Borderlands.

Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881

Dr William OReilly, wto21@cam.ac.uk

For over 350 years, the Military Frontier between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires
served as the first site of engagement in the long struggle to define and defend European
territory. This defence frontier system against the Ottoman Empire comprised of military
and civilian outposts along an ever-changing frontline stretching from the Adriatic to
Transylvania. A Militrgrenze and Cordon sanitare, the frontier began as a buffer against an
expansive Ottoman empire in 1521, when archduke Ferdinand I of Austria began to
financially and defensively support the creation of a permanent, structural fence against
forces moving north and westward from the Balkans. Over time, this defensive device
would become a bulwark of Christianity against the Ottoman lands and would, by the
nineteenth century, develop into a separate crownland (from 1849) and, in effect, a
separate state within the Austro-Hungarian empire. And so it remained until the
borderland state was dissolved in 1881.

Within and along this imperial borderland, Christian refugees, both Catholic and
Orthodox, settled. At other times, the borderland served as a quarantine zone, with
lazarettos stopping the spread of plague and other diseases; and it was served as an
economic frontier to protect trade within the Habsburg lands and between the empire
and the Ottoman. Overtime, it grew into a military bulwark populated with soldiers,
some retired and discharged, living together with civilians often expelled to the frontier
for moral and civil transgressions. By the early 1700s, the lands along the military frontier
were home to a wide-range of non-Muslim residents of every Christian denomination, of
soldiers and ex-soldiers and their families, or colonists seeking a new start in life, and of
waifs, strays and outcasts who now lived in close community with Ottoman subjects
across the line. These frontier lands had particular rights and liberties; serfdom was
forbidden and it was a land without lords and masters, governed under military
jurisdiction. By the time of its dissolution in 1881, this crown land comprised some
33,422 square kilometers with over 1.2 million inhabitants, stretching over 1,900 kms as a
narrow strip of land from near Fiume to Transylvania.

This paper will have the borderland that was the Military Frontier as its main subject,
exploring in depth the development of a Grenzer (frontier) mentality and identity. The
lands of Central Europe (and especially of the Habsburg monarchy) which bordered the
frontier are crucial, too. Thus we will also investigate, when relevant, events in the
Austrian lands, in Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Serbia, etc. Moreover, while this paper
will of course examine the military history of the frontier, it will pay greater attention to
its political, social, cultural, and historiographical aspects. Throughout we will be mindful
of conceptual issues surrounding the study of borderlands -- definitions, processes,
borderland typologies and comparative frameworks that might illuminate the study of
places with multiple and contending political and legal traditions

In concluding, we will look to recent events in helping to re-evaluate the place of the
Habsburg-Ottoman borderlands in European history, and the place of its historiography
in broader European historiography. The Habsburg borderlands of the Military Frontier,
today stretching along six countries, encapsulate many of the difficulties historians
encounter when they step beyond the nation state. In the spring of 1991, during the
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 2

breakup of Yugoslavia, the local population of the former military frontier declared their
independence as the Republic of Krajina (Frontier), appealing to a shared history and a
shared historical memory of frontier life.

In addition to introductory and revision lectures, this Specified paper will be taught
mainly in weekly 2-hour classes; each student will also receive 5 supervisions.
This paper will be capped at a maximum of 20 students.

Below, a list of weekly topics with an outline description and reading list. A selection of
additional primary-source texts in translation (obviously, there is a rich literature on this
subject in German, Hungarian, Croatian, etc., but students will not be disadvantaged
reading English sources).

Start date October 2016

Teachers Dr William OReilly (wto21), with Dr Emma Spary (Medicine and

Science)

Examination
Three-hour unseen; answer 3 questions; undivided paper
There will always be a question set on each of the class topics

Faculty norms for Specified papers

Teaching hours: 28-34 hours, to include 5 supervisions
Reading list: 100-150 items
Exam paper: 18-22 questions (with one or two either/ors)

Teaching regime for this paper

Michaelmas: 7 x 120-min classes
Lent: 7 x 120-min classes
Easter: 2 x 120-min classes
Supervisions, 4-5 per student; in eithr terme
Total contact hours: 32
Supervision topics are the same as the class topics
Trip, to be arranged, at the start of the course to the UL Map Room to view
maps of the Frontier and the region.

Fieldtrip: A short fieldtrip to Vienna-Graz-Zagreb (Varadin) in the Michaelmas-

Lent vacation is being planned.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 3

Reading List

All articles and PhD dissertations referenced below will be made available to
students as pdfs (some articles and chapters are not readily available in the Seeley or
University Library).
Where there is a larger recommended reading list for a given weekly topic, the
class will be divided into groups, each taking a number of readings and presenting to the
full class on their reading.
The Reading List follows the schedule of lectures and supervision topics
However, many books cover several topics, so you need to read around, and
need to make regular use of items in the opening section, Introductions
Students should read on every topic and not just those selected for supervision
essays. Some sections do have Additional Reading sections, to aid in supervision essay
preparation.

General Introductory Reading List for the subject:

This list serves as a source for regular reference and will be regularly referred to
throughout the course. These are all broad surveys; although they are not listed
again below, their individual chapters are also relevant for topics covered in the
weekly classes:

goston, Gbor, The Ottoman Empire and Europe, in: The Oxford Handbook of Early
Modern European History: 1350 - 1750. Volume II. Cultures and Power. Ed. Hamish M.
Scott. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 612-37.
Barkey, Karen, Empire of difference: the Ottomans in comparative perspective, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and early modern Europe, New York : Cambridge
University Press, 2002.
Sahlins, Peter, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989), esp. Introduction; Chapter 2, The Frontiers of the
Old Regime State.
Whittaker, C. R., Frontiers of the Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study (The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1997).
Inalcik, Halil, and D. Quataert. An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire (1300-
1914). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Sugar, Peter F. South-Eastern Europe under Ottoman Rule (1354-1804). Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1993.
Findley, C. V. Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte (1789-1922).
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Sugar, Peter F. Nationality and Society in Habsburg and Ottoman Europe. Brookfield, Vt:
Variorum, 1997
Ingrao, Charles. The Habsburg Monarchy. 1618-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994.
Evans, R. J. W. The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy (1551-1700). Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1979.
Evans, R.J.W., Essay and Reflection: Frontiers and National Identities in Central
Europe, The International History Review 14, no. 3 (1992), pp. 480-502.
Jaszi, Oszkar. The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1977.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 4

Ellis, Steven G. and Raingard Eer (eds.), Frontiers and the Writing of History, 1500-1850,
Hanover: Wehrhahn, 2006.
LeDonne, John. The Russian Empire and the World, 1700-1917: the Geopolitics of Expansion
and Containment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Mitu, Sorin. National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania. New York: CEU Press, 2001.
Cioranesco, George. Bessarabia: Disputed Land between East and West. Munich: Editura Ion
Dumitru, 1985.
Manoliu-Manea, Maria, ed. The Tragic Plight of a Border Area: Bessarabia and Bucovina. Los
Angeles, Calif.: Humboldt State University Press, 1983.
Jelavich, Charles, and Barbara Jelavich. The Establishment of the Balkan Nation States. 1804-
1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Bracewell, Catherine Wendy, The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry and Holy War in the
Sixteenth Century Adriatic, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1992.
Whaley, Joachim, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire 1493-1806, 2 vols., Oxford
University Press, 2012.
OReilly, William, 'Border, Buffer and Bulwark. The Historiography of the Military
Frontier, 1521-1881', in Steven G. Ellis and Raingard Eer (eds.), Frontiers and the Writing
of History, 1500-1850, Hanover (Wehrhahn), 2006, pp. 229-244.

For accounts, in English, of travel writers accounts of journeys to the Habsburg and
Ottoman lands, the most comprehensive collections are:

An Ottoman traveller: selections from the book of travels of Evliya elebi, translation and
commentary by Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim, Eland, London, 2010, esp. Books 6-
7.
C.W. (Wendy) Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis (ed), Balkan Departures: Travel Writing
from Southeastern Europe. (Oxford: Berghahn, 2009).
C.W. (Wendy) Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis (ed), Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative
Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe, 15502000. East Looks West, Vol.
2 .(Budapest: CEU Press, 2008).

For Borderlands in a non-Europe settling, the literature is vast, but by way of possible
comparison the following are offered:

Daniel Power, Frontiers: Terms, Concepts, and the Historians of Medieval and Early
Modern Europe, in Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700-1700, eds. Daniel
Power and Naomi Standen, London: Macmillan Press, 1999, pp. 1-12.
Peter Sahlins, Natural Frontiers Revisited: France's Boundaries since the Seventeenth
Century, American Historical Review 95, no. 5 (1990), pp. 1423-1451.
Rifaat A. Abou-el-Haj, The Formal Closure of the Ottoman Frontier in Europe: 1699-
1703, Journal of the American Oriental Society 89, no. 3 (1969), pp. 467-475.
Charles S. Maier, Transformations of Territoriality 1600-2000, in Transnationale
Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien, eds. Gunilla Budde, Sebastian Conrad
and Oliver Janz (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), pp. 32-55.
Joya Chatterji, The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengals Border
Landscape, 1947-1952, Modern Asian Studies 33:1 (Jan 1999): 185-242.
Ainslie T. Embree, Frontiers into Boundaries: From the Traditional to the Modern
State, in Realm and Region in Traditional India, ed. Richard G. Fox (Durham, N.C.: Duke
UP, 1977): 255-280.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 5

Benjamin Johnson and Andrew R. Graybill, Bridging National Borders in North America:
Transnational and Comparative Histories (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010)
David Weber, Barbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (Yale
University Press, 2006)
Pekka Hamalainen, The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press, 2008)
Anthony P. Mora, Border Dilemmas: Racial and National Uncertainties in New Mexico, 1848-
1912 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011)
Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (Zone Books, 2010)

Michaelmas Term

Week 1. Introduction: Borderlands and Frontiers: identity, culture and politics

Silviu Stoian, The Establishment and Demarcation of Borders in Europe in the Early
Modern Age, Research and Science Today Supplement 2/2014, pp. 6-15.
Gbor goston, A Flexible Empire: Authority and its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers,
International Journal of Turkish Studies 9.1-2 (2003), pp. 15-31.
Jorge Caizares-Esguerra, Entangled Histories: Borderland Historiographies in New
Clothes?, AHR Forum, American Historical Review, June 2007, pp. 787-799.
Gabriel Popescu, The conflicting logics of cross-border territorialization: Geopolitics of
Euroregions in Eastern Europe, Political Geography 27 (2008), pp. 418-438.
Frederic Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, 1893,
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/frontierthesis.html
Owen Lattimore, The Frontier in History, in Studies in Frontier History: Collected Papers
(London: O.U.P., 1962), 469-491.
Hmlinen, Pekka and Samuel Truett. On Borderlands. The Journal of American
History 98 (2011): 338-361.
M. Baud and Willem van Schendel, Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands,
Journal of World History 8:2 (Fall 1997): 211-242.
George Nathaniel Curzon, Frontiers: [lecture] delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre,
Oxford, November 2, 1907 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976) 1-58.
Stephen B. Jones, Boundary Concepts in the Setting of Place and Time, Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 49:3 [Part 1] (Sep 1959): 241-255.
Leonard Thompson and Howard Lamar, Comparative Frontier History, in The Frontier
in History: North America and South Africa Compared (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1981), pp. 3-13.
Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-
States, and the Peoples in between in North American History, The American Historical
Review 104 (June 1999), pp. 814- 841.
Joseph E Taylor, Boundary Terminology, Environmental History 13, no. 3 (July, 2008),
454-481.
David J. Weber, Turner, the Boltonians, and the Borderlands, The American Historical
Review Vol. 91, No. 1 (February 1986), pp. 66-81.
Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, Beyond Identity, Theory and Society 29 (2000):
1-47.
Eric Hobsbawm, Introduction: Inventing Traditions, Mass-Producing Traditions:
Europe, 1870-1914, in E.Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition
(Cambridge1983), pp. 1-14.
Peter Burke, What is Cultural History? (Cambridge 2004), esp. pp. 49-126.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 6

Week 2. Ottoman and Habsburg Empires: Constructing imperial borderlands

(i)The Ottoman Presence

Gbor goston, A Flexible Empire: Authority and its Limits on the Ottoman Frontiers,
International Journal of Turkish Studies 9.1-2 (2003), pp. 15-31.
Gbor goston. Ottoman Conquest and the Ottoman Military Frontier in Hungary. A
Millennium of Hungarian Military History . Ed. Bla Kirly and Lszl Veszprmy. Boulder,
Co.: Atlantic Research and Publications, 2002, pp. 85-110.
Virginia H. Aksan, Locating the Ottmans among early modern Empires, Journal of Early
Modern History, vol. 3 (2), 1999, pp. 103-134.
Gza Plffy, Scorched-Earth Tactics in Ottoman Hungary: On a Controversy in Theory
and Practice on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum
Hungaricae,Vol. 61, No. 1/2 (March 2008), pp. 181-200.
Gbor goston, Defending and Administering the Frontier: The Case of Ottoman
Hungary, The Ottoman World. Ed. Christine Woodhead. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon:
Routledge, 2012, pp. 220-236.
zgr Kolak, And yet fell all the forts to the infidels: Disinformation,
Propaganda and Political Power in the Ottoman-Habsburg War of 1663-1664, Osmanli
arastirmalari, 43, 2014, pp. 165-192.
Virginia H. Aksan, Whose Territory and Whose Peasants? Ottoman Boundaries on the
Danube in the 1760s, in Frederick F. Anscombe (ed.), The Ottoman Balkans, 1750-1830,
Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, 2006, pp. 61-86.
Mark L. Stein. Guarding the Frontier. Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons in Europe. London
and New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007.
Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power, Palgrave, 2002, esp.
Chapter 1, Maps and Ottoman Consolidation, pp. 27-87.
Gbor goston, The Costs of the Ottoman Fortress-System in Hungary in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries., Ottomans, Hungarians and Habsburgs in Central
Europe. The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest. Ed. Gza Dvid and Pl Fodor.
Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2000.
Gbor goston, The Ottoman-Habsburg Frontier in Hungary (1541-1699): a
Comparison, The Great Ottoman, Turkish Civilization, vol 1. Politics . Ed. Gler Eren,
Ercment Kuran, Nejat Gyn, Ilber Ortayli and Kemal iek. Ankara: Yeni Trkiye,
2000.
Palmira Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans: Sovereignty, Territory, and Identity in the Early
Modern Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), esp. Chapter 3,
Borders: the edge of Europe, the ends of empire, and the redemption of Christendom.
Karen Barkey, Empire of difference: the Ottomans in comparative perspective, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2008, esp. Introduction: Emergence: brokerage across
networks; Becoming an empire: imperial institutions and control; Maintaining empire:
an expression of tolerance; The social organization of dissent; An eventful eighteenth
century: empowering the political; A networking society : commercialization, tax
farming, and social relations; On the road out of empire: Ottomans struggle from
empire to nation-state.
Geoffrey Parker, chapter 7, The Ottoman tragedy, 1618-83 and chapter 8,
The lamentations of Germany and its neighbours, 1618-88, in Global crisis:
war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth century, New Haven,
Yale Universoty Press, 2013, pp. 185-253.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 7

Week 3. Ottoman and Habsburg Empires: Constructing imperial borderlands

(ii)The Habsburg Presence

Gunther E. Rothenburg, The Origins of the Austrian Military Frontier in Croatia and
the Alleged Treaty of 22 December 1522, The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 38,
No. 91 (Jun., 1960), pp. 493-498.
Gza Plffy, The Habsburg defense system in Hungary, in Brian L. Davies (ed.),
Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800, Leiden, 2012, pp. 35-61.
Kurt Wessely, The Development of the Hungarian Military Frontier until the Middle of
the Eighteenth Century, Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 9 (Jan. 1973), pp 55-110.
Martyn Rady, Fiscal and Military Developments in Hungary during the Jagello Period,
Chronica, vols. 9-10 (2009-2010), pp. 85-98.
Gunther E. Rothenburg , The Military Border in Croatia 1740-1881: a Study of an Imperial
institution (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Timothy J. Watts, Military Tehnologies on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, World History Encyclopedia, vol. 13, 2011, pp. 966-
969.
Madalina Valeria Veres, Redefining Imperial Borders: Marking the Eastern Border of
the Habsburg Monarchy in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century, in History of
Cartography, Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography 7, eds. Elri Liebenberg, Peter
Collier, Zsolt Trk (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2014), pp. 3-23.

Week 4. Mapping the Borderlands

James P. Krokar, New Means to an Old End: Early Modern Maps in the Service of an
Anti-Ottoman Crusade, Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography,
60:1, 2008, pp. 23-38,
Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), esp. Chapter 6, Centres of
Calculation.
Matthew H. Edney, The Irony of Imperial Mapping, in The Imperial Map. Cartography and
the Mastery of Empire, ed. James R. Akerman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009);
pp. 11- 46.
Pinar Emiralioglu, Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman
Empire, Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014), esp. Chapter 1, Negotiating Space and Imperial
Ideology in the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Empire.
Valerie Kivelson, Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century
Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), esp. Chapter 5 (Messages in the Land.
Siberian Maps and Providential Narratives), and Chapter 6 (Exalted and Glorified to the
Ends of the Earth).
Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1983), esp.Introduction; Chapter 4, The Mapping Impulse
in Dutch Art.
Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Military, Administrative and Scholarly Maps and Plans, in The
History of Cartography, volume 2, book 1, Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian
Societies, eds. John Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1992), pp. 209-228.
Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an empire the geographical construction of British India, 1765-1843,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, esp. Chapter 1, The Ideologies and
Practices of Mapping and Imperialism.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 8

Jeremy Black, Government, State, and Cartography: Mapping, Power, and Politics in
Europe, 16501800, Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and
Geovisualization 43, no. 2 (2008): 95-105.
Valerie A. Kivelson, Cartography, Autocracy and State Powerlessness: The Uses of
Maps in Early Modern Russia, Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of
Cartography 51 (1999), pp. 83-105.

Additional Readings
Valerie Kivelson, Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century
Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), esp. Chapter 3 (Signs in Space: Landscape
and Property in a Serf-Owning Society) and Chapter 4 ("The Souls of the Righteous in a
Bright Place": Landscape and Orthodoxy in Seventeenth-Century Russian Maps).
Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia
and Europe. 1650-1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), esp. Chapter 2
(Circulation and the Emergence of Modern Mapping: Great Britain and
Early Colonial India, 1764-1820).
Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires,
1400-1900. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), esp. Chapter 1 (Anomalies
of Empire) and Chapter 3 (Sovereignty at Sea. Jurisdiction, Piracy, and the Origins of
Ocean Regionalism).
Palmira Brummett, Mapping the Ottomans: Sovereignty, Territory, and Identity in the Early
Modern Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), esp. Chapter 4
(Sovereign Space: The Fortress as Marker of Possession).
Pinar Emiralioglu, Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman
Empire (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014), esp. Chapter 3 (Charting the Mediterranean: The
Ottoman Grand Strategy).

Week 5. Fiscal-Military States and Imperial Surveys: Civilizing the Borderland

Michael Hochedlinger, The Habsburg Monarchy: From Military-Fiscal State to

Militarization, in The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Christopher
Storrs (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 55-94.
Kahraman akul, Military Engineering in the Ottoman Empire, in Military Engineers
and the Development of the Early-Modern European State, ed. Bruce P. Lenman
(Dundee: Dundee University Press, 2013): 179-199.
Madalina-Valeria Veres, Putting Transylvania on the map: Cartography and Enlightened
Absolutism in the Habsburg Monarchy, Austrian History Yearbook 43 (2012), pp. 141-164.
Grete Klingenstein, The meanings of Austria and Austrian in the eighteenth
century, in Royal and republican sovereignty in early modern Europe: essays in memory of Ragnhild
Hatton, eds. Ragnhild Marie Hatton, Robert Oresko, G. C. Gibbs and H. M. Scott
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 423-478.
John Pickles, A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping and the Geo-Coded World
(London; New York: Routledge, 2004), esp. Chapter 5 (Cadastres and capitalisms. The
emergence of a new map consciousness).
Roger J.P. Kain and Elizabeth Baigent, The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State. A
History of Property Mapping (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), esp. Chapter 5
(The Austrian Habsburg Lands, with the Principality of Piedmont), pp. 175-195.
Benjamin Landais, Villages, Actors of Local Cartography? The Cadastral Maps of the
Banat (1772-1779), in History of Cartography, Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography
7, eds. Elri Liebenberg, Peter Collier and Zsolt Trk (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag,
2014): 129-148.
P.G.M.Dickson, Joseph II's Hungarian Land Survey, The English Historical Review 106,
no. 420 (1991): 611-634.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 9

Gbor goston, Information, Ideology, and Limits of Imperial Policy: Ottoman Grand
Strategy in the Context of Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry, in The Early Modern Ottomans:
Remapping the Empire, eds. Virginia H. Aksan and Daniel Goffman (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 75-103.
Lszl Kontler, The Uses of Knowledge and the Symbolic Map of the Enlightened
Monarchy of the Habsburgs: Maximilian Hell as Imperial and Royal Astronomer (1755-
1792), in Negotiating Knowledge in Early Modern Empires: A Decentered View, eds. Lszl
Kontler, Antonella Romano, Silvia Sebastiani and Borbla Zsuzsanna Trk (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 9-105.
Madalina Valeria Veres, Unravelling a Trans-Imperial Career: Michel Angelo de
Blascos Mapmaking Abilities in the Service of Vienna and Lisbon, Itinerario, International
Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction 38, no. 2 (2014), pp. 75-
100.
Steven Seegel, Mapping Europe's Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), esp. Chapter 3 (Purposes of Early 19th-
Century Russian Imperial Cartography).
Iryna Vushko, Enlightened Absolutism, Imperial Bureaucracy and Provincial Society: The Austrian
Project to Transform Galicia, 1772-1815, PhD Dissertation, Yale University, 2008. Esp.
Chapter 1, Bureaurcary as Englightenment, pp. 19-62; Chapter 3, The Civilizers at
Work, pp. 88-144.

Week 6. Reading Week

Week 7. Protecting the Borderland: War, military and violence

Erik-Jan Zrcher, Fighting for a Living. A Comparative History of Military Labor, 1500-2000,
Amsterdam University Press, 2013, esp.: Frank Tallet, Soldiers in Wsetern Europe,
c.1500-1790, pp. 135-168; Michael Sikora, Change and continuity in mercenary armies:
Central Europe, 1650-1750, pp. 201-242; Virginia H. Aksan, Mobilization of warrior
populations in the Ottoman Context, 1750-1850, pp. 331-352.
Kadir Ustun, The New Order and Its Enemies: Opposition to Military Reform in the Ottoman
Empire, 1789 1807, Columbia University PhD dissertation, 2013, esp. Chapter 1,
Historiography on the New Order and Its Opponents, pp. 9-60.
Gbor goston, Military Transformation in the Ottoman Empire and Russia, 1500-
1800, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 12, Number 2,
Spring 2011 (New Series), pp. 281-319.
Alexander Buczynski, Smouldering Grenzer Patriotism and the Siege of Zadar 1813,
Historical Contributions (Povijesni prilozi), issue: 38 / 2010, pp. 235-282, at www.ceeol.com.
Michal Pavlsek, History of the Banat military frontier with regard to the emergence of
Czech enclaves on its territoty, Slovansky prehled, 96 (3-4), 2010, pp. 243-262.
Virginia H. Aksan, Whatever happened to the Janissaries? Mobilization for the 1768-
1774 Russo-Ottoman War, War in History, 5 (1), 1998, pp. 23-36.
Vojna Hrvatska: La Croatie militaire, (1809-1813) [Military Croatia: La Croatie militaire;
The Frontier Community under the French Empire, 1809-1813]. In two volumes.
Zagreb: Stvarnost. 1988.
Caroline F. Finkel, French Mercenaries in the Habsburg-Ottoman War of 1593-1606:
The Desertion of the Papa Garrison to the Ottomans in 1600, Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 55, No. 3 (1992), pp. 451-471.
Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1999.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 10

Bela K. Kirly and Guunther Rothenburg (eds.), War and Scoiety in East Central Europe.
Vol. I, Special Topics and Generalizations on the 18th and 19th Centuries, Brooklyn, N.Y.,
Brooklyn College Press, 1979.
Karl A. Roider, Jr.,The Perils of Eighteenth-Century Peacemaking: Austria and the
Treaty of Belgrade, 1739, Central European History,vol. 5, No. 3 (Sep., 1972), pp. 195-207.

Week 8. The Frontier Body and Vampirism

Katharina M. Wilson , The History of the Word "Vampire, Journal of the History of Ideas,
Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1985), pp. 577-583.
Peter Mario Kreuter, The Name of the Vampire: some reflections on current linguistic
theories on the origin of the word Vampire, in: Carla T. Kungl (ed.), Vampires: Myths and
Metaphors of Enduring Evil, Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press, 2003, pp. 63-65.
Richard Sugg, The Art of Medicine: Corpse medicine: mummies, cannibals and
vampires, The Lancet, 372 (June 21, 2008), pp. 2078-2079.
Richard Sugg, The art of Medicine: Pre-scientific death rites, vampires, and the human
soul, The Lancet, 377 (February 26, 2011), pp. 712-713.
Peter J. Brunlein, The frightening borderlands of Enlightenment: The vampire
problem, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43,
2012, pp. 710719.
Francesco Paolo de Ceglia, The Archbishops Vampires. Giuseppe Davanzatis
Dissertation and the Reaction of Scientific Italian Catholicism to the Moravian Events,
Archives internationale dhistoire des sciences, vol. 61 (166), 2011, pp. 487-510.
Alan Dundes (ed.), The Vampire. A Casebook, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press,
1998, esp. Felix Oinas, East European Vampires, pp. 47-56; Friedrich S. Kraus, South
Slavic Countermeasures against Vampires, pp. 67-71; Veselin Cajkanovic, The Killing
of a Vampire, pp. 72-84; Paul Barber, Forensic Pathology and the European Vampire,
pp. 109-142.
Stphanie Danneberg, "Vampires are most untidy subjects". Considerations the
Instrumentalisation of the Vampire Phenomenon at the Border Region of the Austrian
Empire, Journal for Transylvanian Studies (Zeitschrift fur Siebenburgische Landeskunde), issue: 2 /
2010, pages: 177-192.
Heide Crawford, Review of: Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil. Edited by
Peter Day. Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2006., in: Comparative Literature Studies,Vol.
44, No. 4 (2007), pp. 518-521.
J. Gmez-Alonso, Rabies: a possible explanation for the Vampire legend, Neurology, vol.
51 (3), 1998.
J. Thodorids, Origin of the myth of Vampirism, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine,
91 (2), 1998.

Additional Reading:
Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial and Death. Forklore and Reality, New Haven and London,
1988.
L.J. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the order of nature, 1150-1750, New York, 1988.
David Hollins, Austrian Frontier Troops 1740-98, Osprey Publishing, Oxford and New
York, 2005.
Gbor Klaniczay, Witch-belief, witch-accusation, witch-persecution in the 16th-18th
centuries, Ethnographia 97 (2-4), 1986, pp. 257-295.
Erik Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment. Johann Joseph Gassner and the demons of eighteenth-
century Germany, Yale Universiy Press, 2005.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 11

Lent Term

Week 1. Medicine, Quarantine, Science and the Circulation of Knowledge

Emma C. Spary, Introduction: Centre and periphery in the eighteenth-century Habsburg

medical empire, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43, 2012,
pp. 684690.
Teodora Daniela Sechel (ed.), Medicine Within and Between the Habsburg and Ottoman
Empires, 18th-19th Centuries, Bochum: Winkler Verlag, 2011, esp. Section II.
Nkhet Varlik, Plague and empire in the early modern Mediterranean world : the Ottoman
experience, 1347-1600, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015, esp. Part
I. Plague: History and Historiography; chapter 1. A natural history of plague; chapter 6.
The third phase (1570-1600): Istanbul as plague hub; chapter 7. Plague transformed:
changing perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes.
Varlik, Nkhet, From 'bte noire' to 'le mal de constantinople': plagues, medicine, and
the early modern Ottoman state, Journal of world history, Dec 2013, Vol.24(4), pp.741-770.
Bruno Atalic, Differences and similarities in the regulation of medical practice between
early modern Vienna and Osijek, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical
Sciences 43, 2012, pp. 691699.
Lilla Krsz, Quackery versus professionalism? Characters, places and media of medical
knowledge in eighteenth-century Hungary, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and
Biomedical Sciences 43, 2012, pp. 700709.
Gbor goston, Where environmental and frontier studies meet: rivers, forests and
fortifications along the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier in Hungary, Ottoman Frontiers. Ed.
A.C.S. Peacock. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 57-79.
Ana Maria Gruia, Regional Traits of Smoking in the Autonomous Principality of
Transylvania, Annals of the University of Alba Iulia History
(Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Historica), issue: 16/II (2012), pp 217-234.
Teodora Daniela Sechel, Medical knowledge and the improvement of vernacular
languages in the Habsburg Monarchy: A case study from Transylvania (17701830),
Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43, 2012, pp. 720729.
Grigore Ploeteanu, Travellers and quarantines in Transylvania in the period of the
Vormrz and of the 1848 revolution, Anuarul Institutului de Cercetri Socio-Umane Gheorghe
incai al Academiei Romne vol. X (2007), pp. 58-63.
Gbor goston, Information, Ideology, and Limits of Imperial Policy: Ottoman Grand
Strategy in the Context of Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry, in: The Early Modern Ottomans:
Remapping the Empire. Ed. Virginia H. Aksan and Daniel Goffman. Cambridge, New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 75-103.
Arnold Huttmann, Medical Relations between Transylvania and The Netherlands,
Belgium and Luxemburg, Journal for Transylvanian Studies (Zeitschrift fur Siebenburgische
Landeskunde), issue: 2, 1978, pp.138-144.
Gbor goston, The Ottoman Empire and the Technological Dialogue Between
Europe and Asia: The Case of Military Technology and Know-How in the Gunpowder
Age, Science between Europe and Asia: Historical Studies on the Transmission, Adoption and
Adaptation of Knowledge. Ed. Feza Gunergun and Dhruv Raina. New York: Springer, 2011,
pp. 27-39.
Tatjana Buklijas and Emese Lafferton, Science, medicine and nationalism in the
Habsburg Empire form the 1840s to 1918, Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 38 (2007),
pp. 679686.
Marcel Chahrour, A civilizing mission? Austrian medicine and the reform of medical
structures in the Ottoman Empire, 18381850, Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 38
(2007), pp. 687705.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 12

Alberto Fortis, Travels into Dalmatia containing general observations on the natural history of that
country, J. Robson, London, 1778 [1774].

Additional Reading:
Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier. The Practice of Science in the Age of Absolutism, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Harold Cook, Matters of Exchange. Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age,
New Haven, Yale University Pres, 2007.
Roger French, Medicine before Science: The Rational and learned doctor from the Middle Ages to the
Enlightenment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Steven J. Harris, Confession-Building, Lond-distance Networks, and the Organisation
of Jesuit Science, Early Science and Medicine. A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and
Medicince in the Pre-Modern Period, vol. 1 (3), 1996, pp. 287-318.
Laszl Kontler, Polizey and patriotism: Joseph von Sonnenfels and the legitimacy of
enlightened monarchy in the gaze of eighteenth-century state sciences, in: Caesare
Cuttica and Glenn Burgess, Monarchism and Absolutism in early modern Europe, Pickering and
Chatto, London, 2012, pp. 75-90.
Ian MacLean, Evidence, logic, the rule and the exception in Renaissance law and
medicine, Early Science and Medicine, vol. 5 (3), 2000, pp. 227-257.
Nuzzolese and Borrini, Forensic Approach to an Archaeological Csework of Vampire
Skeletal Remains in Venice: Odontological and Anthropological Prospectus, Journal of
Forensic Sciences, vol. 55 (6), pp. 1634-1637.
Abigail Tucker, The Great New Enland Vampire Panic, Smithsonian, vol. 43 (6), 2012,
pp. 58-65.

Week 2. The Practice of Religion

Tijana Krstic, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern
Ottoman Empire, Palo Alto, CA, USA: Stanford University Press, 2011, esp. Introduction:
turning "Rumi": conversion to Islam, fashioning of the Ottoman imperial ideology, and
interconfessional relations in the early modern Mediterranean context; In expectation of
the Messiah: inter-imperial rivalry, apocalypse, and conversion in sixteenth-century
Muslim polemical narratives; Illuminated by the light of Islam and the glory of the
Ottoman Sultanate: self-narratives of conversion to Islam in the age of
confessionalization; Between the turban and the papal tiara: Orthodox Christian neo-
martyrs and their impresarios in the age of confessionalization; Everyday communal
politics of coexistence and Orthodox Christian martyrdom: a dialogue of sources and
gender regimes in the age of confessionalization; Conclusion: Conversion and
confessionalization in the Ottoman Empire : considerations for future research.
Brian Porter-Szucs ,Introduction: Christianity, Christians and the story of Modernity in
Eastern Europe, in Berglund, Bruce R. and Brian Porter-Szucs, eds. Christianity and
Modernity in Eastern Europe (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), pp. 1-
34.
Paul Mojzes, Religious Topography of Eastern Europe, in Journal of Ecumenical Studies,
36:1-2, Winter-Spring, 1999, pp. 7-43.
Selim Deringil, Redefining Identities in the late Ottoman Empire: Policies of
Conversion and Apostasy, in Imperial Rule, eds. Alexei Miller and Alfred Rieber, pp. 107-
130.
Marc David Baer, Honored by the glory of Islam: conversion and conquest in Ottoman Europe, New
York : Oxford University Press, 2008, esp. chapters, Converting the Jewish prophet and
Jewish physicians, Conversion and conquest: ghazi Mehmed IV and Candia,
Conversion and conquest : ghaza in Central and Eastern Europe, Hunting for
converts.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 13

Febe Armanios, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the

Early Modern Ottoman Empire, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2012,
Vol.44(3), pp.580-582.
Gbor goston, Muslim Cultural Enclaves in Hungary under Ottoman Rule, Acta
Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Vol. 45, No. 2/3 (1991), pp. 181-204.
Felicita Tramontana, Contested conversions to Islam: narratives of religious change in
the early modern Ottoman Empire, Mediterranean Historical Review, 2013, Vol.28(1),
pp.82-86.
Daniel Goffman, Ottoman millets in the early seventeenth century, New Perspectives on
Turkey 1 1(1994), pp. 135-58.
Anton Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve bahas petitions and Ottoman social life,
1670-1730, Boston: Brill, 2004, esp. chapters Conversion to Islam before the Ottomans
Theories of Conversion, pp. 9-27; Periods of Conversion to Islam in the Balkans and
Demographic Processes, pp. 28-63; Forms Factors and Motives of Conversion to Islam
in the Balkans, pp. 64-110.
G. E. Rothenberg, Christian Insurrections in Turkish Dalmatia 1580-96, The Slavonic
and East European Review, vol. 4o (94) (Dec., 1961), pp. 136-147.
Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 Chapter 8 Religion Further
Considered, pp. 185-209.
Viliam Cicaj, The Period of religious disturbance in Slovakia, in Mikuls Teich (ed.),
Slovakia in History, 2011, pp. 71-86.
Gbor goston, Coexisting cultures in Ottoman Hungary, Jewish religious and cultural
life in Ottoman Hungary, Muslim culture in an occupied land, Dervishes and their
orders, Muslim libraries in Hungary, A Concise History of Hungary. Ed. Istvn Gyrgy
Tth. Budapest: Corvina and Osiris, 2005.
Gbor goston, Muslim-Christian Acculturation: Ottomans and Hungarians from the
Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries, Chrtiens et Musulmans la Renaissance. Ed.
Bartalom Bennassar and Robert Sauzet . Paris: Honor Champion, 1998.
Rogers W. Brubaker, Aftermaths of Empire and the Un-mixing of Peoples: Historical
and Comparative Perspectives, Ethnic and Racial Studies 18 (1995) 2, pp. 189-218.
Maria Todorova, The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention, Slavic Review (1994) 53:2,
pp.453-482.
Paul Mojzes, Religious Topography of Eastern Europe, in Journal of Ecumenical Studies,
36:1-2, Winter-Spring, 199, pp. 7-43.
Richard Clogg, The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire in Christians and Jews in the
Ottoman Empire, vol. 1, pp. 185-207
Martin Schulze Wessel, Religion, Politics and the Limits of Imperial Integration:
Comparing the Habsburg Monarchy and the Russian Empire, in Comparing Empires:
Encounters and Transfers in the Long Nineteenth Century, Jrn Leonhard, Ulrike von
Hirschhausen, eds. (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), pp.337-358
Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950 (New
York, 2005), esp. Chapters 10-12.

The Ottoman Empire

The millet structure of the Ottoman Empire; religious and ethnic identities and their
interplay in Rum-millet (i.e. Christian lands). Co-existence of Christians, Muslims and
Jews under the Ottoman Rule. Christians: quasi-state role of the Orthodox Church.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 14

Readings:
Marc David Baer, Honored by the glory of Islam : conversion and conquest in Ottoman Europe,
New York : Oxford University Press, 2008, esp. chaptes, Converting theJewish prophet
and Jewish physicians, Conversion and conquest: ghazi Mehmed IV and Candia,
Conversion and conquest : ghaza in Central and Eastern Europe, Hunting for
converts.
Anton Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve bahas petitions and Ottoman social life,
1670-1730, Boston: Brill, 2004, esp. chapters Conversion to Islam before the Ottomans
Theories of Conversion, pp. 9-27; Periods of Conversion to Islam in the Balkans and
Demographic Processes, pp. 28-63; Forms Factors and Motives of Conversion to Islam
in the Balkans, pp. 64-110.
Kemal H. Karpat, Millets and Nationality: The Roots of the Incongruity of Nation and
State in the Post-Ottoman Era, in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, vol. 1, pp.
141-169.
Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950, New York,
2005, Chapters 10-12.

The Habsburg Empire

Structure and composition of the multinational Empire. Enlightenment - idea and policy
of secularization. Political activities of the Catholic Church along the Frontier: the
Franciscans in Bosnia, Greek-Catholics in Transylvania. The church-school autonomy of
the Orthodox Serbs and Romanians in Southern Hungary. Political and confessional
loyalties of the rulers and peoples.

Readings:
Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918. Berkeley : University of
California Press, 1980, c1974. Ch. 7 Cultural Trends from Late Enlightenment to
Liberalism (from mid-eighteenth century to the 1860s) ; Bogdan Murgescu,
Phanariots and Pamanteni. Religion and Ethnicity in Shaping Identites in the
Romanian Principalities and the Ottoman Empire.
Toader Nicoara, Le Discours antigreque et antiphanariot dans la societe roumaine
(XVIIe et XVIIIe sciecles) in Maria Craciun, Ovidiu Ghitta (eds.) Ethnicity and Religion in
Central and Eastern Europe. Cluj: Cluj University Press, 1995, pp. 196-204 and pp. 205-211.

Islam
Readings:
Aydin Babuna1, The Bosnian Muslims and Albanians: Islam and Nationalism, in
Nationalities Papers, Vol. 32, No. 2, June 2004, 287-321.
Mark Pinson (ed.), The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina: Their Historic Development from the
Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
c1996. Introduction.
Tone Bringa, Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian
Village. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c1995. (Introduction)
Rogers W Brubaker, Aftermaths of Empire and the Un-mixing of Peoples: Historical
and Comparative Perspectives, Ethnic and Racial Studies 18 (1995) 2, pp. 189-218.

Week 3. Voluntary and Penal Settlement on the Borderland

Stephan Steiner, Austrias Penal Colonies, in Transnational Penal Colnies: New

Perspectives on Discipline, Punishment and Desistance, Abingdon, Oxon;
Routledge, 2015, pp. 115-126.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 15

Stephan Steiner, An Austrian Cayenne: Convict Labour and Deportation in the

Habsburg Empire of the Early Modern Period, in iGlobal Convict Labour, 2015,
pp. 126-143.
Colin Thomas, The Anatomy of a Colionization Frontier: The Banat of Temesvar,
Austrian History Yearbook, 19-20 (1983-I984), pp. 3-22.
Gbor goston. The population of Hungary in the Turkish period, Migration and
stability,Coexistence of ethnic groups, in: A Concise History of Hungary, ed. Istvn
Gyrgy Tth, Budapest: Corvina and Osiris, 2005.
G. E. Rothenberg, The Austrian military Border in Croatia, 1522-1747, Urbana, University of
Illinois Press, 1960.
G. E. Rothenberg, The military Border in Croatia. 1740-1881. A study of an imperial institution,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1966.
H. Dama, Banat: A Penal Colony of Maria Theresa?, Transylvanian Review, vol. 17 (3),
2008, pp. 38-53.
Robert A. Selig, Carlowitz, the Rakoczi Revolt, and the Origins of German Settlement
in Hungary, German Life, vol. 5 (5), (Mar. 31, 1999), p. 21.
Karl A. Roider and Robert Forrest, German colonization in the Banat and Transylvania
in the Eighteenth Century, in Charles Ingrao and Franz A.J. Szabo (eds.), The Germans
and the East, West Lafayette, Ind. : Purdue University Press, 2008, pp. 89-104.
Mark L. Stein, Guarding the Frontier: Ottoman Border Forts and Garrisons in Europe, I.B.
Tauris, London, 2007.
William OReilly, Selling Souls. The Traffic in German Migrants: Europe and America,
1648-1780, manuscript in print, chapters 3 and 5 on colonisation and settlement.

Week 4: Trade and Commerce, Law and Order

Karen Barkey, Rebellious Alliances: The State and Peasant Unrest in Early Seventeenth-
Century France and the Ottoman Empire, American Sociological Review, 1 December 1991,
Vol.56(6), pp.699-715.
Trian Stoianovich, The conquering Balkan Orthodox merchant, Journal of economic history,
Jun 1960, Vol.20(2), pp.234-313.
Kelly Hignett, Co-option or criminalisation? The state, border communities and crime
in early modern Europe, Global Crime, 9:1-2, 2008, pp. 35-51,
Gerard Delanty, The Frontier and Ideas of Exclusion in European History, History of
European Ideas, 22 (2), 1996, pp. 93-103.
Gbor goston. "Knowledge, Technology and Warfare in Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the
Early Modern Period." The Ottomans and Europe: Travel, Encounter and Interaction. Ed.
Seyfi Kenan. Istanbul: ISAM, 2010, pp. 471-480.
Gbor goston. "Ottoman artillery and European military technology in the 15th and 17th
centuries." Warfare in Early Modern Europe 14501660. Ed. Paul E.J. Hammer.
Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007.
Gbor goston. "Behind the Turkish War Machine: Gunpowder Technology and War Industry in
the Ottoman Empire, 1450-1700." The Heirs of Archimedes: Science and the Art of War
through the Age of Enlightenment . Ed. Brett Steele and Tamera Dorland. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 101-133
Gbor goston. "Early Modern Ottoman and European Gunpowder Technology." Multicultural
Science in the Ottoman Empire . Ed. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Kostas Chatzis and
Efthymios Nicolaidis. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 16

Gbor goston, The organization and structure of Ottoman Hungary, Ottoman

administration in Hungary, Ottoman taxation, The condominium, A Concise History of
Hungary. Ed. Istvn Gyrgy Tth. Budapest: Corvina and Osiris, 2005.
Mehmet Sinan Birdal, Legal evolution and state formation: a comparison of Roman law
and Islamic law, in ibid., The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans :from global imperial power
to absolutist states, I.B. Tauris, 2011, pp. 59-85.
Huri slamolu-nan, State and peasants in the Ottoman Empire: a study of peasant
economy in north-central Anatolia during the sixteenth century, In Huri slamolu-
nan, The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy, Cambridge University Press, 2004,
pp. 101159.

Week 5: Reading Week

Week 6: The Challenge of Nationalism

Wolfram W. Swoboda, Marx and Engels views of the Austrian Nationalities,

Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 9 (Jan. 1973), pp. 3-28.
Agnieszka Gucka, The awareness of ethnic affiliation among inhabitants of the
former military frontier between the 16th and 20th centuries. A historical
outline, Nationalities Affairs (Sprawy Narodowociowe), issue: 31, 2007, pp. 333-343.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, London; New York: Verso, 2006, Chapter 10, Census, Map, Museum.
Jason D. Hansen, Mapping the Germans: Statistical Science, Cartography, and the Visualization of
the German Nation, 1848-1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, esp. Chapter 1,
Counting Germans: The Search for a Practical Means to Measure Nationality; Chapter
2, Mapping Germans: Making the Cultural Nation Visible.
Robert Nemes, Mapping the Hungarian Borderlands, in Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence
and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian and Ottoman Borderlands, eds. Omer Bartov and
Eric D. Weitz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013, pp. 209-227.
Benjamin C. Fortna, Imperial Classroom. Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman
Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, esp. Chapter 5, Maps.
Iaroslav Hrytsak, History of Names: A Case of Constructing National Historical
Memory in Galicia, 1830-1930, Jahrbcher fr Geschichte Osteuropas 49, no. 2 (2001): 163-
177.
Andriy Zayarnyuk, Obtaining History: The Case of Ukrainians in Habsburg Galicia,
1848- 1900. Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2005): 125-151.
Larry Wolff , The Idea of Galicia . History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford
2010), 111-157 (chapter 3: The Galician Childhood of Sacher-Masoch);
Steven Seegel, Mapping Europe's Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012, esp. Chapter 6, Modern European
Ethnoschematization and the Vienna-St. Petersburg Axis.
Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008.
Martin Schulze Wessel, ed. Nationalisierung der Religion und Sakralisierung der Nation im
stlichen Europa, Stuttgart, Steiner, 2006.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 17

Sanja Lazanin, Count Joseph von Rabatta and the image of the Croatian
frontiersmen (end of the 17th-beginning of the 18th century), Migracijske i ethnicke
teme, vol. 19 (4), 2003, pp. 413-432.
Istvan Deak, The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-1849,
New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
Gunther E. Rothenburg, Jelacic, the Croatian Military Border, and the
Intervention against Hungary in 1848, Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 1 (Jan. 1965), pp 45-
68.
Tomislav Markus, The Serbian Question in Croatian Politics, 1848-1918, Review of
Croatian History, 1, pp.165-188.
Fred Singleton, The South Slavs under Foreign Rule, in A Short History of the Yuglslav
Peoples, 1985, pp. 35-71.
Vesna Goldsworthy, Invention and In(ter)vention: The Rhetoric of Balkanization, in
Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation. (eds.) Duan I. Bjeli and
Obrad Savi. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, pp. 25-38.
Istvan Deak, Beyond Nationalism : A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps,
1848-1918, Cary, NC, USA: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Week 7: Dissolution and Legacy

Charles and Barbara Jelavich, The establishment of the Balkan national states, 1804-1920,
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977, esp. ch. 15 Balkan Nationalities in the
Habsburg Empire, pp. 235-265
Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980, esp. Ch. 7, Cultural Trends from Late Enlightenment to
Liberalism (from mid-eighteenth century to the 1860s).
Jaroslav Pelikan, Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture since 1700, (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991), esp. Ch. 6 The Sobornost of the Body of Christ, pp. 282-336.
Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Imagined Communities and the Origins of the National
Question in the Balkans, in European History Quarterly (1989) vol. 19, pp. 149-194
Carsten Riis, Religion, Politics, and Historiography in Bulgaria, Boulder, Colo.: East European
Monographs; New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, esp. Ch. 6 San Stefano and
the National Triumph, pp. 121-142.
Greg Gaut, Can a Christian be a Nationalist? Vladimir Solovevs Critique of
Nationalism. Slavic Review 57, No. 1 (Spring 1998): 77-94
Peter F. Sugar, Nationalism and Religion in the Balkans since the 19th Century, in Peter
F. Sugar, East European Nationalism, Politics and Religion, Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1999,
IX, pp. 7-50.
Tone Bringa, Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian
Village. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995, esp. Introduction, Chs. 1 and
Conclusion.
Keith Hitchins, Gindirea: Nationalism in a Spiritual Guise, in Kenneth Jowitt (ed.),
Social Change in Romania, 1860-1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation,
Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1978, pp. 140-173.

Week 8: Conclusions, Historiography and the Legacy of the Military Frontier

Frontiers, Boundaries, Borderlands: A Terminological Maze or Distinct

Categories?
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 18

Frontiers, Borderlands, Contested Zones and The System of Continental

Empires: A New Approach to Empire Studies?

Easter Term

Week 1: Revision class

Week 2: Revision class

Sample Exam Questions

Answer three questions

How, and to what extent, is borderlands historiography useful in understanding the

history of early modern Habsburg and/or Ottoman history?

EITHER: Why did Vienna support the maintenance of the Military Frontier, 1521-1881?
OR: Why did Istanbul tolerate the maintenance of the Military Frontier, 1683-1881?

Assess the role of cartography in the creation of the Military Frontier.

How important were surveyors, military engineers and travellers accounts in creating a
frontier identity? Discuss with reference to AT LEAST THREE accounts.

How, and to what extent, were Grenzer fighting for a living?

Account for the Vampire obsession along the Habsburg-Ottoman borderland in the
18th century.

To what extend was the Military Frontier an Austrian penal colony?

In what ways, and to what extend, was the Habsburg-Ottoman borderland an

experiment in colonial government?

Account for the reluctance of Roman Catholics to settle the Habsburg-Ottoman

borderland in the eighteenth century.

How, and to what extent, was the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier a zone of toleration in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Discuss with reference to Serbian Orthodox
and Uniate Christians.

Account for and outline the emergence of particular rights and liberties for women
moving to and living in the borderland.

Consider the role of borderland quarantine practices (cordon sanitaire) in the emergence
and development of Habsburg and/or Ottoman medicine.
 Borderlands: Life on the Habsburg-Ottoman Frontier, 1521-1881 19

How, and to what extent, was Ottoman-Habsburg trade and commerce facilitated, rather
than inhibited, by the military frontier?

Assess the role of conversion to Islam in the development of Habsburg administrative

attitudes towards the frontier, c.1600-1800.

EITHER: How, and to what extent, did the Habsburg-Ottoman borderland challenge
more metropolitan views of Hungarian and/or Slavic nationalism, in the nineteenth
century?
OR: How, and to what extent, were residents of the Habsburg-Ottoman borderland
beyond nationalism [Istvan Deak]?

Why was the Military Frontier crownland dissolved ?