REVIEWS 141 remindsthe reviewerof the vain attemptto officializeprivatepracticelawyers in Prussiain the eighteenth century. The essaysby Pergosicand Stephanec drawthe reader'sattentionto topics in Croatia and Slavonia, to an intriguing comparative analysis, and to information concerning inter-regional personal networks which emerged while the Tripartitumwas being translated into Hungarian and Slavonian. Katalin Gonczi focuses on the contributionof the Tripartitum to the makingof the national legal culture over the last two centuries, and points out the 'rediscovery'of the Tripartitumin I989, the year of the transition (p. 99). Hungary's accession to the European Union will be a 'challenge' for its rediscovered 'national individuality'.Laszl6 P&terexamines the relationship between legislation and the effectof custom until the end of WorldWarTwo. The Hungarian solution to, or compromise over, one of the most famous antagonismsthroughout Europeanlegal history,namely the conflictbetween the historical law school and the so-called dogmatic method, was the 'TwotrackView of Legal Sources', which concluded that 'custom could, as it had in the past, annul statelaw' (p. iIo). Medievalists,legal historians,as well as studentsof East European Studies can be assuredof finding clear and insightfultreatment of topics that will be of interestto all. KumamotoUniversity, Japan RIEKO UEDA Aarbakke, Vemund. Ethnic Rivalry andtheQuestfor Macedonia, I870-I9I3. East European Monographs, 629. Boulder, CO, 2003. xii + I96 pp. Tables. Notes. Appendices. $40.00. IN I813 Macedonia did not exist. A century later, it had become a hotly contested nationalist cause, a battlefield, and an obsession. What led to this dramatic transformation was modernity: a chilly wind of West European provenance that propelled to the Balkans concepts that few in the region understood,wanted or caredabout. Among these, the idea of nationalismwas the most potent, and the most lethal. Before the I850s, Macedonia was a poverty-stricken province of the Ottoman Empire, where an Orthodox Christian and mostly peasant population speaking a variety of Slavonic idioms, Greek, or Vlach, was tryingto eke out a modest living, and protect it from rapacious brigands and a decaying Ottoman administrative system. Religion was the only collective identity that most of them could make sense of, for ethnicity and language played little role in shaping their loyalties. But the winds of change quickly gathered momentum, and eventually shattered that multi-ethnic community, producing a 'Greek',or a 'Bulgarian',out of a 'Christian'. Vemund Aarbakke's book covers the first phases of the Macedonian imbroglio. It begins with the establishment of the Exarchate, a national Bulgarian Church that challenged the authority of the Patriarchate of Constantinople over its Slav-speakingMacedonian flock, and ends with the Balkan Wars, which marked the withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from Macedonia, and the division of the province between Greece, Serbia and I42 SEER, 83, I, 2005 Bulgaria. It started life as a Masters thesis submitted to the University of Copenhagen in 1992, but the bibliographyhas not been updated. The author concedes that his aim was not to offera new interpretationor evidence, but a workof synthesis,based on secondaryliteratureand publisheddocuments. In that he has succeeded, forthe book is a concise and carefulintroductionto the nationalist strugglesfor Macedonia. Among its strong points is the balanced view the author is striving to take, while his linguistic competence and analyticalabilitiesallowhim to makegood use not only ofWesternscholarship but of Slav and Greek accounts as well. In this work the searchlightis firmly put on the internaland local aspectsof its subject.The polemics surrounding the demographic composition of the region, and the Greek and Bulgarian attempts to conquer the souls of the Macedonian peasants through their respective school systems, or by sending into the wretched Macedonian villages scores of armed irregulars and brigands, all receive competent treatment. The author's analysis is further supported by a comprehensive appendix, examining conflictingpopulation and school statistics.The Serbian involvement in Macedonia afterVienna denied them the road to the Adriatic in 1878, and the well-oiled but unsuccessful Romanian efforts to fan the flickering flames of Romanian nationalism among the Vlachs also get the attentionthey merit. Inevitably,there are omissionsin covering such a dense subject:there is no mention, forexample, of two influentialSerbianfigures:the geographerJovan Cvijic, and Stojan Novakovic, a diplomat and minister for education in the I88os. Partlyout of conviction and partlyout of necessityboth men advanced theories...