John R. LAMPE

Department of History, University of Maryland,

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC

jrlampe@umd.edu

Serbia and Southeastern Europe between Global and East European History

Abstract:

Drawing on a half century of Balkan research and publication that started in Belgrade, John Lampe reviews three new Western histories of the region and their attention to Serbia from prominent Western historians. Germany’s Calic examines only Southeastern Europe, while Connelly from the US and Bideleux and Jeffries from the UK include the Balkans in their volumes on Eastern Europe.

Key words: Serbia, Yugoslavia, Southeastern Europe, Global History, Regional History, Marie-Janine Calic, John Connelly, Robert Bideleux, Ian Jeffries.

Summary

Calic’s book receives the greater attention not only for its narrower regional focus but also for its application of the new global history and its emphasis on transnational connections. Her book revolves around the social and cultural history central to this approach. Belgrade 1913 is one of nine cities, typically trade centers, treated in instructive separate sections. Connelly covers a good deal of the missing political history until focusing on the Soviet bloc after 1945; Bideleux and Jeffries concentrate instead on economic history, domestic and foreign, from the early modern period through the 1990s. Within their three respective concentrations, Serbian history is fairly treated, including the Second if not the First World War.