Product Description

In this book an eyewitness to the breakup of Yugoslavia provides the first full and impartial account of the rise, fall, and rebirth of Croatia from its medieval origins to today's tentative peace. Marcus Tanner describes the turbulence and drama of Croatia's past and - drawing on his own experience and interviews with many of the leading figures in Croatia's conflict - explains its violent history since Tito's death in 1980. This second edition updates the account and follows Croatia's progress to democracy since the death of President Franjo Tudjman.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158797 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
"[Tanner] brings to bear wide knowledge of Yugoslavia and experience of Europe's worst war since 1945. [He] gives a good historical survey and an account of the war's causes." Economist "Lucid and accessible." Melanie McDonagh, Evening Standard "Readable and stimulating... Long-overdue corrective to the onesidedly negative view long entertained about Croatia by the educated British public." Times Higher Education Supplement "A much-needed introduction to this southern Slavic country, whose past and present defy simple categorisation... Written with vigour, full of absorbing stories and important insights, [the book] deserves to be read." Aleska Djilas, New York Times Book Review "The insights [Tanner brings] to [his] subject in his brave and compelling book will remain valid for many years to come." David Rieff, Toronto Globe and Mail "By far, the best book on the history of Croatia ever published." Choice

Melanie McDonagh, Evening Standard
"Lucid and accessible."

Times Higher Education Supplement
"Readable and stimulating ... Long-overdue corrective to the onesidedly negative view long entertained about Croatia by the educated British public."

Customer Reviews

Try to ignore the accusations of bias below
This book was in my shopping basket for almost a year before I finally bought it. My hesitation was due to accusations of pro-Croat bias in some of the reviews above. Having now read the book, I wish to defend the author and, not being of Serb, Croat or any other ex-Yugoslav origin, perhaps I am better qualified to opine on the matter than some of the reviewers below.
This is an absorbing and well-written account of a country which, although largely unknown in the UK before 1991, has a rich and fascinating history. It had a centuries-long relationship with Hungary and the Hapsburg Monarchy and it was on the front-line in the wars against the Ottoman Empire. Dubrovnik was an independent maritime republic with a remarkable capacity for survival - in fact, it took Napoleon to bring it to an end. The controversy in Croatia's history starts in 1918, when Croatia was absorbed (more or less voluntarily, although they soon regretted it) into what then became Yugoslavia.
With the bitterness of the war in the early 1990's still fresh in people's minds, it is, perhaps, impossible to write a book on this subject that both Serbs and Croats would regard as objective. However, the suggestion that this book is a pro-Croatian polemic is quite unfair. There is no attempt here to conceal or gloss over massacres of Serbs or Bosnians or other war crimes perpetrated by Croats. Neither does the author pull any punches in dealing with Croatia's contemptible efforts to carve up Bosnia with Serbia or the massive ethnic cleansing of Serbs that followed the recapture of the Krajina in Operation Storm. Croatia's "Father of the Nation", Franjo Tudjman, does not, in fact, come through as a particularly savoury character in this book, by any standards.
That, however, will not be enough for many readers from ex-Yugoslavia, particulary when the author talks about the origins of the war. The view of Marcus Tanner is that Milosevic planned the whole thing down to the last detail and that there was nothing to stop him because, in the Yugoslav National Army, he had the biggest army in south-eastern Europe right behind him. No doubt, such a view will never appeal to proponents of the theory that Serbs were spontaneously rising up against Croat/Bosnian Muslim tyranny, to those who blame Germany, the US, NATO, etc., to any of the Yugo-nostalgics on the far left who mourn the passing of communist Yugoslavia or to those (particularly prevalent in British government circles in the early 1990's) who put it all down to Balkan savagery and continue to defend Britain's disastrous policy of non-intervention.

A Good Overview of Croatia's 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.

Good intoduction to Croatian history
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.