Historiographies of Southeast Europe in the Pre-Modern Period

As recent reviews of medieval and early modern studies impressively demonstrate, the study of historiography has boomed in the last 15 years or so, paving the way for integrative and cross-cultural approaches beyond the previous focus on (Western) Eurocentric focus. Despite these developments it is striking that the area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea continues to be treated only marginally in general research on the history of culture and ideas. There is an immense disparity between the thriving research on Western knowledge production and the rudimentary interest in those historical writings that were produced and circulated in the Ottoman and Ottoman-Venetian area.

Situated at the intersection of Mediterranean, Eastern European, and Near Eastern cultures, early modern Southeastern Europe offers the opportunity to understand the various forms, practices, and meanings of historiography in a tense contact zone where nearly all the languages, religions, and writing systems of the Eastern Mediterranean world intersected.