Thoughts on Karl Kasers' The Balkans and the Near East

Most texts that seek to provide an historical perspective tend to focus on a time span of no more than a couple of centuries, or focus on an area defined by modern state boundaries. Some may even focus on a ‘people’ and cover a more expansive time. Yet none attempt what Karl Kaser has, which is to tie together a shared history over an expansive area known as the Balkans and the Near East.

He diverges from the norm by his approach to time and space. The earliest time that the book covers is from the formation of sedentary communities; that time when nomadic communities began to remain in one place, usually due to agriculture and the domestication of animals. The geography covered avoids modern state boundaries, but focuses on the territorial extents of the former Byzantium and Ottoman Empires.  It is within these two demarcations that he writes his shared history of the region. Yet this notion of shared does not seek to account for similarities only. It also looks at how different areas within this region diverge from each other, and seeks to explain why it is they do.

An example of this would be his observation of preindustrial modes of economy. One group being tied to the land, and the other as roaming, highlights the difference between sedentary and nomadic peoples. But what makes a group stay or move can be for many reasons. Whether they deal with livestock or crops, whether the climate is arid or wet, the degree of contours to determine seasonal economy (shorter distances to higher climes can lead to a diverse economy all year round, as opposed to a seasonal economy); and from these, lead on to the need to develop new technologies for a non-suitable environment, different modes of exchange of commodities once people move to production for surplus, and new ways of structuring society.

This highlights Kaser’s style in the book. The focus on a theme usually covers a time from several millennia BC up to the time of one of the empires, aside from a couple - such as pre- and post-industrial economic structures. Others complement each other such as the section on ‘Migrations’ and a later one on ‘Demographic Developments’, or ‘Family and Kinship’ followed by ‘Gender Relations’. Only on a few occasions did you feel a sense of repetition, but the ability to weave in something already mentioned symbolises the unity of the themes, underscoring the objective of the book being that of a shared history, temporally, spatially and thematically.

One chapter stuck out for me especially; that on ‘The Relevance of Writing Systems’. This chapter reflected the writings of Michel Foucault in ‘The Order of Things’. In that, he looks at the development of language from an oral expression to indicate hunger in the guise of a whimper, via the growing development of complex oral sounds to indicate further things, to the ability to draw a mark (either on wall or in sand) abstractly to indicate an object or a motion; finally to reach a nuanced and diverse set of linguistics and literature the world over. Kaser looks at this development in the region, and places emphasis on the development of language, especially written language, for the Book religions. The script was meant to keep the message for eternity and remain unchangeable. Those able to read it had the power to interpret the messages so had considerable leverage. But even if the written text remained the same, the interpretation could alter – and thus lead to schism and separations. Kaser deals with the religions earlier in the book, but this provides a neat summing up of how world religions are divided within themselves.

The overall conclusion, which Kaser threads seamlessly through the entire book, finds its origins in the first chapter – ‘Power and Dominance’. What he observes is a shift of power and dominance, both in its geographic sense and in its content, over the time frame of the book. He sees this shift as moving away from the Near East toward the Atlantic overall, with the content of this power and domination gradually being asserted in the economic sphere. He pinpoints the 500 years from the 11^th century as the period where a turning point was reached. Accidental factors, developmental dynamics, and Eurasia Minor’s economic-spatial and socio-cultural handicaps (lack of natural resources, deteriorating agriculture, late coming to printing, thus knock on to education and knowledge economy) as internal and external forces, lent themselves to this shift.

Given the breadth of knowledge that the book attempts to cover in its geography and time, it does provide a rounded and novel approach to the history of a wide region often studied across factitious disciplines. Although the depth of knowledge is lacking, the further reading lists do allow the specialist to delve further into a specific theme. Overall it successfully compels the reader to think differently by forging two hitherto academically separated regions – Oriental and Occidental – into one innovative approach to history of such a diverse region.