Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.17234/RadoviZHP.57.06
Peripheral, Connected, Networked? Southeast Europe in the Global Middle Ages (Summary)
Nada Zečević
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu Odsjek za povijest
Abstract
This article surveys medieval Southeastern Europe through the lens of global medieval studies, challenging its persistent portrayal as a marginal, transitional, or merely reactive region. Instead of viewing the area as a passive periphery or a simple crossroads of empires, the paper explores interpretations of Southeastern Europe as a historically dynamic, internally structured, and relational space embedded in long-term transregional and global processes. Drawing on recent historiographical debates about global connectivity, entangled histories, comparative approaches, and advanced methodologies, the study reassesses key analytical categories such as “periphery,” and “borderlands,” emphasising the need to move beyond traditional frameworks that favour Eurocentric views of the region and its representations as conflict-driven and unstable.
In doing so, the article deals with the region’s medieval connectivity, as it is currently being assessed in scholarly debates. The core aspects of this connectivity include political interaction among empires and local power structures, lasting population mobility and migration, religious pluralism and multireligious coexistence, multiglossia, and the circulation of knowledge, people of various statuses, and their material culture across the region as part of a connected space that spanned the Mediterranean, Central Europe, the Black Sea, and Eurasia. In this circulation, special attention is given to the role of infrastructure, geography, and networks in shaping long-term patterns of interaction rather than occasional episodic contacts. By examining the points at which Southeastern Europe can be situated within broader global medieval systems, the paper sets out expectation for future research that would present the region as an active participant in transregional and global exchange, thus challenging prevalent traditional views of it as historically backward or marginal.
Ultimately, the article argues that integrating Southeastern Europe more fully into global medieval scholarship will not only revise regional historiography, but also contribute to the wider refinement of conceptual tools used in global medieval studies.
Keywords
global medieval studies; Southeastern Europe; historiographical debates; contemporary historiography; methodological approaches; conceptual tools
Hrčak ID:
352367
URI
Publication date:
21.12.2025.
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