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Historical
Institute of the Serbian Academy of
Sciences and Art
Belgrade, 2000
Response
to the Book of Noel Malcolm
Kosovo - A Short History
Prof. Slavenko Terzic, Ph.D
Institute of History of
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Old
Serbia In the Eyes of the "Merciful Angel": The Phenomenon
of Historian as a Destructionist*
Our main attention
in this text will be focused on the views presented in Noel Malcolm's
"Introduction" to his book, and also on those contained in
the section of his book dealing with the period 1817-1918, and, quite
summarily, on some of his concluding remarks towards the end of the
book. Noel Malcolm has written this book for political ends, or as he
says at one point, to cater "to the practical needs of English
readers".1 The history of the Serb province is presented as the
history of the Albanian national minority in Serbia. The aim of Malcolm's
book is to demonstrate that Kosovo and Metohija are "the Albanian
land", and that they should stay that way. The design of everything
in the book serves to satisfy the needs of the day, and that spirit
permeates even the sections of the book dealing with the early Middle
Ages or the Ottoman period. Malcolm's methodology, his general propositions,
his usage of place or historical names or concepts, his usage of sources
and, finally, his interpretations are there only in order to prove a
preset thesis.
Noel Malcolm is not a naive forger. To the public at large, not to a
more limited cricle of experts in the field, the book does meet a set
of formal criteria of alleged thoroughness and scholarship. His notes
are extensive, taking up 70 pages of his book. According to the listing
appended to the text of the book, he has consulted manuscript materials
contained in some fifteen archives and research centres, including the
Archives du Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres in Paris, the Archivio
della Sacra Congregazi-one della Propaganda Fide in Rome, the Archivio
Segreto Vaticano in Vatican City, the Haus-, Hof and Staatsarchiv in
Vienna, the Kriegsarchive in Vienna, the National Archives in Washington,
the archives in London (Public Record Office) as well as manuscript
holdings in the libraries of Paris, Venice, Oxford, Bologna, the Vatican,
including even the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
His Bibliography contains over 870 entries - in English, German, French,
Italian, Turkish, Serb, Albanian, Macedonian, Russian, Bulgarian and
Rumanian. The bibliographical entries in Serb and Albanian are substantial
in number. The entire conception of the book is illustrated with historical
maps, which also serve the general idea of the author.
For a scholar who is neither versed in Slav studies nor a balcanologist,
and who, judging by his scholarly credentials, until 4-5 years ago never
had anything whatsoever to do with the history of the Balkans, it strikes
one as unconvincing, even in sheer physical terms, that he could have
managed to digest and synthesize, within 2-3 years, such a huge quantity
of archives and archival holdings in so many languages, consulted such
a massive literature in eleven European languages - a quite heterogeneous
literature at that. But, even if he has managed to do so, even to superficial
students of South-East European history it is obvious that scientifically
dependable references to those allegedly massive materials are absent
from his book! Even where a quotation is given, it is evident that it
is there rather to prove the author's preset political thesis, and not
to illustrate a complex picture of the past of this part of Europe.
It is stunning that Malcolm, in spite of his alleged insight into such
extensive archival materials and literature, has not advanced a step
further than the many times repeated great-Albanian theses launched
by national ideologists from Tirana and Pristina. All Malcolm's key
theses are found in the 1995 Memorandum of the Forum of Albanian Intellectuals,
signed by Rexhep Qosja.2 The only difference is that Malcolm's book
appeared in English, in London.
The essential, methodological and professional failure of this book,
however, is in its usage of sources and its interpretation of events.
To be precise, the author selects from historical evidence only what
corroborates his thesis. For instance, he refers to almost all works
by Mary Edith Durham, but he ignores her first serious work, Through
the Lands of the Serb, in which she touches on Metohija.3 Everything
leads to the conclusion that by referring to such a mass of sources
and literature in general, Noel Malcolm in fact wanted to conceal his
real motifs while doing his best to conceal his mission as an advocate
of the separatist movement of the Albanian minority in Serbia by an
aura of alleged scholarship and thoroughness.
There are few instances of violation of historical facts and historical
truth comparable to that committed by Noel Malcolm against the history
of the Serbs and the entire area of Old Serbia, currently the southern
province of the Republic of Serbia. Malcolm does not discuss Kosovo
and Metohija within the history of the Serbs, or the history of Serbia,
but within the history of the "Albanian lands". Throughout
the book Kosovo. A Short History, he applies the term "Kosovo"
as the only name for the area of Kosovo and Metohija, picturing it as
a separate historical, political, cultural an even geographical entity
from times immemorial, always in isolation from Serbia and the history
of the Serbs. And, practically from the beginning to the
end, Malcolm challenges the theses of "Serb nationalists"
and "Serb myths", as a rule trying to picture this area as
a tragic prey of "the Serb conquerors".
In the very "Introduction" to his book, Malcolm rejects what
he calls the "confused usage of the term Kosovo and Metohija".
Parallel to already common terms such as the "Croatian Serbs",
the "Bosnian Serbs", Malcolm is often happy to use the term
the "Kosovo Serbs". The Albanians are for him the "Kosovars",
and a part of a homogenous whole of the Albanian people, whereas the
"Kosovo Serbs" are defined only by that regional attribute
(Kosovo) and as isolated from Serbia.
The introductory section of Malcolm's book reveals, on one hand, his
undeniably partial and undoubtedly clear political stance, and on the
other hand his complete unawareness of the history of the Balkans, as
well as his dilettante simplification of its subtle historical processes
and problems. Malcolm says that there had never been ethnic wars in
the history of this region, that Kosovo and Metohija are "the area
with the worst human rights abuses in the whole of Europe", and
that in fact primarily political leaders are to blame for the events
taking place there.4 The aforementioned Mary Durham wrote down in 1903,
during her trip through Metohija: "The story of Old Servia is one
of uninterrupted misery. The suffering of the Christian peoples in the
Balkans is no new thing. It began with the advent of the Turk, and will
continue while he remains. As long ago as 1690 the intolerable lot of
the Serbs of Old Servia induced no less than 37,000 stem families (zadruge)
to emigrate to Hungary. The Albanians then spread over the vacated lands,
which they have been permitted to harry with impunity ever since."5
In contrast to many well known historians stressing the important role
of the religious factor in history, Malcolm is of the opinion that religion
had no role among the Albanians, but that it does play an important
role in the formation of Serb attitudes. Religion, he says, "has
played almost no role at all" in the political mobilization of
the Albanians, adding that "there is no Islamic political movement
among the Albanians". However, the well-known British historian
Harold W. V. Temperley has perceptively observed that "the Islamicized
Serbs known as Arnauts are the bitterest foes of the Serb".6 Temperley
was professor at Harvard and Cambridge and in 1921 he a represented
Britain in the Commission for the Albanian borders. The unabashed intolerance
of the Arbanasi (Arbanenses) in relation to the Serbs and Slavs and
the gradual expulsion of the latter from the area settled by the Arbanasi
are also convincingly described by H. N. Brailsford in his book Macedonia,
published in 1905. Brailsford emphasizes that the Albanians "manifest
a semifeudal terrorism" in relation to the Slav people.7
Even if we ignore the views of reputable Europeans, it takes no more
than a superficial knowledge of the provisions of the 1878 Prizren League
Statute or of later links of the Muslim Albanians with radical Muslim
political movements to our day, including the former's training in well
known religious centres of the kind, to conclude that Malcolm is either
an ignoramus, or, simply, that he intentionally ignores the facts. The
Croatian historian Bernard Stuli underlines precisely the pan-Islamic
character of the League: in all sixteen articles of its Statute the
political subjects of the League are simply Muslims. They refer to the
"sublime religious law" Seriat), advocating alliance with
"believers of the same religious affiliation in the Balkans",
whereas desertion of the alliance is qualified, by Article 16, as disloyalty
to Islam.8 That we are dealing with unprecedented partiality blind to
the facts is shown by Malcolm's claim that the Orthodox Serbs, the "Orthodox
side", in contrast to the Albanians, "constantly employs religious
rhetoric to justify the defense of 'sacred' Serb interests", this
being, in his opinion, "a classic example of religion being mobilized
and manipulated for ideological purposes".9 According to Malcolm,
the Albanians are not only tolerant -they are also guardians of Orthodox
religious sites. What that tolerance looked like in the past is best
shown today by some eighty Orthodox churches and monasteries, most of
them medieval, torn down in Kosovo and Metohija since June 1999, in
the presence and under the auspices of NATO forces at that!
That Noel Malcolm is not really a researcher by any truly scientific
standards and that his interpretation is firmly rooted in political
prejudices is demonstrated by his total acceptance of a set of recognizable
stereotypes. Resembling, on one hand, the Marxist theses assuming that
the harmony among peoples as a whole is disturbed only by their social
elites or leaderships, and, on the other, hand the "Golden Age"
of the English struggle, waged throughout the nineteenth century, against
anything Slav, and particularlythat which is Orthodox Slav and capable
of establishing links with Russia. At times he uses the language of
the nineteenth century, and the reader might rather picture him lounging
in a Bosphorus palace at the time of the preparations for the Berlin
Congress (1878) than as a calm scholar doing his best to understand
and explain the history of a part of Europe. But even so, he is imbued
with more onesidedness and partiality than any English consul in the
nineteenth century Balkans. Instead of elucidating, he obscures things
and causes confusion.
Malcolm intentionally discusses the relations between the Serbs and
the Albanians within the framework of "Kosovo", trying through
his regionalist prism to cut off all ties between the Serbs of this
area and other Serbs. These acrobatics of his serve to promote the Albanian
national minority in a part of Serbia into the rank of the pivotal and
state-oriented factor, whereas the Serb people in that part of their
own country is allotted, by Malcolm and some other current interpretations,
the "status" of a national minority. The reader can only imagine
what the history of Spain or France or Germany or any other country
would look like if the history of their respective regions inhabited
by national minorities were interpreted in relation to Spaniards, Frenchmen,
Germans or any other majority people of any country. In order to minimize
the importance of the historical evidence pertaining to the relations
between the Serbs and the Albanians, that is to the processes brought
about by the beginning of an increasingly massive migration of the Arbanasi
into Old Serbia since the late 17th century (the relics of the celebration
of a family's patron saint day - the slava of the Serbs - among the
Arbanasi, as well as of cutting a special Yule-log at Christmas - the
badnjak of the Serbs), Malcolm gives very general sociological definitions
of the problem through phrases such as "ethnic-linguistic assimilation
in both directions", and "folk-religious syncretism"
in the Balkans. "The slava", he writes, "which has pre-Christian
origins, was popular among Catholics and Muslims in northern Albania
as well as Catholics in Dalmatia, Bosnia and Slavonia…"10
Of course, Malcolm does not happen to conclude that the Arbanasi could
be the Serbs converted to Islam or Catholicism. One should consult the
ethnographical map of Serbia published in 1909 in London by Alfred Stead
showing that the numbers of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija
were very small in size and that they were mostly "Albanized Serbs".11
In order to deepen the regionalist dimension of the Serb presence in
Old Serbia and minimize the proportions of Islamization and the turning
the Serbs into Arnauts, Malcolm even claims that in Kosovo and Metohija
"over many centuries" there was no clearcut ethnic division
between Serbs and Albanians. The Serbian colonists in the 1920s, he
says, felt the "local Serbs" as foreign as "the alien
Albanians".12
Malcolm interprets the life of the Serbs in Old Serbia, that is in Kosovo
and Metohija, as the centre of their political, spiritual and cultural
life, by concealing decades- -long ethnic cleansing of the Serbs with
phrases about the harmonious and almost idyllic life before 1912. The
Serbs and the Albanians fought, says he, "as allies" at the
Battle of Kosovo in 1389, and they ("including even Muslim ones
[Albanians]") rose up towards the end of the seven-teenth century
"to throw off Ottoman rule".13 All this has been repeated
many times by Albanian historians without a single shred of evidence
to support the claim. Typical of Malcolm's "history of Kosovo"
is that he interprets the past of this area in isolation not only from
the history of Serbia and the Serbs, as we have already said, but also
from the general currents of European history. By his magic wand, Malcolm
has placed the history of this area under a bell jar, probably intending
to make such pseudo-scientific interpretations as his "history"
of Bosnia and now of Kosovo and Metohija serve as models for the writing
of a presumably radically new history of Europe.
For one thing, it is widely known that from the late seventeenth century
down to 1912 a bitter struggle was fought between Christian Europe and
the Ottoman Empire as the champion of the spirit of Islam in Europe,
the spirit of the militant Islam at that embodied by the advancing Ottomans.
Beginning with the siege of Vienna in 1683 and all the way to 1912,
that struggle was both longlasting and bloody, and its main victims
were particularly the Christian peoples of the Balkans - notably the
Serbs, Greeks and Bulgarians. Nowhere were those bitter conflicts of
the European Christian world on one hand, and the Ottoman-Islamic world
on the other hand being so intensely refracted as then in Old Serbia
and in Kosovo and Metohija in particular. Among a host of authors writing
to that effect one can point to the former State Secretary of the USA
Henry Kissinger, who has in recent years repeatedly stated that this
conflict of two civilizations and social models was most intense precisely
in this relatively small area. Malcolm confidently concludes relying
on no serious analysis of the events and processes in question: "What
really turned the division between Orthodox Serb and Muslim Albanians
into a more general and systematic conflict was the politicization of
the issue in the nineteenth century, which arose during the growth and
expansion of the Slav Christian states in the Balkans." In reality,
from the first moment of the "conquest" - as Malcolm calls
it -of Kosovo and Metohija by Serbia and Montenegro in 1912 hostility
and hatred was created "on a scale that the region had never seen
before.14 Thus we come to the key claim revealing the essence of Noel
Malcolm's approach - the idea that all problems in Kosovo and Metohija
started with the liberation of these areas from Turkish rule in 1912.
On the contrary, the truth is that their liberation, as well as the
liberation of other areas that had been under Turkish rule was a prerequisite
for their social and cultural modernization and reintegration into the
European Christian civilization.
Malcom announces the format of his book at its very beginning, by his
challening the claims presented in the memorandum of the Serbian government
early in 1913. In his attempt to invalidate the civilizational, historical
and ethnic evidence, he, in addition to his lame interpretation, makes
a series of factual errors. The latter range from his claim that the
Serbian Patriarchate as an institution has had no continuous history,
to the claim borrowed from Albanian historiography that the Great Migration
(Velika Seoba) of the Serbs from Kosovo is largely "mythology",
that it is "invented", and to crown it all, to the claim that
Kosovo was not a part of Serbia for several hundred years prior to 1912
"because there was no Serbia of which it could be a part".
Had he looked at any 17th or 18th century map of Europe, for instance
the map of the humanist and cartographer Giacomo Cantelli da Vignola
published in 1689 in Rome under the title Il Regno della Serbia detta
altrimenti Rascia he would have learnt that Kosovo and Metohija represented
the centre of Serbia and that the southern borders of Serbia ran along
the river Drin in what is today northern Albania."15 In the reports
of the 17th century missionaries from Rome Prizren was described as
"the principal town of Serbia" and "the most beautiful
place in Serbia". In his report of 1633, Petar Masarek even points
out that many Serbs live in Albania - in the bishoprics of Skadar, Ljes
and Zadrimje.16
In his book Kosovo. A Short History Noel Malcom displays a very unusual,
one can say even anti-European approach, presumably following in the
footsteps of old Turkophile politics of nineteenth century British cabinets.
In essence, he sharply criticizes the European Christian liberation
movement of the last few centuries. But when discussing expulsions of
Muslims, he does not as much as mention Austria, or Hungary, or Croatia,
or Polish troops, but sees only the Serbian army and its crimes. It
is known that in the early decades and the mid-nineteenth century Turkey,
under the pressure of the great powers, resorted to internal reforms
meant to alleviate the position of its Christian subjects. The toughest
opponents to those reforms were Bosnian and Albanian beys, whose resistance
Malcolm sees as an expression of nationally conscious liberation and
state-oriented aspirations. When Muslims, for instance, flee Bosnia
and Hercegovina after the Austro-Hungarian occupation, then it is not
an act of expulsion of muhaxhirs, but "because they did not want
to live under 'infidel' administration"; yet when they flee from
the territory liberated by Serbia in 1878, then it is solely on account
of "ethnic cleansing", which was a means of "Serbian
state policy to create an ethnically 'clean' territory".17
On the other hand, the expulsion of the Serbs into Central Serbia and
ethnic cleansing of Old Serbia is explained by Malcolm from quite a
different standpoint. Then it is a consequence of "local hostilities",
"the general stagnation" and "poor administration of
the vilayet", as well as the "attractions of life in Serbia
(a fully independent country from 1878)". When the fate of the
Serbs is at stake, Malcolm speaks of "migration". When the
fate of the Albanians is at stake, he speaks of "uprooting".
Here is an example of his interpretation of the ethnic cleansing of
Old Serbia: "There was no Ottoman state policy of expelling Serbs,
and therefore no symmetry in principle between these migrations of Serbs
and the uprooting of the Albanians in Serbia."18 Niko Zupanic's
claim that some 150,000 Serbs left Kosovo between 1876 and 1912 is,
in Malcolm's opinion, an exaggeration, yet he ignores the identical
claim voiced by the well-known historian Konstantin Jirecek at the University
of Vienna in 1913.19 Though his list of sources includes many quite
marginal entries, Malcolm, in accordance with his determination to ignore
any evidence not fitting his thesis, does not as much as mention the
book The Lament of Old Serbia (Plac Stare Srbije) published in Zemun
in 1864 and dedicated to an English defender of Christians - William
Denton. As a matter of course, Malcolm does not as much as mention the
diplomatic documents describing the crimes of the Arbanasi in Old Serbia
in the period 1898-1899 published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the Kingdom of Serbia.20 One is even more amazed by the fact that
he does not mention English diplomatic papers, for instance those published
in London in 1904. A few pieces of evidence from those papers follow.
Sir George Bonham writes to the Marquess of Lansdowne on 7 May 1901
that forty Serb families were compelled to escape to the Kingdom of
Serbia owing to Albanian terror.21 Another English diplomat, Mr. Young,
also writes to The Marquess of Lansdowne on 9 September 1901 as follows:
"Old Serbia is still an area of disturbance owing to the lawlessness,
vendettas and racial jealousies of the Albanians."22 In the same
report, Young goes on to say that oppression of the Serb population
continues and that 600 Albanians, helped by 50 Turkish soldiers, "quartered
on a village of sixty households, reducing it to destitution".23
Young's report of December 1901 testifies that between the spring and
December of that year 250 families were driven by Albanian terror into
the Kingdom of Serbia.24 These are only some obvious instances of Malcolm's
ignoring of the historical facts which do not support his thesis.
Malcolm's picture of the ethnic and religious structure of Kosovo and
Metohija is even more drastic. At one point, Malcolm claims that in
the 1830s in the area of "West Kosovo" - which is in fact
Metohija - the proportion between the Muslims and the Christians was
circa 58% : 42%. When he finds it fitting, Malcolm sticks to general
evidence, evading exact data offered by historical sources. The ethnic,
political and religious circumstances in the 19th century are reflected
in numerous documents by foreign authors, such as Ami Bue, Joseph Muller,
Johan Georg
von Hahn, Ivan Stepanovich Yastrebov, Alexander Gillferding, Victor
Berard, Gaston Gravier and others. In 1838 Joseph Muller published the
data about the population of the Pec, Dakovica and Prizren districts
in Metohija. He states that in the towns of Pec, Dakovica and Prizren
there lived 31,650 Orthodox and Muslim Serbs, as compared to 23,650
Muslim and Catholic Arbanasi.25
An even more telling instance is Malcolm's handling of the sources contained
in the book A Detailed Description of the Plevlje Sancak and the Kosovo
Vilayet published in Vienna in 1899. Quoting from this work, he writes
that, according to Austrian statistics, in the 1890s, the population
of the "regions" of Kosovo (including neighbouring areas such
as Ljuma), consisted of 72% Muslims and 28% non-Muslims. "We can
assume", he says, "that most of the non-Muslims were Serbs."26
If we look up the pages 80-81 of this book, we will see what Malcolm
failed to note. First of all, the Austro-Hungarian statistical reports
have precise headings: "Serbs - Orthodox, Catholic, Muslims",
and "Albanians - Catholics - Muslims". Secondly, if we want
to see the structure of the population of Kosovo and Metohija, we need
not add to it the statistics relating to the neighbouring towns of Gostivar,
Tetovo, Ljuma, Rozaje and Berane. When speaking only of the area of
Kosovo and Metohija, that is of the towns of Mitrovica, Vucitrn, Pristina,
Gnjilane, Presevo, Pec, Dakovica and Prizren sandzak including the nahiye
of Rahovce, the statistics read as follows: Serbs - Orthodox, Muslam
and Catholics - 166,700; Albanians - Muslims and Catholics - 182,650.
In terms of percentage, these numbers amount to 43.70% Serbs, 47.88%
Albanians, whereas the remaining 8.42% cover the population consisting
of Orthodox Tsintsars, Ottoman Turks, Cherkesses, Romanies and a small
number of Jews.27
In short, the book before us is not a history of Kosovo and Metohija.
Noel Malcolm produced an inadmissible forgery and discredited himself
as a serious scholar and history researcher of any format. From fragments
of the reality of that area he has put together a construction that
has nothing at all to do with the real life of that area. That is the
destructive essence of the "Malcolm" phenomenon. The only
surprising thing is that this unprecedented moral and professional degradation
could befall a historiography rich in great names and traditions such
as the English. So Malcolm's book amounts to a political pamphlet supporting
the Albanian cause, concocted in anticipation of an international conference
designed to pave the way for the "solution" of the so-called
"Albanian issue", in fact for the establishment of Great Albania.
FOOTNOTES:
*
The expression "Merciful Angel" in the title of this paper
is a synonym for violence, since that was the official name of NATO's
punitive expedition against Serbia and FR Yugoslavia. In this case that
stylistic figure, stands for the violation of the past of the Old Serbia,
and in the first place of its central part - Kosovo and Metohija.
1 Noel Malcolm,
Kosovo. A Short History, Macmillan, London 1998, XI.
2 Bujku, 28 October 1995.
3 Mary E. Durham, Through the Lands of the Serb, London 1904, 303-345.
4 Noel Malcolm, Kosovo…, XXVII.
5 Mary E. Durham, Through the Lands of the Serb, 310.
6 Harold W. V. Temperley, History of Serbia, London 1917, p. 309.
7 N. H. Brailsford, Macedonia. Its Races and Their Future, New York
1971, p. 90, 274-277.
8 Bernard Stulli, Albansko pitanje (1875-1878), Rad JAZU, Vol. 318,
Zagreb 1959, 323.
9 Noel Malcolm, Kosovo…, XXVIII.
10 Ibid, p. 198.
11Servia by the Servians, Compiled and Edited by Alfred Stead, With
a Map, London (William Heinemann), 1909. (Etnographical Map of Servia,
Scale 1:2.750.000).
12 Noel Malcolm, Kosovo…, XXIX.
13 Ibid, XXIX.
14 Ibid, XXX.
15IL REGNO DELLA SERVIA detta altrimenti RASCIA descritto da Giacomo
Cantelli da Vignola.- Roma, Gio. Giacomo de Rossi, 1689.
16 Quoted in Zaduzbine Kosova - spomenici i znamenja srpskog naroda,
Prizren - Beograd 1987, 607-609.
17Noel Malcolm, Kosovo…, 229.
18Ibid, 229-230.
19Dr. Konstantin Jirecek, Albanien in der Vergangenheit (in) Illirisch
albanische Forschungen, Zusammengestellt von Dr Ludwig von Thalloczy,
I Band, Munchen und Leipzig 1916, 86-87.
20 Documents diplomatiques, correspondance concernant les actes de violence
et de brigandage des Albanais dans la Vieille Serbie (Vilayet de Kosovo)
1898-1899, Ministere des affaires etrangeres, Belgrade MDCCCXCIX, 1-145.
21Turkey, No. 1 (1903). Correspondence, Respecting the Affairs of South-Eastern
Europe, London 1904, p. 45.
22 Ibid, p. 88.
23 Ibid, p. 89.
24 Ibid, p.102.
25 Dr. Joseph Muller, Albanien, Rumelien und die Osterreichisch-montenegrinische
Grenze, Prague, 1844.
26 Noel Malcolm, Kosovo…, 194.
27Detailbeschreibung des Sandzaks Plevlje und des Vilajets Kosovo (Mit
8 Beilagen und 10 Taffeln), Als Manuskript gedruckt, Vien 1899, 80-81.
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