Customer Reviews

Croatia: A Nation Forged in War

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Tanner is neither a Croatian nor an academic, and this limits the book in both understanding and the depth of its research. And yet, the book is successful all the same. It is a quick and accurate overview of Croatia's long and complicated history. Useful for those new to the region and its issues. Some of Tanner's conclusions (particularly those for the most recent events) are decidedly pro-Croat nationalist (unabashed support for Tudjman and the HDZ), and the still-important WW2 events are not carefully considered. But overall, it is a good, if simple book. You may want to complement it with Goldstein's history as well.

A book that needs to be read, if only for the shedding of light on Croatian history, which for too long was hidden or re- written by others. Putting aside his conclusions to the recent war, which seem to arose most criticism, he has written an even handed history of Croatia since early times, although sometimes he fails to place Croatia in its historical context, as a small nation in the greater general upheavals of Europe. Even so, Tanner has relied on many varied sources, not just myths created since the Second World War by both Western and East European historians, which many Western historians are now acknowledging as myths, half tuths or deceptions, of which Tanner is one.

A book on Croatian history is most overdue. This is one of the rare books on Croatian history written in English and therefore a must read. Croatian history is rarely analysed, with most of its 2000 or so years virtually ignored. Fortunately there is now a book which will give an objective and comprehensive overview of this ancient nation from the 7th century to the present. It is well written and easy to read. Recommended. Added analysis can be found in Noel Malcolm's 'Bosnia: A short History'.

By his own account, British journalist Marcus Tanner did not set out to write a history of Croatia from the seventh century. He intended to write an account of the recent war with the Serbs. However he found he could not do so without locating the seeds of the conflict in the 1940s, which are rooted in the politics of the 1920s, which were engendered by the nationalism of the 1840s, and so on. What he ultimately produced is a useful 300-page overview of Croatian history. And he still managed to write about the recent war, devoting 80 pages to events since 1990.

The common view that Tanner is not sufficiently critical of unsavory elements in Croatia's past is justified. His discussion of the horrors of the World War II-era Jasenovac concentration camp is cursory; he comments on the main political football - the debate about the numbers and identities of the victims - but fails to describe the political context surrounding the camp or the lives of the people within it. His praise for Tudjman as a noble, if overzealous, nationalist who successfully steered his country to the fruition of the `thousand-year-dream' is insufficiently honest about his neo-fascist and sometimes nonsensical policies. Today Tudjman's HDZ party is a quasi-democratic regime rooted in corruption and repression. The war is over, the Croats won. Now is the time for nurturing democratic institutions.

From a journalist with such a tactile understanding of the region, "Croatia" includes few of the primary source interviews and observations that were so interesting and enlightening in other recent books about the Balkans by British journalists (Misha Glenny, Laura Silber). Instead Tanner weaves together secondary sources and analyses by other experts. While this approach sacrifices visceral understanding, it allows him to explain fluidly centuries of tangled events. This ultimately proves to be the work's strongest feature.

Tanner compresses dense material into smooth prose where each paragraph fairly begs for its own chapter of elucidation. Readers may not come away with a deep feeling for what makes a Croat tick, but they will certainly come away with a broad knowledge of the historical underpinnings of today's twisted conflicts. Tanner has something of a pro-Croat perspective, but this is not disastrous. Careful readers seeking understanding still rely on multiple sources with varied viewpoints. But for all the dilettantes who throw up their hands and mutter about "historical hatreds" and "centuries of fighting", there is no longer any excuse for ignorance.

A nitpick: the book's maps are a failure. The few maps are haphazard and only loosely correspond to the events in the nearby text. Many locations whose importance Tanner carefully explains appear nowhere on the maps. Perhaps a good editor can remedy this in the next edition.

By his own account, British journalist Marcus Tanner did not set out to write a history of Croatia from the seventh century. He intended to write an account of the recent war with the Serbs. However he found he could not do so without locating the seeds of the conflict in the 1940s, which are rooted in the politics of the 1920s, which were engendered by the nationalism of the 1840s, and so on. What he ultimately produced is a useful 300-page overview of Croatian history. And he still managed to write about the recent war, devoting 80 pages to events since 1990.

The common view that Tanner is not sufficiently critical of unsavory elements in Croatia's past is justified. His discussion of the horrors of the World War II-era Jasenovac concentration camp is cursory; he comments on the main political football - the debate about the numbers and identities of the victims - but fails to describe the political context surrounding the camp or the lives of the people within it. His praise for Tudjman as a noble, if overzealous, nationalist who successfully steered his country to the fruition of the `thousand-year-dream' is insufficiently honest about his neo-fascist and sometimes nonsensical policies. Today Tudjman's HDZ party is a quasi-democratic regime rooted in corruption and repression. The war is over, the Croats won. Now is the time for nurturing democratic institutions.

From a journalist with such a tactile understanding of the region, "Croatia" includes few of the primary source interviews and observations that were so interesting and enlightening in other recent books about the Balkans by British journalists (Misha Glenny, Laura Silber). Instead Tanner weaves together secondary sources and analyses by other experts. While this approach sacrifices visceral understanding, it allows him to explain fluidly centuries of tangled events. This ultimately proves to be the work's strongest feature.

Tanner compresses dense material into smooth prose where each paragraph fairly begs for its own chapter of elucidation. Readers may not come away with a deep feeling for what makes a Croat tick, but they will certainly come away with a broad knowledge of the historical underpinnings of today's twisted conflicts. Tanner has something of a pro-Croat perspective, but this is not disastrous. Careful readers seeking understanding still rely on multiple sources with varied viewpoints. But for all the dilettantes who throw up their hands and mutter about "historical hatreds" and "centuries of fighting", there is no longer any excuse for ignorance.

A nitpick: the book's maps are a failure. The few maps are haphazard and only loosely correspond to the events in the nearby text. Many locations whose importance Tanner carefully explains appear nowhere on the maps. Perhaps a good editor can remedy this in the next edition.

Anyone interested in going beyond the standard media sound byte to understand the history of Croatia, will find Tanner's book an invaluable resource. Tanner chronicles in detail the long history of the Croatian people and emergence of the Croatian state, including the birth and shaping of national identity, personalities, myths and changing political panorama. While most works on the subject deal with specific, disjointed time periods of Croatian history, Tanner provides an insightful and comprehensive account - complete with references and facts rarely found in other sources. An enlightening read about a surprisingly complex nation and its turbulent path through the historical landscape.

I was pleasently surprised to have found this book which is one of the rare history books about Croatia written in English language successfully avoiding the historical misconceptions ant the mythomania from serbian and croatian extremist elements who often tend to re-write the 20th century history. Although Tanner is not an academic, he has carefully collected all of the historical facts and has very swiftly dealt with the chapters covering newer history, managing to present all of true and false historical facts as such.
The chapters on the early croatian history are also well written, easy to read and suitable for an average reader who might not be a historian, as well as for all those who are learning about Croatia for the first time.
A must-read for anyone wanting to learn about the basic history of the western Balkans.

This is a decent book which provides some insight into the struggle of the Croatian people. But it fails to provide the most important information. That is, the background of how Serbian and communist domination and hegemony forced all people of the former Yugoslavia to want to break free from oppresion. I lived in Zagreb in the late 1980s and the fact is that Serbs dominated Police, Military, Education, Politics, Diplomacy throughout Croatia. The fact is that Croatia, a fairly developed republic had to give most of its income to the YU government in Belgrade. The fact is that the Croatians were not allowed to show any national (not nationalistic) pride. How would we Americans feel if we were not allowed to display our flag, sing our anthem or criticise the governemt. That's how it was. The YU constitution allowed for separation of the individual YU republics if so elected in a public poll, which 94% of Croatian inhabitants did. Croatia offered Belgrade a loose confederation at first but Belgrade replied with terrorist attacks. On a personal basis Croats don't hate Serbs. They just wanted their own country, flag, governemtn and peace. If you look at the history, Croatia due to its natural richness and location, was constantly under attack or occupation. Including by the Serbs. But since the Serbs were the ruling republic, they wrote the history books. Why do you think Croatia is always singled out as an ally to Italy/Germany and Serbia isn't? Serbs wrote the history. Serbs were allies with Germany as well. They had brutal forces like the chetniks who killed tens of thousands of Croatians and Bosnians. But that is not common knowledge. But the anti-Nazi uprising started in Croatia, not Serbia. That's something to think about. So, this book is good, but lacks deeper explanations of the reasons behind the conflict.

We start in the dim past of Slavic tribes moving into the dark realms of the collapsed Roman empire, Christianizing and warding off (sometimes unsuccessfully) the Byzantine rulers from the southeast. Then we move rapidly through the long period of Hungarian rule, coupled with the Venetian hold on the Dalmatian coast, and Turkish occupation. The lands that make up Croatia today long served as a frontier for the Hapsburg Empire and the Hungarian Kingdom, fighting the Muslims/Turks of Bosnia, the French under Napoleon, and the Italians and Russians in World War I. Ultimately Croatia wound up---not an independent state as so many had hoped under the rising tide of nationalism in Austro-Hungarian times---but as a part of Yugoslavia where they played the part of perpetual second fiddle to Serbia. More than half the book is devoted to Croatian history after World War I. Large sections cover the country between the two World Wars, under the awful Ustashe regime during German occupation, and in Tito's Yugoslavia. The slow crumbling and breakup of that country after the leader's death in 1980 is documented very well, as is the war between Croatia and Serbia in 1991-92 and then the lightning campaign in 1995 when the renewed national army drove out the Serbs who had tried to set up an independent enclave within the boundaries of Croatia. Like Ireland, Finland, Slovakia, and other small nations, Croatia endured for centuries as a minor outpost, used but not appreciated by the empires that ruled it. Its territories were often divided among different conquerors. After nearly a thousand years of passionate defence of its mere existence, the nation finally emerged into the light in the 1990s with a language and culture of its own. The perennial "minor leaguer" entered the majors at last. It was an exceedingly difficult transition.

I've read various histories of Balkan and Eastern European countries in which nationalism outpoints facts. Perhaps we might say that "certain facts are ignored" in such books. Tanner, a journalist who worked for years in Croatia and former Yugoslavia, tries to maintain a neutral stance. He neither whitewashes Croatian sins nor takes sides with their enemies. The result is a highly readable book with attention to academic sources, with a series of interesting black and white photographs, and some modern details gleaned on the spot by personal experience which standard histories might never incorporate. I felt that he tried his best to be fair. There are a number of interesting portraits of characters in Croatian history---of Jelacic, Gaj, Strossmeyer, Radic, Pavelic, Stepinac, and Tudjman among others---men hardly known in the outside world. Given that knowledge of Croatia is not particularly widespread, a better, more detailed large map would have been useful. The small maps provided are all right, but insufficient. Histories of Croatia in English aren't exactly a dime a dozen, so you've got to take what you can find. I suspect that Tanner's work, definitive or not, is the most readable. He sticks closely to political/military matters, eschewing the economic, cultural, religious, and other spheres. Croatia's artists, writers, musicians, and architects; the trade, agriculture, and industrial growth, education, even population trends---all are almost totally absent. If you want an excellent action-history of Croatia, this is it, just be aware that nobody can cover all the bases.

Those wishing to understand the Croatian perspective to the recent war in Yugoslavia will find this book invaluable. Not only does it succinctly manage to present Croatian history but also its "tone". Suprisingly it tends to be balanced given that English authors tend to interpret recent political events with a decidedly pro Serbian view. Refreshing.