James D. Tracy

Balkan Wars (eBook, ePUB)

Habsburg Croatia, Ottoman Bosnia, and Venetian Dalmatia, 1499-1617

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Distinguished scholar James D. Tracy shows how the Ottoman advance across Europe stalled in the western Balkans, where three great powers confronted one another in three adjoining provinces: Habsburg Croatia, Ottoman Bosnia, and Venetian Dalmatia. Until about 1580, Bosnia was a platform for Ottoman expansion, and Croatia steadily lost territory, while Venice focused on protecting the Dalmatian harbors vital for its trade with the Ottoman east. But as Habsburg-Austrian elites coalesced behind military reforms, they stabilized Croatia's frontier, while Bosnia shifted its attention to trade, and Habsburg raiders crossing Dalmatia heightened tensions with Venice. The period ended with a long inconclusive war between Habsburgs and Ottomans, and a brief inconclusive war between Austria and Venice. Based on rich primary research and a masterful synthesis of key studies, this book is the first English-language history of the early modern Western Balkans. More broadly, it brings out how the Ottomans and their European rivals conducted their wars in fundamentally different ways. A sultan's commands were not negotiable, and Ottoman generals were held to a time-tested strategy for conquest. Habsburg sovereigns had to bargain with their elites, and it took elaborate processes of consultation to rally provincial estates behind common goals. In the end, government-by-consensus was able to withstand government-by-command.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 456
• Erscheinungstermin: 29. Juli 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781442213609
• Artikelnr.: 45221590

Autorenporträt

James D. Tracy is emeritus professor of history at the University of Minnesota.

Inhaltsangabe

Maps
Introduction
Prologue: Ottoman Expansion in the Balkans
1 Hungary and Venice Defeated
2 The Ottoman Advantage: Advances in Slavonia, Croatia, and
Dalmatia
3 Diplomacy and Kleinkrieg
4 War by Consultation vs. War by Command
5 War in a Time of Peace
6 Two Wars and Three Borders
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography