The Battle of Kosovo
The History and Legacy of the Battle Between the Serbs and Ottomans That Forged Serbia's National Identity
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Narrated by:
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Daniel Houle
About this listen
The Balkan area has historically been one of the world’s most combustible regions. Home to several national groups and at a crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the Balkans have exerted an outsized role on world affairs. Infamously, the 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, was the final straw that led to World War I.
The Balkans, however, had been flammable long before Princip’s bullets murdered the Austrian monarch-in-waiting. A number of countries had attempted to expand their borders within the Balkan region, and many of these had been supported by larger continental powers, such as Russia, Britain, France, Austria, Germany, and Italy. The main cause of this instability was the decline of empire in the Balkans, where the Ottoman Empire had held sway over the southeast section of the Balkans since the 15th century and the Austrian Habsburgs were dominant in the northwest of the region.
The wake of World War I would produce Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic nation made up of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Montenegrins. In addition to the nationalities that would be part of Yugoslavia, the Balkans was home to a number of other identities, ethnicities, and traditions, including the Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Albanians, and Turks.
Yugoslavia eventually fractured as a result of the different ethnic groups, all harboring their own sense of nationality and culture, and one of the most dominant groups at the center of the infighting was the Serbs. Notions of a Serb-nation focused on the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, on the Field of Blackbirds, where the Ottomans had defeated a Serb army but, nevertheless, gave Serbia a sense of identity in a hostile region. Kosovo also became an integral part of any notion of a Serb state, and as a predominantly Christian Orthodox people, Serbia also gained fraternal support from coreligionists, most notably Russia. The jostling between the Russians, Austrians, and Serbians in the wake of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination would bring about what was then history’s deadliest conflict.
Given how tightly the Serbs have historically been clinging to the Battle of Kosovo, which was fought on June 28, 1389, on the Kosovo plain in southern Serbia against the fledgling Ottoman Empire, it’s somewhat surprising what actually happened there. There can be no doubt that it is regarded as an important and, indeed, iconic battle in European history, but at first glance, it is difficult to see why. Though neither side fielded more than 40,000 men, it was a bloody battle that all but spelled the end of the Serbian nation.
Records of the actual battle itself are scarce, so historians have attempted to reconstruct a likely chain of events, thanks to written-down strategies, numbers, and information from other similar battles. The Serbian and Turkish sources often contradict each other, and what modern history books relay about the events are based on the general assumption and what most likely is true. Of course, the lack of actual documentation is the very reason the battle has become so easy to mythologize, and while Kosovo did not have any decisive effect on the course of Ottoman history or that of its other neighbors, the Serbs still regard it as a momentous conflict that resonates to the present day.
The Battle of Kosovo: The History and Legacy of the Battle Between the Serbs and Ottomans That Forged Serbia’s National Identity chronicles the Balkans in the 14th century, the circumstances that brought the Serbs and Ottomans to the Kosovo plain, and the subsequent events that gave rise to the potent cultural phenomenon now known as the Kosovo Myth.
©2019 Charles River Editors (P)2019 Charles River EditorsWhat listeners say about The Battle of Kosovo
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- Emir
- 28-01-2021
Too Narrow Minded
Firstly I don't think this is a bad book, but it makes the all to common historian mistake of looking at the events too closely. If one takes a step back they would see the context is what makes Kosovo important.
The book presents the argument that Kosovo wasn't as important as the Serbs think it is, I disagree. Shortly the reason the Battle of Kosovo is important is because of the butterfly effect, had the Serbs been able to conquer and stabalize Kosovo it would have meant there was great potential to conquest the rest of the Eastern Balkans at the expense of the Ottomans, which could have then lead into basically a Serbian Empire controlling the lands we associate with Eastern Rome
When you consider that you see why Serbs see this battle as the death of the Serbian Empire
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- Anonymous User
- 06-02-2024
Not an objective account
Not an objective account and biased. After glorifying Murat in the early chapters, culminates in dismissing Serbian historical accounts as myth and ends in another serb bashing in the Yugoslav wars. The latter in particular takes up almost a quarter of the piece and not what I was intending to purchase. Wonder who financed this piece. Look elsewhere if you want a more objective account. You might as well rename this book to the Kosovo Myth as that is all this book is trying to portray.
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