Team: Konrad Petrovszky (PI), Ovidiu Olar, “N. Iorga” Institute of History of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest

Website: www.oeaw.ac.at/en/ihb/research-units/balkan-studies/research/forms-of-knowledge/historiographies/

Overview

Hosted since 2019 by the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and financed by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Vienna-based HEMSEE intends to produce a source-based handbook showing the challenges and opportunities of working with the historiographic texts of Early Modern Southeast Europe. Operating with thematic clusters, leading scholars in the field explore both familiar and uncharted territories and thereby analyze excerpts from both mainstream and “minor” sources.

27 themes are grouped into three major categories – subject, method, and narration – each being illustrated by fragments in original language and script and in English translation. For example, the cluster “Annotating,” which belongs to the subchapter “Narrating and Enumerating” of the second category, “Ways of Making Sense,” contains the annotated edition and translation of a chapter from the History of the growth and decay of the Othman or Aliothman Court of the Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir (r. 1693, 1710–11; †1723).

Designed for a broader audience, HEMSEE tries to render justice to the fascinating (in terms of linguistic diversity and cultural complexity) historiographic traditions of Early Modern Southeast Europe. It also intends to lay the foundation for a forum on the topic.

Further Reading

Petrovszky, Konrad. Geschichte schreiben im osmanischen Südosteuropa. Eine Kulturgeschichte orthodoxer Historiographie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014.