ISBN: Ostalo
Godina izdanja: 1997.
Autor: Domaći
Jezik: Engleski

Vasilije Krestić HISTORY OF THE SERBS IN CROATIA AND SLAVONIA 1848-1914.

BIGZ, 1997.
Tvrd povez, udžbenički format, 670 strana.

Lepo očuvana, mali trag u gornjem uglu od kontaksta sa vodom.

Author:
Vasilije Krestic
Reviewer:
Nicholas Miller
Vasilije Krestic. History of the Serbs of Croatia and Slavonia, 1848-1914. Belgrade: Beogradski izdavasko-grafiski zavod, 1997. 667 pp. [Price unavailable] (paper), ISBN 978-86-13-00888-0.

Reviewed by Nicholas Miller (Boise State University) Published on HABSBURG (December, 1998)

Vasilije Krestic is the leading Serbian scholar of the Serbian communities of the Habsburg monarchy in the nineteenth century. Since the publication in 1969 of his book Hrvatsko-ugarska nagodba 1868. godine [1], he has published numerous articles on various aspects of Serbian life in Croatia and Hungary. Until the last decade, he worked virtually alone among Serbs and Croats on Serbian history in the monarchy. [2] Today others have joined him, most notably Drago Roksandic, a scholar working in Croatia. The book under review here, History of the Serbs in Croatia and Slavonia, 1848-1914, was first published in Serbian in 1991. It is the only work of synthesis that Krestic has attempted. Its publication in English renders it the only study of its kind in this language. His other books include two collections of essays and a useful two-volume collection of documents that serve as an accompaniment to the volume under review. None of his other publications have been translated into English.

This History of the Serbs of Croatia and Slavonia is a history from the `inside out`: its single concern is the Serbian community of Croatia. Krestic betrays little interest in the broader context, as Austrian, Hungarian, and Croatian developments are presented only insofar as they affected the Serbs of the monarchy. Immediately, then, the book loses a bit of its value, for it is exceedingly difficult to evaluate developments, even in the most self-contained of communities, in a microcosm--unless one`s thesis is narrowly conceived. And so it is: Krestic writes that he wishes `to stress, as the main point of the entire book, that one of the basic results of the policy based on the `Croatian state and historical rights` was the widespread conviction among the Croats that their national and political program can be realized only through destruction of the Serbs (p. 25).` The book is unconvincing because its author is too devoted to the demonstration of this tendentious thesis, which he first broached in a controversial article published in 1986 entitled `The Genesis of Genocide of the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia.` Ivo Banac described that article as `ten quotes..., accounts of four incidents, and unpublished observations by a Croatian politician to claim that the `genocide against the Serbs in Croatia is a specific phenomenon in our centuries-old common life with the Croats." This History of the Serbs of Croatia and Slavonia seems to be an expanded version of that earlier article, with all of its apparent weaknesses.

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