Balkan Wars

Habsburg Croatia, Ottoman Bosnia, and Venetian Dalmatia, 1499–1617

This first English-language history of the western Balkans in the sixteenth century brings together rich primary research and a masterful synthesis of key work on Habsburg Croatia, Ottoman Bosnia, and Venetian Dalmatia. Distinguished scholar James D. Tracy shows how the Ottoman advance across this region stalled amid great-power conflicts. Ottoman conquests in Croatia were facilitated by a highly centralized structure of command. If Habsburg sovereigns needed decades to rally fractious elites behind common goals, the defenses they built proved enduring. Meanwhile, Venice guarded its Dalmatian harbors, but viewed the Ottomans more as trading partners than as enemies, thus heightening tensions with Vienna. Along the way, this comparative political and military history of the three contiguous provinces illustrates how metropolitan capitals were sometimes able to control their distant outposts, and sometimes not.