Hvar in the Modern Age: Identity and Change in Southeast Europe

In this open-access book, Florian Bieber traces the history of the Adriatic island of Hvar over half a millennium, from the advent of Venetian rule in the 15th century to the end of Yugoslavia in the late 20th century. The history of Hvar tells a larger story about modernity, the changing states and identity, tourism and the transnational entanglements of the Adriatic and Southeastern Europe. It shows how ordinary people dealt with the challenges of the rise of nations, transnational connections such as migration and tourism, and the shifting empires and states. Based on a wealth of archival materials from Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, the UK, and the USA, Hvar in the Modern Age also reveals the complexities of the history of the Venetian Republic, the Habsburg Monarchy and Yugoslavia from a bottom-up perspective and the realities and challenges of island life in southeast Europe during the modern period.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

Florian Bieber is Professor of Southeast European History and Politics and Director of the Center for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. He has held the Luigi Einaudi Chair at Cornell University, USA, and was a Visiting Fellow at the Remarque Institute at NYU and London School of Economics, UK. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Nationalities Papers and is Vice President of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN). His teaching and research focuses on nationalism, ethnic conflict, inter-ethnic relations and peace building. Florian is the author or editor of several books, including Debating Nationalism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) and The Rise of Authoritarianism in the Western Balkans (2019).