The Byzantines and the Balkans, 12th to 14th century

Pre-requisites: Senior year at the Department of History // appropriate term/year on other Departments

Course objectives: Explaining the policy of the Byzantine Empire toward the Balkans, from the Byzantine reconquest of the region in the eleventh century, through the period of the Crusades and the fall of Constantinople, and the attitudes of the Byzantines towards their Balkans neighbors.

Course description: A wave of massive changes swept across southeast Europe gyrating with the First Crusade in the late eleventh century, with the Byzantine Empire already in the process of the radical internal evolution and the new political balance, and the system of kinship government in the process of creation across the Balkans, with the new dynasty of the Komnenoi in Constantinople eager to established its dominance within and beyond the borders of the Empire. Through the detailed examination of changes in Byzantiium, the internal political evolution in Serbia and Bulgaria and the analysis of the new approach of Constantinople regarding the Empire's European hinterland the changing political paradigm in the region will be explained, as the bases on which the political structure of the region will rest until the Ottoman conquest in the fifteenth century.

Learning Outcomes: The students will be able to classify, analyze and understand the set of complex events and relations in the Balkans from the 11th through the 14th centuries, and the causality of geopolitical changes in the region marked by volatile internal and external political and cultural evolutions in the triangle Byzantium-Bulgaria-Serbia.

Literature/Reading:

• U dogovoru sa profesorom