Kosovo: A Short History [Paperback]

Kosovo, a 55-mile-long plateau in southern Serbia bordering Albania and Macedonia, should by all rights be a historical and political backwater. A Bulgarian geographer who visited Kosovo during World War I remarked that it was "almost as unknown and inaccessible as a stretch of land in Central Africa." The observation would prove ironically fitting by the 1990s, as Central Africa and Kosovo both became sites of widespread genocide, fuelled by ethnic hatreds, of the deepest international significance. Noel Malcolm, a British historian and journalist who has written extensively about the Balkans (including a companion volume of sorts on Bosnia) provides an overview of Kosovo's long-standing cultural divisions in his "short history" (although, at more than 500 pages, a not so short book).

Readers following the war in Kosovo through newspaper and television coverage may well ask why ethnic Albanians and Serbs are struggling so violently to command the small region. Kosovo, Malcolm explains, is the birthplace of Serbian nationalism; the defeat of Serbian forces there in 1389 by Turkish troops became emblematic of the fall of the Serbian empire, as it led to Turkish domination of the Balkans. Contemporary warriors of Serbia are, in Malcolm's eyes, evidently attempting to reverse the course of history by reclaiming the land from its Turkish conquerors--but in the absence of the Turks, they'll take it from the Albanians (the largest ethnic group among Kosovo's inhabitants) whose ancestors converted to Islam when the Turks ruled the region. Malcolm's lucid text shows again and again that the ethnic conflict in Kosovo is less a battle over bloodlines and religion than it is one over differing conceptions of national origins and history. "When ordinary Serbs learn to think more rationally and humanely about Kosovo and more critically about some of their national myths," he concludes, "all the people of Kosovo and Serbia will benefit--not least the Serbs themselves."

The Albanian-inhabited region of the former Yugoslavia is one of the most complex areas of Europe. Kosovo's current bitter ethnic conflict is the most recent demonstration of centuries of tension. While the Serbs insist that Kosovo belongs to Serbia by a sacred historical right, the Albanians who live there refuse to accept the authority of Belgrade. Sifting through the many claims and myths which have bedevilled discussion of the region, Malcolm has compiled the first ever complete history of Kosovo. By looking at the dual strands of Albanian and Serbian history he has not only pieced together a perceptive and focused history of Kosovo, but also of the whole of southeastern Europe. Attaining the same heights of historical record-straightening that his acclaimed Bosnia: A Short History achieved, he pleads for a far greater understanding of the conflict by the Serbs, whose hopes of genuine democratic development Malcolm recognizes to have been poisoned by the constant reintroduction from above of a politics of fantasy and hatred. Guaranteed to enlighten and impress. (Kirkus UK)

A timely and penetrating history of the Balkans' next crisis zone - the Serbian province of Kosovo. With its 90 percent ethnic Albanian population dominated by Serbs with a nasty record of human-rights abuses, Kosovo is a nightmare waiting to happen. Throughout the 20th century it has presented an intractable problem to Yugoslav leaders, both royalist and communist. Malcolm, a seasoned British journalist in the Balkans and the author of a much-acclaimed work on the region (Bosnia: A Short History, 1994), demonstrates a similar appreciation for the urgency and significance of both the present turmoil and the complicated past of the region. He manages to be both concise and comprehensive. The book begins with geographic and ethnographic background and follows historical developments chronologically from the medieval period to the present. Malcolm's prose is lively and engaging, his scholarship well documented, and he seems unafraid of offending the warring camps, displaying a strong, healthy skepticism bred of many years spent in the Balkans. He identifies several major factors in the shaping of Kosovo's past and present situation. The Serbian Orthodox Church's use of religious rhetoric to defend "sacred" Serbian interests (the official Serbian Patriarchate and several historic churches) is, he asserts, "a classic example of religion being mobilized and manipulated for ideological purposes." He also objects to the Serbs' claims of political hegemony based "on the geography of long-gone kingdoms or empires." He blames the politicization of Albanian-Orthodox relations since the 19th century for turning divisions into outright hostility, drawing a parallel to the key role of politicians in creating the Bosnian crisis. Significantly, Malcolm openly challenges both the legality of Kosovo's incorporation into the Serbian state as well as a historiography of Kosovo that has misrepresented parts of the region's history due to national and ideological biases. Both scholars and general readers will appreciate Malcolm's vigorous and trenchant analysis of the region's troubled past and present. This is destined to become a standard work on the subject. (Kirkus Reviews)