engleski

From Borderland to Border: Regulation of Imperial Frontiers in Central and Southeastern Europe

From 1699 onwards, the so called Triplex Confinium was an actual point of convergence of three defensive imperial belts (Habsburg, Venetian and Ottoman). Today it is also a moniker for an extensive, porous and fluid contact zone of three empires that shaped the history of Central and Southeastern Europe for almost five centuries. In recent decades studies of Triplex Confinium abandon traditional 'us and them' perspective and the clash of civilization discourse. They increasingly emphasize the liminal character of this particular contact zone of states and cultures. The three military belts were specific in terms of their goals, financial potentials, logistics, administrative organization, hierarchies and models of interaction with their respective centres. However, the communication between them was complex and ongoing. They shared practices, rules, customs and codes of behaviour. In other words, this contact zone was both contested and shared. Long-lasting interaction of diverse peoples and cultures in this space produced a unique social configuration, a specific subculture inherent in the term of borderland (pograničje, Krajina, végvidék). Though seemingly peripheral to distant imperial centres in Vienna, Istanbul and Venice the borderland heavily engaged these centres in political, military and financial terms. It forced them to (inter)act, to redefine their policies and to develop new administrative and military solutions in order to remain propulsive and competitive. Local elites and institutions were transformed and often marginalised along the way. The presentation has four main goals: to map, based on primary sources, the extent of the contact zone, from deserted lands to fortified areas on imperial rims ; to present the first partial territorial demarcations of the 16th century and systematic delineation of territories in the 17th and 18th centuries ; to highlight new, (proto)modern, form and function of the border in political, military, economic and sanitary terms ; to question how and when did the border-making, as well as internal changes within each defensive belt, started to dismantle the shared borderland.

Border, frontier, krajina, Croatia, Slavonia, Habsburg Monarchy, Ottoman Empire, Venetian Republic

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