Article of the Month - February 2022
“Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Venetians on the Frontiers of Dalmatia:
The Capture of Clissa in 1596”
(Eric Dursteler: History, Brigham Young University)
Dursteler, Eric. "Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Venetians on the Frontiers of Dalmatia: The Capture of Clissa in 1596."
In The Habsburg Mediterranean 1500–1800, edited by Stefan Hanß and Doroteha McEwan.
(Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2021). Pp.: 61—77.
Article Abstract:
A discussion of the important military operations to capture Clissa in 1596 in light of the competing Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Venetian interests in securing the Adriatic for their own commercial and political ends. The article brings to light the importance of the distinct views of the city for the strategic rivals, while also placing the conflict within the context of frontier and settlements. The article stands out for its discussion of local peoples and local authorities operating within the larger political and military concerns of the major powers.
Keywords: Clissa (Klis), Dalmatia, Croatia, Mediterranean, popular revolt, identity, religious violence, center and periphery, Habsburg empire, Ottoman Empire, Republic of Venice, Venetian stato da mar, entangled history
Nomination Statement:
Eric Dursteler's essay, "Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Venetians on the Frontiers of Dalmatia: The Capture of Clissa in 1596," investigates the competing motivations, both local and international, behind the siege of Clissa in 1596. Clissa, as Dursteler points out, was a strategic lynchpin for controlling Dalmatia due to its geographic location and prominent position near the coast. As such, one would expect the conquest of the city to fall into the traditional rivalries of the competing Ottomans, Hapsburgs, and Venetians, who vied for the control of the Adriatic to secure their own commercial and political ends. However, Dursteler's work approaches the subject both from the center and the periphery, seeking to understand how local and external forces shaped the siege and conquest of the city. While addressing these major powers, he demonstrates the importance of the local population and the fluid frontier situation where local actors utilized the competing interests of the great powers to secure their own agendas. Dursteller asks us to reconsider the conquest of Clissa considering the "fuzzy and entangled boundaries" typical of communities along a frontier. He notes the importance of local economic grievances and the mixed composition of the conspirators (including Muslim and Christian groups) formed from various Ottoman vlachs, Venetian forces, and Habsburg Uskoks. Dursteler’s rightly demonstrates that the conquest of Clissa is deeply rooted in the local political and economic tensions and should not be seen primarily as a new crusade of a religious nature.
Author’s Comment:
This article explores the multivalence of cross-cultural violence on the frontiers of the Mediterranean through a close reading of the capture of the Ottoman fortress of Clissa (Klis) in Dalmatia in 1596. While often interpreted as a religious, even proto-na/onalist conflict between Muslim Ottomans and Christian Croatian subjects of Venice, the reality was more ambiguous. The triplex confinium where the Venetian, Ottoman and Habsburg empires intersected was a space of intense cross-cultural mixing that transcended poli/cal and religious borders. The outburst of violence in 1596 illustrates this complexity: a combination of Muslim, Christian, Ottoman, Habsburg and Venetian conspirators captured the fortress, and it was returned through the cooperation of Venetian and Ottoman officials in the face of Habsburg and papal machinations. This event is better understood as one of many frontier disruptions rooted in economic and political tensions between imperial centers and their distant peripheries. The article is part of my ongoing research into the intertwined Mediterranean, in which I have relied on a micro-historical approach to attempt to access life as experienced on the ground level as a means to gaining insights into broader questions and themes such as identity, coexistence, mobility, gender, communication. In previous work I have argued for the often overlooked presence of peace and against the clash of civilizations model that has often distorted Mediterranean studies: this article explores the breakdown of peace, but argues that the paradigm of perpetual civilizational conflict is still not useful in understanding violence in the early modern Mediterranean.
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