What is it about?
The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the late Middle Ages is one of the most important changes in the relationship between the Christian and Islamic worlds, along with the Spanish Reconquista and the expansion of the Moscow Grand Duchy. Our paper proposes a new theory for the interpretation of the Ottoman conquest: the hunting of slaves, carried out by Ottoman raiders, was decisive. With Christian slaves, Ottoman regional rulers in the Balkans built new economic structures. Ottoman raids often lasted for decades. Only when the affected areas had been destabilised by demographic losses did the final Ottoman conquest and transformation into Ottoman provinces follow.
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Why is it important?
The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, one of the most important geopolitical shifts in european history of the last millennium, must be re-periodised: the phase of slave-hunting and demographic shaking, which usually lasted seven to eight decades; then the definitive conquest of the demographically profoundly changed territory, with new population groups being settled in parallel to the establishment of Ottoman population structures. The incursions of Ottoman raiders, we argue, were far more than raids of plunder - they were an integral, crucial and devastating part of the Ottoman conquest of the south-eastern peninsula of Europe.
Perspectives
The article was written jointly by an Ottomanist and a Balkan historian. This allowed us to tap into an unusual wealth of sources and research literature, but above all to consistently examine different perspectives. on the basis of a new empirical foundation, we propose a new explanatory and periodisation model for one of the fundamental themes of the medieval history of Eastern Europe. The article does not result from a project financed by third parties, but from a spontaneous collaboration.
Oliver Schmitt
University of Vienna
Writing this article in cooperation with one of the leading Balkan historians gave me pleasure and great satisfaction in bridging the disciplinary and linguistic barriers that often mark current research. It also convinced me that placing the Ottoman raiders and their plundering expeditions at the center, rather than on the periphery, of the Ottoman expansion, is crucial for a better understanding of the Ottoman conquest process and the social and economic matrix of the Ottoman world. I very much hope that it opens up new vistas for the specialized and broader audience in provoking further thoughts on the phenomenon of violence in the late middle ages and the early modern period.
Mariya Kiprovska
Central European University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ottoman Raiders (Akıncıs) as a Driving Force of Early Ottoman Conquest of the Balkans and the Slavery-Based Economy, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, May 2022, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15685209-12341575.
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