Table Of ContentRIVAL BYZANTIUMS
Thisisacomprehensivecomparativeviewofthewaythephenomenon
of Byzantiumhas been treated bythe historiographiesof the polities
that have emerged from its remains Bulgaria, Greece, Romania,
Serbia and Turkey from the Enlightenment to the present day.
Synthesisingasprawlingmassofmateriallargelyunknowntoacademic
audiences, it highlights the important place Byzantium’s representa
tions occupy in the identity building and historical consciousness in
that part of Europe. The diverse interpretations of the Byzantine
phenomenon across and within these historiographic traditions are
scrutinised against the backdrop of shifting geopolitical and cultural
contexts,inconstantdialogueandcompetitionwitheachotherandin
communication with extra regional, western and Russian, academic
currents.Thebookwillbeofvaluetomedievalhistorians,Byzantinists
andhistoriansofhistoriographyaswellasstudentsofandspecialistsin
modernpolitics,culturalandintellectualhistory.
dianamishkovaisProfessorofHistoryandAcademicDirectorof
theCentreforAdvancedStudyinSofia.SheistheauthorofBeyond
Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making (2018) and
Domestication of Freedom: Modernity and Legitimacy in Serbia and
Romania in the Nineteenth Century (2001), and the editor of many
collective volumes, including European Regions and Boundaries:
AConceptualHistory(2017),EntangledHistoriesoftheBalkans, vols.
II and IV (2014, 2017) and We, the People: Politics of National
PeculiarityinSoutheasternEurope(2009).
RIVAL BYZANTIUMS
Empire and Identity in Southeastern Europe
DIANA MISHKOVA
CentreforAdvancedStudySofia
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Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781108499903
doi:10.1017/9781108499903
©DianaMishkova2023
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Firstpublished2023
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Contents
Acknowledgements pagevii
NoteontheText viii
Introduction 1
part i on the road to the grand narrative 9
1 Precursors:TheHistoriographyoftheEnlightenment 11
2 TheCenturyofHistory:ByzantiumintheBudding
National-HistoricalCanons 35
3 InSearchofthe‘ScientificMethod’ 76
4 BetweenByzantineStudiesandMetahistory 123
5 ByzantiuminOttomanandEarlyRepublicanTurkish
Historiography 170
part ii metamorphoses of byzantium after world
war ii 197
6 FromHelleno-ChristianCivilisationtoRomanNation 199
7 Towards‘Slavo-Byzantina’and‘PaxSymeonica’:
BulgarianScripts 219
8 HowByzantineIsSerbia? 242
9 Post-ByzantineEmpireorRomanianNationalState? 264
v
vi Contents
10 IntheFoldofthe‘Turkish-IslamicSynthesis’ 286
EpilogueandConclusion 305
References 320
Index 350
Acknowledgements
IamindebtedtoHistorischesKolleginMunich,thebirth-cityofmodern
Byzantinestudies,forhostingmeduringacrucialphaseofmyresearchand
providing me with precious time to work on the book. I have to thank
RoumenDaskalovandtheteamoftheEntangledHistoriesoftheBalkans
project,whoencouragedmetopressonwithmyinvestigationanddevelop
an originally modest enterprise into a book. Tchavdar Marinov, Alex-
Drace Francis, Ivan Elenkov, Konstantina Zanou, Ioannis Koubourlis,
Ahmet Ersoy, Koray Durak and Ivan Biliarski helped me with my many
queries. I am deeply grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the manu-
script,whoofferedinvaluableadviceandinsightsandsavedmefrommany
mistakes and misconceptions. If there are any left, they are all mine.
Acknowledgement is also owed to the New Critical Approaches to the
ByzantineWorldNetworkandtheOxfordCentreforByzantineResearch
forinvitingmetopresentpartsofthebookandreceivevaluablefeedback
and encouragement. The help Milena Varzonovtseva lent me with the
References was indispensable. To the editorial staff at Cambridge
University Press, the editor Michael Sharp in particular, I express my
appreciationfortheirengagedmanagementandcooperation.
Substantial parts of a chapter published in Roumen Daskalov and
Alexander Vezenkov (eds.), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, vol. III:
Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies (Leiden: Brill, 2015) have been integrated
into the book. My thanks are due to the editor of the Balkan Studies
Libraryforpermissiontousethisessayhere.
vii
Note on the Text
SeveraldifferentsystemstotransliterateCyrillicscriptshavebeenused.For
Serbian,thecommonlyacceptedLatintransliterationisused.ForBulgarian
andRussian,English-deriveddigraphsareusedratherthancharacterswith
diacritics:chforч,shforш,zhforжandtsforц.Theystandsfortheйin
Bulgarian and Russian but also for the ы in Russian Cyrillic – a small
inconvenience triggered by the preference for a more practical ‘English’
transliteration. Accordingly, the ю and я are transliterated as yu and ya.
The Russian soft sign (ь) is denoted with an apostrophe (’). In order to
distinguishbetweenthevowelaandtheschwa(ə),thecharacterăisusedfor
the latter (namely, for what is ъ in the Bulgarian Cyrillic). Well-known
geographicalnameshaveretainedtheirconventionalspelling(suchasSofia
insteadofSofiya).
viii
1988
Frontispiece: Detail from Byzantium by Svilen Blazhev ( ),
Bulgarian National Gallery
