Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages: 500–1250 by Florin Curta (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 215 Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages: 500–1250 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 2006) xxvii + 496 pp., maps. Florin Curta’s Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages: 500–1250 presents a new multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the complexity of the medieval period in this broadly defined region, and is a fitting addition to the Cambridge Medieval Textbooks series. Building on the author’s earlier work, which has provided fascinating new methods of envisioning southeastern Europe and the emergence of the various peoples between late antiquity and the Middle Ages, this survey of medieval history presents a cohesive view of the historical issues within the framework of a narrative history while applying innovative research. For example, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages enlarges the body of sources to include and to rely heavily on recent archaeological findings and the scholarship that it has inspired, as opposed to the traditional presentation of medieval Balkan history primarily conceived through literary sources. The geographic range of the work has also been greatly increased from earlier surveys (which primarily were concerned with narrow definitions of the Balkans ) to include the areas of present day Hungary and Romania. Curta argues that although there is a great diversity in histories in this expanded area, traditional arbitrary models of political histories have been slow to recognize that this broad perspective allows for reevaluation of the interactions between various areas and comparison “across visible and invisible frontiers” (38). This new survey of early medieval southeastern Europe is not only a response to the growing importance of archaeological research for this period, but also a reassessment of the geographic concepts of the “Balkans” and southeastern Europe, which seems to be highly influenced by changes in the modern concept of a unified Europe and the desire to break from “national(ist)” paradigms. Although Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages balances many types of sources and adopts broad perspectives on some of the most contentious issues, the organization of the work is surprisingly conventional, divided into relatively arbitrary chronological periods which are subdivided by historical issues. The periodization tends to be divided into centuries: for example, the first chapter , “The end of late Antiquity or the beginning of the Middle Ages?” covers the sixth century; the second chapter covers the seventh and eighth centuries (“Dark Ages”); and the penultimate chapter focuses on the first half of the thirteenth century (“Between Crusade and the Mongol Invasion”). The subdivisions are less uniform and are primarily focused on either groups or locations (Croats/Croatia, Bulgarians/Bulgaria, Byzantines) or issues (The problem of Greater Moravia, the Byzantine-Hungarian wars and the rise of Serbia). The conclusions presented in the final chapter do not follow the organization of the rest of the work, and are broadly thematic, covering economy, society, and religion over the entire period. The final chapter is also very short, given the range of material and issues present in the rest of the work, and functions more like a location in which these types issues (such as agriculture) can be included rather than a set of conclusions. Curta’s presentation of archaeological evidence, and the weight which he gives it, is one of the greater methodological differences compared with earlier REVIEWS 216 scholarship, for example Fine’s The Early Medieval Balkans.2 A short illustration of this phenomenon can demonstrate the growing authority with which archaeological evidence has come to play in creating the history (or histories) of the people of Southeastern Europe. The location of “Greater Moravia,” both as a political entity and as a pseudo-mythic country where the Slavic conversion was first attempted, has been greatly contested in previous scholarship. After outlining the various theories (primarily that Moravia was located on the Morava river in present day Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which is the traditional view, or that is located south of the Danube in Serbia), Curta turns to the archaeological evidence based on grave goods and the emergence of certain types of settlements which are interpreted as clear indicators that in the period of the ninth century, the region north of the Danube should be considered as Moravia. Curta’s work is not simply an...