A history of the Croatian people and the charm of it's outdatedness

It's been years since I read a book on Croatian history, so, given that I started a rewatch of the fantastic documentary series Croatian Kings, I thought it would be a good time to finally read one of the most influential books on the topic ever written: A history of the Croatian people by Trpimir Macan. So, I popped right down to my local library and grabbed myself a copy, ready to dive into the wonderful and strangely chaotic realm that I hold so near and dear to my heart: a world inhabited by kings, knezs, commoners, a land many civilisations from all over Europe had made their home, a world of equally heroic and villainous men and women who walked, fought and loved on these territories from prehistory, all the way up to the present day. So, in the end, did the actual book live up to all the hype surrounding it? Well, to quote a certain green ogre: That's a good question. And, to quote myself every time I get asked a complicated question: I'm nout sure if I could give a satisfying enough answer to it.

Don't get me wrong. In an of itself, the actual book is far from bad, in fact, it's remarkabley well written and does a great job of assembling the materials from a very long historical record and presenting them in a manner that could be equally palatable to both proffesional historians and your Joe Everyman who yerns to get that good fix of education everyone's been craving these days (doub't somebody like that exists in this reality but, hey, stranager things have happened).

Kinda like The Skeleton Key, which we looked at last time, I'll alternate between my positive and negative feelings on the subject as the review progresses as I neither straight up hated any of the aspects, but, I'm a far cry from loving them either.

Also before we start, as this is a non-fiction book (and not even a narrative one like Truman Capote's In cold blood or Douglas Preston's The lost city of the Monkey God) reviewing it would be significantly harder than reviewing fiction books as there's no cast of characters, arcs or even a specific plotline (well, there is the passage of history and several important figures which could be considered characters, but you get the jist).

So, let us dive in the thick glossy pages of a book whose influence cannot be overstated, starting off with, as per usual...

(1) The Writing

Non-fiction books are often times sterotyped as being overtly dry and scholarly. As somebody whose been reading this genre well since his early childhood days, I'd say that this view of the genre is only partially right. Sure, there certainly are works which can be described as such, however, an enjoyment of a book can primarily come from the reader's enjoyment of the subject matter. For example, I doub't I'd find a book about finance interesting in the slightest, even if it was written by some of the genre's most accomplished authors like, say, Brill Bryson (not that I've read many of his books if I'm honest), however, on the other hand, I loved almost every history focused book I came across, even the ones which were as dry as lakes in Africa. A truly well written and memorable non-fiction book, however, must, in my opinion, at the same time, balance out the lively and the scholarly types of writing, thus remaining both accesible for newcomers and general audiences overall, but also not come off as overtly simplistic for people who have knowledge and/or experiance with the subject matter the book deals with.

To illustrate this point a bit further, I'll use an example of my three favorite non-fiction books of all time: Mindhunter: Inside the FBI elite serial crime unit by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker (if the title sounds familiar, it's probably because it was the direct inspiration between the ever so popular Netflix original series of the same time), Legends of blood: The vampire in history and myth by Wayne Bartlett and Flavia Idriceanu and Witches of the world by Diane Canwell and Jonathan Sutherland.

Despite all 3 books having almost nothing in common with the premise and subject matter of the topic of my review, all three of them do something which I believe makes them important staples in the history of non-fiction as a literary genre; their writing really makes the topic come alive. Now, of course, Mindhunter has the advantage of being a narrative non-fiction book, which is a genre I briefly touched upon in the opening paragraph. It's a style of non-fiction writing which aims to tell an ever evolving plot with it's own stakes and narrative, usually following a select group of real world individuals. Things like memoirs, published diaries and travel logs, all fall under this umbrella and are usually written by individuals who participated within the events described in the book. The other two, however, manage to take very scholarly subject matter and present it to the readers in a way that manages to stick in their heads, not simply because it's informative, but because of their exceptionally addictive writing style and memorable, easy to follow and well categorized struction.

Fortunately, however, A history of the Croatian people, manages to work well within these boundries. Despite covering an over 1400 year long history (starting at some point during the antiquity and ending with the war for independence in the 1990s and the events that took place afterwards), it still manages to not only keep a consistent tone when it comes to it's writing, but the whole thing is surprisingly easy to follow. As a history buff I do wish the book was a little bit more detailed when it comes to the subject matter, but I will say that, as with most history books, it would get extremely confusing if it did decide to go in that direction. If anyone's looking for a relatively brief and quick ovreview in order to better understand Croatian history and mindset, I think this would be easily be my number one pick for a good introduction before moving on towards more complex titles and authors (alteast it's better than whatever the fuck Hrvoje Hitrec's Croatian history: a prosal account was).

I would have to say that there are parts of the book I would say are a bit outdated, but that's not really the book's fault. The copy I read was the 1999 third and expanded edition, with the earliest copies of what I assume is the first edtion, date back to 1988 and, like a lot of things stemming from this particular region of Europe, it was full of political appraisal for the quote on quote, achievements of the Communist party of Yugoslavia, a socialist federative republic which Croatia was a part of, with the copy I read being published four years after the country finished fighting it's war for independence. As far as I could tell there was no obvious political messages hidden here too, but perhaps some may have slipped under my radar so be warned, not to mention the fact that a plethora of new archeological and historiographical finds had been made since the 90s, so it's absolutely possible that this book features out of date or straight up inaccurate information. There are a few new editions published in the current century, however, as I haven't read any of those myself as of writing this article, I'm unable to vouch for their quality or lack there of, but, I'm sure I'll post a review of them on here once I, eventually, get to reading them.

I do have one critique regarding the book that I would like to adress.

I can't decide if the first one is a minor or major one, however, I'll still share it anyway since that's what this blog's all about.

The book completely skims over Croatia's long prehistoric heritage, which both does and doesn't surprise me. We're home to one of the most perfectly preserved neanderthal dwellings in all of Europe, which makes us the mecca for paleonathropologists the world over. The Vučedol culture that developed on the shores of Danube near the town of Vukovar, was one of the best developed and most sprawling communities during not just neolithic, but the Bronze and Iron ages that soon followed, with some of it's remenants being instantly recognizable icons when it comes to our country's promotion (with the most famous one being the Vučedol Dove). Instead of starting off at that point in time, the book decides to start with the antiquity, discussing primarily the Illyrians, as well as thesuccesful Greek and Roman attempts and colonization. Now, this part of history certainly is interesting to me (quite frankly, it's hard to find one that isn't if I'm honest), but still, kinda boggles why everything I just mentioned would end up being completely neglected. Now, I do have a sneaking suspition as to what the reason behind this decision. You see, historians and historiographers (yes, there is a difference) view history as starting with the invention of the written word in Summeria, which took place cca. 3500 BCE. Everything prior to this (ergo the entire evolution of mankind and the birth of civilisation and culture as we know it) is known as prehistory. So yeah, if that's the case, I do understand the book's decision to do this, even though I would have probably written it a little differently if I were the one to write it, but hey, this guy changed a scientific branch for decades to come and I'm over here writing a blog almost nobody reads instead of contributing to any serious literay genre, so what do I know.

So, yeah, despite this slightly subjective issue I retain that the book is indeed surprisingly well written. It doesn't even crack the top ten of my favorite non-ficiton reads (concerning the topic or otherwise), but I do retain that it does not fault it's quality nonetheless.

(2) The Illustrations

Does every non-fiction book need to feature illustrations? Of course not, but they can certainly help the book's appeal, especially with the more artsy reading crowd.

That being said, as is true for most cases, the visuals in this book aren't anything too revolutionary. The majority of them are colorized photos of paintings, statues and other things related to the subject matter without anything new added to the table. They're not organized in any particularly interesting way, which is, in my opinion, a missed opportunity (for example, another book on the same subject, that being Croatian rulers by Josip Jukić was one of the most visually pleasing books I've ever read, despite the fact that all of it's illustrations were of the same nature as seen here).

The photos themselves, in my opinion, are of quite high quality and provide good enough companions to the information being presented to the readers. They may not be the most unique a non-fiction title can muster, but they serve their purpose quite nicely and, all in all, I never flatout hated any of them or thought they didn't belong here. It's not the best illustrated non-fiction book I've come across, but, it's far from being bad and some may even find the illustrations to be quite cool.

I hadn't read any of the updated editions so I'm not sure if those feature some original content or not, but, I'll definetely picking those up once I get the chance to do so.

(PS: These pages are from the the 1988 edition, since they were the only ones I was able to find on Google, so I apologize for the lack of colour)

So, would I reccomend that you give this book a read?

Absolutely!! If anyone is interested in a rundown of Croatian history from the early days until the present, this book is a terrific introduction. The information is translated well, it never feels condescending or boring and is an overall fun read for history nerds who want to read something on the lighter side for once. It is a bit outdated whn it comes to a lot of the info presented within it's pages, but, again, I haven't read any of the later editions, so maybe that problem was fixed there. It's also probably the first book I'd reccomend to folks that are looking for introductions to Croatian history as it presents a clear and concise ovreview of it without going into overly unfamiliar territories. If you aren't interested in the topic, however, this book probably won't catch your attention or pique your interest anyways, so yeah, I won't be reccomending this to that side of the crowd.

Sorry that this review was a bit on the shorter side, I didn't really know what else to talk about when it comes to this book, but I still hope that my fans enjoyed reading it regardless.