Balkan Wars: Habsburg Croatia, Ottoman Bosnia, and Venetian Dalmatia, 1499-1617

The Habsburg-Ottoman battle to dominate the Mediterranean world in the 16th century has received considerable scholarly attention, with many accounts portraying this as a 'clash of civilizations.' What has been overlooked was the fight for the Balkans. Tracy remedies that with his portrayal of this three-way struggle for Balkan ascendancy among the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and the Venetian Republic. Like a chess master, Tracy details the strategic and military roles of the three powers and their proxies. He relies extensively on Hungarian and Turkish sources and provides considerable insight into these strategic attempts to dominate the region. More significant was the role of the Venetian Republic, which challenges a 'clash of civilizations' argument. Venetian merchants, predominantly Christian, maintained good relations with the Ottomans to preserve access to the spice markets, and La Serenissima's rulers often undercut Habsburg efforts to launch a crusade against Islam. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.-- "Choice Reviews"
Tracy's . . . greatest contribution [is] to assemble an extraordinary array of information on a military frontier 600 miles long running from the Adriatic through Croatia and Hungary as far as Ukraine. This is the story of the Habsburg Province of Croatia, the Ottoman Province of Bosnia, and Venetian Province of Dalmatia in their common experience of war from 1527-1618. . . . [T]he quite remarkable aspect of Tracy's narrative is its extraordinary generosity and excavation of decades of scholarship by Habsburg, Hungarian, Italian, and Ottoman military historians. . . . Tracy eschews the sensational exemplified in the clash of civilizations binary, preferring to describe a clash of two fundamentally different systems of government, the one autocratic and arbitrary; the other composite and consultative.-- "Austrian Studies News Magazine"
James D. Tracy's book mixes old and new perspectives in a comprehensive overview of the balance of power in the Western Balkans from the mid-fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth. . . . Based on rich archival material. . . . Balkan Wars is a valuable contribution to the history of Ottoman expansion and Christian reactions during the sixteenth century. By focusing on a large border region, on its background, particularities and challenges, Tracy offers a better understanding not only of the Ottoman, Habsburg and Venetian policy but also on the role played by Bosnia, Croatia and Dalmatia in each imperial system.-- "European History Quarterly"

The liveliest debate is likely to be provoked by Tracy's argument that there was, if not quite a conflict of civilizations in the early modern Balkans, at least a conflict of governing styles. . . . The implicit judgement that "government-by-consultation" eventually outperformed "government-by-command" (albeit by adopting a few of the latter's techniques) will no doubt give rise to further discussion, a valuable outcome of Tracy's work in redirecting attention to an underexamined region.

-- "Sixteenth Century Journal"
'Could a monarchy obliged to respect local prerogatives compete with an empire whose political arrangements offered no lawful obstruction to commands from the top?' This is the question the distinguished historian James D. Tracy seeks to answer in his detailed study of the struggles and conflicts, which occurred on the frontiers between three Early Modern Empires, those of the Habsburgs ruling in the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottomans, and the Venetians.-- "Journal of World History"
Meticulously researched. . . . I would strongly recommend Balkan Warsfor those interested in comparative politics, state building, and diplomacy in Renaissance Europe, and for those looking at how historians are constructing alternative histories to national narratives. The book rewrites Bosnia's role from that of being seen as primarily a military border zone between Latin Christendom and Islam, to that of a frontier that saw a vibrant exchange of goods and individuals. It gives brilliant insight on how the strategy of Venice was to improve commercial relations with the Ottomans as much as follow a policy of continuous war. It highlights how vastly different forms of state building existed concurrently and how diverse and rich sixteenth-century Balkan society was.-- "Austrian History Yearbook"
Balkan Wars provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of the strategic thinking and operational realities that accompanied the Ottoman advance into southeast Europe in the sixteenth century. It is based on a wide range and depth of sources, giving emphasis to the sources available in Western languages, but by no means excluding the Ottoman perspective, which is conscientiously reconstructed from a variety of first-hand sources available in translation from Ottoman texts. The book is organized around a regional analysis with detailed coverage of Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Croatia, which formed the borderlands as well as the conflict zone situated in the interstices between major states and empires. As such it provides a welcome alternative to the Istanbul- and Vienna-centered political narrative, courtly apologetics, and triumphalist tone that has all too often tainted previous studies on sixteenth-century European conflict in the age of imperial rivalry.--Rhoads Murphey, Birmingham University
James Tracy's Balkan Wars is an impressive, even masterful, work of historical reconstruction by an expert on early modern history who brings a lifetime of expertise in the field to bear. Tracy has distilled the complex situation on the Balkan frontier between the Venetian, Ottoman, and Habsburg empires with great skill and clarity. His contention that this region presents a clear example of the so-called clash of civilizations challenges the dominant historiographical narrative, which has sought to overturn this binary model in favor of one that emphasizes the fluid nature of relations in this period. The book will undoubtedly elicit significant scholarly debate.--Eric Dursteler, Brigham Young University
An excellent overview of the Ottoman-Habsburg conflict in the western Balkans at the beginning of the Early Modern period. Drawing on rich archival sources, James Tracy makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Habsburg and Venetian region of the Balkans as a bulwark against the Ottomans. His book will be the definitive English-language account of western Balkan history in the sixteenth century for years to come.--Géza Pálffy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest