A Balkan “Archaeology” and the Crisis of Modernity. Afterword by Dejan Djokić

Abstract

In this posthumously published essay, Traian Stoiano­vich traces reasons for the crisis of modernity in the Balkans, from the Late Antiquity to the modern era. Stoianovich approaches the subject from the perspectives of both a micro historian and a transnational and global historian, always in dialogue with other disciplines. He looks at how the development of premodern Bal­kan nations and their medieval states was impacted by imperial conquests (Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman). He points out at both ruptures and continuities while analysing Balkan societies during the Ottoman era. The question of socioeconomic backwardness is given due consideration. Contrary to popular perceptions, the ideas of Enlightenment reached the Balkans and had an impact on the region, which tried to copy outside models. Following the Protestant Reformation and especially the French Revolution, two models of modernity emerged in Europe: Europe I of liber­ties (privileges) and Europe II of liberty. Stoianovich argues that among Orthodox Christians in the Balkans advocates of moderni­ty tended to favour Europe II.

Summary:

Professor Traian Stojanović, in this posthumously published essay, explores the reasons for the crisis of modernity in the Balkans, from Late Antiquity to the contemporary era. His approach of total history is connected to the French Annales School, to which Stojanović belonged as a former student of Fernand Braudel and about which he also wrote. The essay moves discreetly through different historical periods, between history, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and political science; between the Balkans, Europe, and the Middle East; and also between microhistory and global history, drawing on works in English, French, German, and Serbo-Croatian. Stojanović examines the premodern origins of the Balkan nations, the ruptures caused by imperial conquests—Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman—and the continuities that outlived them. The article represents a significant contribution to ongoing debates about modernity in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. For example, Stojanović points out that Ottomanism, regardless of its reformist nature, did not constitute civil society, and shows, as he does in other works, that the Balkans did not remain isolated from the influence of the Western intellectual revolution. As early as the last decade of the fifteenth century, printing presses were introduced into Montenegro, while Enlightenment ideas reached the Serbs, Greeks, and Romanians largely through their compatriots from the Habsburg Monarchy. Stojanović also demonstrates how global economic crises in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries affected Balkan economies and societies, both in the short and long term. The discussion of the crisis of modernity in Europe—or, in Professor Stojanović’s interpretation, the existence of two Europes—is central to the article: “Europe I,” characterized by freedom, or privilege, which was favored in the Protestant parts of the continent, and “Europe II,” representing the ideal of freedom derived from the French Revolution, which had a strong influence among Orthodox Christian peoples in the nineteenth century. Stojanović also examines the post-Versailles order and the Habsburg legacy, seeking to explain the instability that emerged after 1918 in the Balkans and beyond.