Noel MalcolmRezensionen

Regular users of social media may be aware that the peach emoji is used to indicate not only the fruit in question but also the buttocks. This metaphor is not new. It was used in the middle of the 16th century by Francesco Berni, a Florentine poet, who assured his readers that the fruit was ‘good at the front and perfect from behind’. While drawing such modern parallels is tempting, it also presents dangers for the historian. This is particularly true for the history of sex between men, where so many sources derive either from the prosecution of illegal acts, or from literary texts that were by necessity often coded.

One of the most thought-provoking books I have read in some time, Forbidden Desires is an ambitious comparative study of sex between men in the Mediterranean and northern Europe. Its argument unfolds in a very readable narrative: this is a rare academic book for which I must tell you that my review contains spoilers. From the starting point of a scandalous case of sodomy in the household of the senior Venetian official in 16th-century Constantinople, Noel Malcolm first compares patterns of sex between men in the eastern and western Mediterranean, before asking whether these also prevailed in northern Europe.

The Mediterranean half of the story is relatively straightforward. Synthesising a large body of research based on legal codes, court cases (both secular and ecclesiastical) and literary sources, Malcolm paints a convincing picture of a broad Mediterranean pattern of sex between men. In both the Ottoman Empire and the western Mediterranean (strictly speaking Iberia and Italy, because the study does not take in the south of France, nor the Maghreb), this consisted of illegal but nonetheless relatively common sexual relations between men under 30 and ‘beardless youths’. Those whose sex lives sat outside this pederastic model faced much harsher condemnation, both legally and socially (the ‘inveterate sodomite’, for example, who kept having sex with men after his marriage, or the older man who took the passive role in sex). This pattern has its variations: there was a more open literary culture around love for boys in the Ottoman texts than in the Italian, while Italy (especially Florence) seems to have had a wider sodomitical culture than Iberia. Malcolm has little time for scholars who dismiss European travellers’ accounts of Ottoman sexual practices as only Orientalist fantasies, pointing out that the Ottoman sources provide ample confirmation of a real-life phenomenon.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Catherine Fletcher is Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/three-books-about-kosovo/

Magisterial stuff, which unfortunately takes us only to 1997 and the emergence of the KLA. Unlikely to be bettered as a summary of historical knowledge, especially in the medieval period.

Prior to reading "Kosovo: A short history", I knew sweet fa about Kosovo, except that it featured in the media in the 1990s for all the wrong reasons. Now I know this small, landlocked nation (or at least considered by over 100 other countries as a nation) has a bloody history that seems far bigger than its area, full of Nazi collaboration and a seemingly insignificant (in global terms) battle in 1389 that still echoes through the region six centuries later.

Like his earlier tome on Bosnia, Malcolm is very thorough and you don't finish the book wishing Malcolm had covered particular topics in more detail. As Kosovo may yet prove to be an important part of twenty first century Europe, this book is worth a read.

"Bosnia: A Short History was celebrated on its first publication as a brilliant
work of history which set the terrible war in the Balkans in its full
historical and political context. This revised edition has been updated with a
new chapter that covers the events of the last two years and remains the
definitive work on the complex history of Bosnia." --back cover

Inspired by the hunt for an obscure manuscript that essentially marks the beginning of Albanian historiography, Malcolm provides one with a wide-ranging examination of social and military interaction on the political line between Venice and the Ottoman Empire from the perspective of an extended family of Albanian noblemen. While the subtitle invokes "knights, corsairs, Jesuits and spies" the meat of this book is really the practice of day-to-day diplomacy by the men who found their affairs straddling the lines of conflict. I rather liked this work but for the uninitiated you'll at least want to have read a popular account of the battle of Lepanto first.

In this post-Yugoslavia world, I'm finding it difficult to tell what those former constituent parts of Yugoslavia, sporting strange names like “Kosovo”, “Montenegro” and “Herzegovina” all fit within Europe, and how (by Australian standards) such small areas got to have such varied histories and traditions.

So, Noel Malcolm’s “Bosnia” is a good introduction for chumps like me; scholarly but readable and my atlas was almost in constant use as I tried to understand where everything was and wasn’t. “Bosnia” also shines some light on a hitherto shady part of history; the role of Bosnian Muslims within the Nazi war machine. Some credit goes to the group of Bosnian Muslims who clashed with their German supervisors but prior to them we witnessed several years worth of Bosnian Muslims happily heading off to kill Jews.

This is a very thorough history. It naturally brings in the whole Balkans, and therefore the Ottoman Empire too; these are brief, accessible, and a very nice introduction for the clueless like me. The Kosovo part is quite interesting, it's also dense, and there is an agenda (albeit, probably a justified one). The author firmly believes Kosovo should be independent and Albanian, and rejects the mythical Serbian links to the region as, well myth. Actually Serbia comes out awful... since day one of independence (1878). I found this quite readable and enjoyable in the way disturbing histories are enjoyable.½

En lång historia om det lilla Kosovo. Det handlar mycket om den äldre historian och nyare skeenden får tyvärr väldigt lite plats.

By the early 1980s Kosovo had reached a state of permanent crisis and military occupation, and it became the main focus for the revival of Serbian nationalism. This book traces the history of Kosovo, examining the Yugoslavian conflict, and the part played by Western Europe in its destruction.