A Concise History of Bosnia |
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19 März 2024 - Adetswil
In preparation for my trip to Bosnia i Herzegovina to run the half marathon in Mostar this weekend I have been studying the country. I've already made several visits to neighboring countries Croatia and Serbia as well as another former Yugoslav republic, Slovenia, and another on the east Adriatic coast, Albania.
Cathie Carmichael's A Concise History of Bosnia was published in 2015, making it two decades younger than the last book I read. This especially shows in Carmichael's detailing of catching war criminals, both Ustaša after WWII and Serbs after the Bosnian Civil War. This of course brings to mind Carla del Ponte's book I read last year, as she sat in judgement over the Serbs in the Hague. Carmichael doesn't mince words about the trial for the genocide at Srebrenica being held in the Netherlands after the Dutch UN troops disarmed and then abandoned the Muslim population there to wholesale mass murder.
Carmichael's book starts with the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463, whereby the conutry lost it's independence for five centuries. The Ottomans get a chapter, then the Habsburgs get a chapter, and then the bulk of the book is devoted to the 20th century. Carmichael comes off as a Tito fan, which is I suppose where the revisionism of history sits with that particular period. What relevance the dictator entertaining Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on his yacht has to Bosnia history she does not make clear. Where Carmichael shines is describing the culture, films, and books that have shaped Bosnian history.
