When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans: A Study of Identity in Pre- Nationalist Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early-

"This is history as it should be written. In "When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans," a logical advancement on his earlier studies, Fine has successfully tackled a fascinating historical question, one having broad political implications for our own times. Fine's approach is to demonstrate how ideas of identity and self-identity were invented and evolved in medieval and early-modern times. At the same time, this book can be read as a critique of twentieth-century historiography-and this makes Fine's contribution even more valuable. This book is an original, much-needed contribution to the field of Balkan studies."-Steve Rapp, Associate Professor of Caucasian, Byzantine, and Eurasian History, and Director, Program in World History and Cultures Department of History, Georgia State University Atlanta "When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans" is a study of the people who lived in what is now Croatia during the Middle Ages (roughly 600-1500) and the early-modern period (1500-1800), and how they identified themselves and were identified by others. John V. A. Fine, Jr., advances the discussion of identity by asking such questions as: Did most, some, or any of the population of that territory see itself as Croatian? If some did not, to what other communities did they consider themselves to belong? Were the labels attached to a given person or population fixed or could they change? And were some people members of several different communities at a given moment? And if there were competing identities, which identities held sway in which particular regions? In "When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans," Fine investigates the identity labels (and their meaning) employed by and about the medieval and early-modern population of the lands that make up present-day Croatia. Religion, local residence, and narrow family or broader clan all played important parts in past and present identities. Fine, however, concentrates chiefly on broader secular names that reflect attachment to a city, region, tribe or clan, a labeled people, or state. The result is a magisterial analysis showing us the complexity of pre-national identity in Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia. There can be no question that the medieval and early-modern periods were pre-national times, but Fine has taken a further step by demonstrating that the medieval and early-modern eras in this region were also pre-ethnic so far as local identities are concerned. The back-projection of twentieth-century forms of identity into the pre-modern past by patriotic and nationalist historians has been brought to light. Though this back-projection is not always misleading, it can be; Fine is fully cognizant of the danger and has risen to the occasion to combat it while frequently remarking in the text that his findings for the Balkans have parallels elsewhere. John V. A. Fine, Jr. is Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

Disenchanted with the way in which nationalists have manipulated and mythologized history to serve their contemporary political aims, Fine uses his expertise as a Balkan medievalist to tackle the modern question of how people conceived of identity and belonging before the invention of the nation. His premise-that elites co-opted and politicized ethnic consciousness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to construct national identities-is one that most scholars now take for granted. But his approach is refreshingly new. Using an impressive array of sources in various languages and dialects from the medieval era to the eighteenth-century, he draws an intricate picture of how people who lived in the present-day country of Croatia identiªed themselves and their neighbors. By analyzing the gradual shifts in local identity that occurred throughout the centuries, he reveals the process of identity formation and transformation in the western Balkans that eventually led to the construction of the Croatian nation.
One of the book's great strengths is Fine's analysis of premodern "ethnic" identity, which he convincingly demonstrates to have existed, though in different forms, as it does today (165)(166)(167)(168)(169)(170)(272)(273). His focus is not on religious or familial ties but on the various forms of secular identity that served as the predecessors of the national unit, such as tribal, civic, regional, and city bonds. Fine contends that few of his subjects felt part of a "Croat" collective. Instead, most of them viewed themselves as members of a smaller, often more ºuid, unit based loosely on their Slavic roots and a regional connection. Moreover, the meanings of the terms that they used to describe themselves varied by region and period. "Serb" and "Vlach" sometimes differentiated class or occupation rather than ethnicity. "Croat" and "Dalmatian" acquired legal, territorial, and political meanings when new rulers came to power. Fine persuasively argues that today's "Croats" could have formed part of a larger national body (South Slavs) or divided themselves into even smaller ethnonational units (for instance, Dalmatians and Slavonians).
Fine is aware that his argument will provoke controversy in the western Balkans, but he is content to let his documents speak for themselves. In an almost encyclopedic style, he systematically reviews sources region by region and century by century, revealing the protracted intellectual battle about identity labels. Some readers will ªnd his style tedious and wish for a more cohesive historical narrative. Others, especially those with a deep interest in the region (as opposed to the theme of ethnicity), will appreciate Fine's exhaustive footnotes and descriptive summaries. Especially valuable to the contemporary social scientist is Fine's compelling analysis of the character and durability of regional identities. His work offers new insight into modern political dynamics, such as why Dalmatians became major advocates of Yugoslavism at the turn of the twentieth century and why Istrians repeatedly rejected the agenda of nationalist Croat president Franjo Tudjman in the 1990s.
Like many foreigners who fell in love with Yugoslavia, Fine is overtly disappointed and angry that radical nationalists rose to power there and that Yugoslavia-both the country and the idea-collapsed amid a bloody conºict in the 1990s. However, if he had investigated how other groups living in the region (Orthodox Serbs, Latins/Italians, and Muslims) conceived of themselves, and engaged more with the literature about nationalism, instead of ranting at contemporary nationalists, he might have broadened his argument and reached a larger audience. His blatant hostility toward Croat nationalists seriously detracts from the book's laudable empirical contribution. Nonetheless, readers who focus on Fine's descriptions of the evolution of ethnic consciousness will be rewarded with an innovative glimpse into the study of identity before ethnicity mattered.
Emily Greble Balib Harvard University The approach to nationhood and nationalism taken by Brubaker and his co-authors offers new perspectives on a familiar subject and, best of all, stirs thought. They use the perspectives and methods of historians and sociologists as they probe ethnicity, guided by Hobsbawm's dictum that although nationhood and nationalism are constructed from above, an understanding of these phenomena requires an analysis from below. 1 Politics, especially nationalist politics, and the role that it plays in manifestations of ethnicity, is the pervasive theme. It could not be otherwise given Transylvania as the locus for testing hypotheses. Long a borderland of ethnicities, it is an inspired choice. So is the authors' focus on Cluj, the modern capital of Transylvania, as a laboratory where the workings of ethnicity can be uncovered and the consequences analyzed.

Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian
The authors have divided their investigation into two parts. The ªrst looks at nationhood and nationalism historically from above, examining the discourses of intellectuals and activists and placing the contemporary scene in a longer-term perspective. Brubaker and company are concerned mainly with developments since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when nationhood and nationalism began to dominate Transylvanian public life, and they describe successive contexts: the