalj. Central European Studies. West Lafayette:
Purdue University Press, 2011. xiii, 310 pp. Notes. Index.
Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Maps. $39.95, paper.
$19.99, e-book.
This collection brings together eighteen essays initially presented
at an international conference held in Pož arevac, Serbia, in
November 2008 on the occasion of the 290th anniversary of the 1718
Peace of Passarowitz (Pož arevac). Having missed an opportunity to
mark the 300th anniversary of the Peace of Karlowitz (Sremski
Karlovci) due to "the tragic events of 1999" (viii), and
anticipating that 2018 will be swamped with conferences on 1918,
the organizers chose to proceed a decade ahead of a round number
anniversary. The project, initiated by the director of the National
Museum in Pož arevac, Milorad o ordevic, and organized by members
of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade, Nikola
Samardž ic, Jovan Pes alj and Jelena Mrgic, as well as Purdue
University's Charles Ingrao, while taking the Peace of Passarowitz
as its centerpiece, actually covers the larger problem of war and
peace in the Balkans between 1699 and 1739.
The volume is divided into four sections. In the first section,
entitled "General Outlook," Ingrao opens the collection by arguing
that the Peace of Passarowitz marked a missed opportunity to bring
the majority of Serbs and Romanians into the Habsburg monarchy,
which would have been advantageous to the locals and would have
prevented subsequent "magnet states" from engaging in nationalist
irredentism. Samardž ic's subsequent broad narrative survey of
developments from 1699 to 1739 shows how the treaty laid the
foundations for prosperity on both sides of the new border between
the Habsburgs and the Ottomans and "contributed to the breakthrough
of new economic and political ideas" (28) in the Balkans. Fi
A conference was held in Pozarevac, Serbia to mark the 290th
anniversary of the treaty, which helped shape modern international
relations, international law, and international borders in
southeastern Europe. Historians and museum curators present 18
papers from the conference on general matters; international
relations, diplomacy, and warfare; society, economy, and trade; and
ideas, art and culture. Specific topics include the
Habsburg-Ottoman wars and the modern world, the Peace of
Passarowitz in Venice's Balkan policy, the Crimean Tatars and the
Austro-Ottoman wars, and the emergence of the baroque in Belgrade.
(Annotation C2011 Book News Inc.Portland, OR)reviews: Awards:
Reference Research Book News October 2011
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