the last century is not taught at all. On the other hand, in French schools, according to the programme of July 28, 1905, contemporary history is the subject specially prescribed for the highest classes; and it means the study of European and French history from 1815 to the beginning of the present century. The text books used are excellent;* they show that it is possible to combine the teaching of national history and general history in schools, and so to prepare the schoolboy to form an intelligent opinion on the international questions which the citizen will be required to decide.

Unhappily our universities have for a long time neglected to encourage the study of recent European history. In an address delivered by Dr Prothero, as President of the Royal Historical Society, in February 1904,† he dwelt on the neglect with which the history of the 19th century is treated in this country,' and the lack of good English books both on the period in general and on separate countries.

'This,' he said, 'is a reproach to British scholarship and gives food for some disagreeable reflections as to the commonsense and political wisdom of a people which, having probably more points of contact with other Powers than any nation in the world, yet neglects to acquaint itself with the events and conditions that have made its neighbours what they are.'

He then proceeded to show that Oxford and Cambridge were largely responsible for this neglect, owing to their failure to provide teaching in the subject or to the restrictions of their historical examinations.

Since 1904 there has been some improvement in this respect at both universities. At Oxford the regulations of the School of Modern History have been altered; and the history of Europe can now be studied down to 1878 instead of only as far as 1815. At Cambridge it is clear from the writings of the younger historians that the 19th century is no longer left unstudied. We have also to thank the Press of that university not only for the three volumes devoted to the period since 1815 in the

* E.g., E. Driault and G. Monod, 'Histoire Contemporaine' (1815-1908); or A. Malet, 'L'Époque Contemporaine.'

tTransactions,' New Series, vol. xviii, pp. 12-31.

* 6

Cambridge Modern History, but also for a special series of books on various European states intended for the use of all persons anxious to understand the nature of existing political conditions.' Unhappily this valuable series of text books is incomplete-the volumes on Modern Germany, Modern France and Modern Austria, have not yet appeared, and those dealing with Italy and Spain need chapters to bring them up to date.

There is yet another requisite for the political education of the British peoples-a series of books setting forth the history of the relations (not confined to diplomacy and war) between this country and particular foreign states. Professor W. A. Dunning's book on the British Empire and the United States is an example of the kind of work required; its fairness, its breadth of view, and its learning make it a model which should be followed. It is not an apology for either country, but an explanation of the causes which brought them from time to time into conflict and the means by which agreement on the points at issue was finally effected. Lastly, there is one more desideratum, and that is a history of the growth of British policy, to complete the story which Seeley left half-told, for it is now more than ever necessary to make plain to our people the responsibilities they have inherited and the principles their forefathers followed.

C. H. FIRTH.

* The Cambridge Historical Series,' edited by Dr Prothero, which now numbers 23 volumes. A volume on Germany (1815-'52), by Sir A. W. Ward, has appeared since this address was delivered; a volume on the period 1852-'71, by the same author, together with two volumes on the history of France, 1815-1914, by M. Emile Bourgeois, is in the press; and a volume on Austria-Hungary is in preparation.

Art. 10. THE MEDIEVAL SERBIAN EMPIRE.

1. Geschichte der Serben. Von Constantin Jireček. Erster Band (bis 1371). Gotha: Perthes, 1911.

2. Serbes, Croates et Bulgares. Par Louis Leger. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1913.

3. Les problèmes serbes. Par Stojan Novaković. In Archiv für Slavische Philologie, Bände xxxiii-iv. Berlin: Weidmann, 1912.

4. Listine.

By S. Ljubić. In Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum meridionalium. Eleven vols. Agram, 1868–93.

5. Acta et Diplomata res Albaniæ mediæ ætatis illustrantia. Ed. L. de Thallóczy, C. Jireček, E. de Sufflay. Vol. 1 (344–1343). Vindobonæ, 1913.

THE late Professor Freeman once remarked during a great crisis in the Balkans, that it was the business of a Minister of Foreign Affairs 'to know something of the history of foreign countries.' The demand, however unreasonable it may seem, derives special importance from the fact that recent events have signally justified the forecasts of the eminent historian and signally falsified those of the Minister whom he was criticising. For in the Balkans, and especially in Greece and Serbia, history is not, as it is apt to be in some Western countries, primarily a subject for examinations, but is, thanks to the popular ballads, an integral part of the national life and a powerful factor in contemporary politics. The glories of the Byzantine Empire exercise a continual fascination upon the Greeks; the conquests of the Tsar Stephen Dushan in Macedonia have been invoked as one of the Serbian claims to that disputed land; whereas no Englishman of to-day has been known to demand a large part of France on the ground that it belonged to the English Crown in the reign of Dushan's contemporary, Edward III.

But there is a further reason for the study of Balkan history by practical men. Our judgments of the Balkan peoples are often harsh and unjust, because we do not realise the historic fact that they stepped straight out of the 15th century into the 19th (and in some cases into the 20th), like Plato's cave-dwellers who emerged suddenly

For the centuries case of Northern

from darkness into the full light of day. of Turkish rule, interrupted in the Serbia by the twenty-one years of Austrian rule between the treaties of Passarovitz and Belgrade in the 18th century, left them much as it found them-with their material resources undeveloped, their roads reduced to mule-tracks, their harbours undredged, their education neglected. Consequently, it was manifestly unfair to expect those who were practically contemporaries of our Wars of the Roses to enter the 19th century with the same ideas and the same culture as the gradually evolved states of Western Europe. The wonder rather is that so much progress has been accomplished in so short a time, especially when we remember that the eminent personages who direct the affairs of this world are apt to regard the Balkan peoples, with their deeply-rooted historical traditions and aspirations, and their extraordinarily keen sense of nationality, immensely stimulated by the victories of 1912-13, as pawns in a game, to be moved about the board as its exigencies demand. Let us Western Europeans, then, who have had no personal experience of Turkish rule, be less censorious of those who have lived under it for nearly four centuries at Semendria and for five at Skopje.

In the following pages I propose to give a general sketch of medieval Serbian history, emphasising those points which may help us to understand the events of the last four years, and referring those who desire further details to the great (if as yet unfinished) work of Constantin Jireček, who for the first time has placed the history of the Serbs in the Middle Ages upon the impregnable rock of contemporary documentary evidence.

The Serbs, like the Bulgars, are not original inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula, where, at the dawn of history, we find three principal races-the Greeks, the Illyrians (who are perhaps the ancestors of the Albanians), and the Thracians. But a continuous residence of thirteen centuries qualifies the Serbs to be considered a Balkan people. The usually received account of their entry into the peninsula is that given by the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Porphyrogénnetos, in his treatise 'De Administrando Imperio,' written some three centuries

later. He tells us that the Emperor Herakleios (610-'41) gave them the territory which was later called 'Serblia' a country bounded in the time of Porphyrogénnetos by Croatia on the north, Bulgaria on the south, the river Rashka near Novibazar on the east, and the present Herzegovina on the west. But a chain of historical facts proves that Herákleios merely gave to the Serbs what they had already taken. About a century before his time the Slavs, whose oldest home was in Poland, had begun to cross the Danube, and about 578 had actually appeared before Salonika. Herakleios, occupied with the war against the Persians in the East, could not defend the Western Balkans. So he made a virtue of necessity, just as, in our own day, Governments have granted autonomy to lost provinces which they could no longer protect. The Danubian principalities, Bulgaria, Eastern Roumelia, Crete, and the Lebanon are examples.

This arrangement suited both parties. The Byzantine Court could keep up a formal suzerainty, and Constantine Porphyrogénnetos could point in proof of it to the quite unscientific etymology of the word 'Serboi' from the Latin servi, because they had become the 'slaves' of the Byzantine Emperor. This national name, which first occurs in the ninth century, when we find Eginhard, the biographer of Charlemagne, describing in 822 the 'Sorabi' as 'said to occupy a large part of Dalmatia,' is still applied not only to the Balkan Serbs but to those of Saxony, whose language, however, is so different that a Serb of Bautzen cannot understand a Serb of Belgrade. The later Byzantine historians, full of classical lore, sometimes call the Serbs Toiẞalloí after the Thracian tribe, which occupied in antiquity part of modern Serbia, and the King of which is brought on the stage and made to talk broken Greek in the 'Birds' of Aristophanes. Yet, despite this false etymology of their name, Constantine Porphyrogénnetos himself admits, what was doubtless the fact, that the Croats and Serbs were 'subject to none.' Thus, in the words of Finlay (i, 333), 'the modern history of the eastern shores of the Adriatic commences with the establishment of the Sclavonian colonies in Dalmatia.' Of the two pre-existing elements in the population, the Romans, as Constantine Porphyrogénnetos says, retired into the coast-towns, while the Illyrian aborigines were