Byzantium after the nation : the problem of continuity in Balkan historiographies

Dimitris Stamatopoulos undertakes the first systematic comparison of the dominant ethnic historiographic models and divergences elaborated by Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Romanian, Turkish, and Russian intellectuals with reference to the ambiguous inheritance of Byzantium. The title alludes to the seminal work of Nicolae Iorga in the 1930s, Byzantium after Byzantium, that argued for the continuity between the Byzantine and the Ottoman empires. The idea of the continuity of empires became a kind of touchstone for national historiographies. Rival Balkan nationalisms engaged in a "war of interpretation" as to the nature of Byzantium, assuming different positions of adoption or rejection of its imperial model and leading to various schemes of continuity in each national historiographic canon. Stamatopoulos discusses what Byzantium represented for nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars and how their perceptions related to their treatment of the imperial model: whether a different perception of the medieval Byzantine period prevailed in the Greek national center as opposed to Constantinople; how nineteenth-century Balkan nationalists and Russian scholars used Byzantium to invent their own medieval period (and, by extension, their own antiquity); and finally, whether there exist continuities or discontinuities in these modes of making ideological use of the past. Stamatopoulos undertakes the first systematic comparison of the dominant ethnic historiographic models and divergences elaborated by Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Romanian, Turkish, and Russian intellectuals with reference to the ambiguous inheritance of Byzantium. The title alludes to the seminal work of Nicolae Iorga in the 1930s, Byzantium after Byzantium, that argued for the continuity between the Byzantine and the Ottoman empires. The idea of the continuity of empires became something of a touchstone for national historiographies. Rival Balkan nationalisms engaged in a “war of interpretation” as to the nature of Byzantium, assuming different positions of adoption or rejection of its imperial model and leading to various schemes of continuity in each national historiographic canon. Stamatopoulos discusses what Byzantium represented for nineteenth-, and twentieth-century scholars and how their perceptions related to their treatment of the imperial model: whether a different perception of the medieval Byzantine period prevailed in the Greek national center as opposed to Constantinople; how nineteenth-century Balkan nationalists and Russian scholars used Byzantium to invent their own medieval period (and, by extension, their own antiquity); and finally, whether there exist continuities or discontinuities in these modes of making ideological use of the past product_pages 1 10.1515_9789633863084 2 Contents 6 Transliterations 9 Preface to the English Edition 12 Chapter I Introduction 16 Chapter II The Iconoclast Byzantium of Greek Nationalism 40 Chapter III The “Medieval Antiquity” of Bulgarian Historiography 140 Chapter IV Byzantinisms and the Third Rome: Russian Imperial Nationalism 204 Chapter V The “Roman Byzantium” of the Albanian Historiography 276 Chapter VI Byzantium as Second Rome: Orientalism and Nationalism in the Balkans 320 Chapter VII Iconoclasts against Iconolaters: Conclusions 352 Bibliography 372 Index 398 "A systematic comparison of the dominant ethnic historio-graphic models and divergences of 19th- and 20th-century Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Romanian, Turkish, and Russian intellectuals with regard to the ambiguous inheritance of Byzantium"-- Provided by publisher.