Southeastern Europe 34 (2010) 135–141 brill.

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Book Reviews

Sundhaussen, H., Geschichte Serbiens. 19.-21. Jahrhundert (Serbians’ History. 19th – 21st cen-
tury) (Wien: 2007: Böhlau Verlag). ISBN: 978-3-205-7760-4.

Geschichte Serbiens. 19.-21. Jahrhundert is a massive study of a history of Serbia that effectively
and comprehensively discusses the country’s historical development since the start of the 19th
century. Together with Stevan Pawlowitch’s Serbia: The History Behind the Name, this book offers
the most useful and nuanced discussion of Serbia’s history in a Western language.
When the book was published in early 2009 in Serbia with the publishing house Clio, it cre-
ated a storm of controversy among historians. It was the subject of numerous interviews and
commentaries in the daily Politika and of public debates amongst the most prominent Serbian
historians. So what makes this history so controversial in the country it is discussing?
Prominent Serbian historian and ambassador to France, Dušan Bataković has called the book
a “paradigmatic example of projecting the contemporary and recent reality into the distant past”
(Politika, 01/02/2009). Bataković thus views the book as the latest example of an ‘Austrian-
German’ anti-Serb reading of history. He also accuses the book of relying excessively on com-
munist historiography and of taking a Manichean perspective on Serbia. Other historians accuse
Sundhaussen of drawing a straight line between the nationalist ideas of Karadžić and Garašanin
and the violence of the late 20th century, and for taking too benign a view of the Communist
period (Politika, 27/01/2009).
So, does this criticism stand? Some of the critique is directed against a critical outsiders’ per-
spective and at times appears not to be based on a reading of the book. The discomfort of some
Serbian historians, in particular of Dušan Bataković, is understandable, considering Sundhaussen’s
book is not only a factographic history of Serbia, but also a book about the history of Serbia.
It engages and challenges ethnocentric conceptions of parts of Serbian historiography (which can
be found in national historiography elsewhere as well), which see the past in the service of the
nation. It is unsurprising that some historians of Serbia, such as Latinka Perović, welcomed the
book thus highlighting the divide between national and critical historiography in Serbia itself.
As a history of Serbia in the 19th and 20th centuries, the book is inevitably also a history of
the Serbian nation and nationalism, as these are the concepts which essentially allow for the
focus on a territory which only existed as a distinct unit for half of the period the book covers.
The book does not establish any overstretched lines of continuity between the first ideas of
national identity in the 19th century and those of the late 20th century. In fact, it discusses of the
nationalist ideas of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and the emphasizes the fact that Garašanin’s
Načertanje was kept secret for decades rather than touted as a tool for nationalist mobilization,
underlining the author’s care in discussing the complexity and evolution of nationalism.
In choosing to focus on one nation, Serbia, the book’s thoroughness in other aspects is inevi-
tably reduced. It thus does not discuss the dynamic relations with other nationalisms, nor does
the role of outside actors, in particular the Great Powers, always get the weight it might deserve.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI 10.1163/187633309X12563839997026

136 Book Reviews / Southeastern Europe 34 (2010) 135–141

In tracing the evolution of nationalist ideas, the book also at times gives too much weight to the
nationalist musings of some intellectuals whose weight is overstated, such as regarding Vasa
Čubrilović’s plan for the expulsion of Albanians (pp. 298-300).
The book has some weaknesses, which would be desirable to correct in any future editions.
There are a number of factual mistakes; i.e. on pp. 278-9 the author claims that there were
150,000 unemployed university graduates in 1933, an impossibly high number considering that
according to Sundhaussen only 30,000 students graduated university in the interwar period. He
also claims that the mausoleum for Prince Njegoš on Mount Lovćen in Montenegro, designed
by Meštrović, was never built (p. 296), though the 1970s construction of the monument, accord-
ing to Meštrovićs plans, was quite controversial. The book also suggests that Milošević cancelled
the local election results in November 1996, though his party actually tried to falsify them,
which was the trigger for mass protests (p. 434). These and similar glitches are minor, yet at times
frustrating for such an otherwise excellent work. Furthermore, at times, the quotations are too
long, which stands out particularly when they are not in German (i.e. p. 248) and not all sources
are always reliable (i.e. Philip Cohen and references to a Wikipedia entry).
It is commendable that the book does not shy away from Serbia’s most recent history and
includes an extensive discussion of the wars and the Milošević regime. Its writings about this
period become more of a discussion of Serbia as an idea and of Serb war aims in Bosnia and
Herzegovina and Croatia, rather than a history of Serbia itself. One thus learns less about the
domestic political dynamics inside Serbia during the 1990s and the cultural and social develop-
ments after the end of Communism, and more about the controversies in the interpretations of
Serb responsibility during the wars.
A book of such a scope and focus on a topic as controversial as the history of Serbia is inevita-
bly going to elicit some objections and be contested. This book is a real contribution to the
understanding of the past and present in Serbia and the Balkans, as it is the work of a historian
who neither seeks to polemicize nor shies away form historical controversies. The accusation of
Dušan Bataković that the book understands the past through the perspective of the present could
also be understood as one of the book’s strengths. It constitutes not an attempt at writing a time-
less ‘objective’ history of Serbia, but rather a self-conscious and level-headed effort to write the
history of country and nation from today’s perspective.

Florian Bieber,
Department of Politics and International Relations,
University of Kent

Bibliography

Politika 27 January 2009, “Garašanin nije začetnik nacionalizma” (interview with Vojislav
Pavlović).
— 1 February 2009, “Tito je umro prekasno”.