KINSHIP AND POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE BYZANTINE AND SLAVIC BALKANS (C. 1355 – 1395): SOME INITIAL THOUGHTS
KINSHIP AND POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE BYZANTINE AND SLAVIC BALKANS (C. 1355 – 1395): SOME INITIAL THOUGHTS

Summary/Abstract: The period of Balkan history between the death of Emperor Dusan (1355) and the rise of Ottoman hegemony (c. 1371-1395) is often characterized by modern science as a period of chaos and decline, with large states disintegrating into regional principalities controlled by newer local elites. This is especially true of the region that today comprises the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and much of northern Greece, where the growth of the powerful Mrnjavcevic family is often seen as a paradigmatic example of the chaotic and fragile regionalism that paved the way for the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. Nevertheless, Byzantine scholars, as well as Balkanologists, made little effort to move away from this vague characterization of the Balkans after 1355. to better explain the ways in which power, legitimacy, and group identities functioned during that period. Given such shortcomings, bypassing the historical issues of institutional disintegration, this article seeks to focus on elite kinship in order to clarify the diverse political landscape of the 14th century Balkans. Such an approach reveals that the new local elites, although they seem to have broken the political cohesion in the region, almost all of them, however, were tied together in a close kinship network. Far from being an era of monolithic instability, on the eve of the Ottoman conquest, the Balkans emerged as a highly precise dynastic world, united by common kinship ties and notions of legitimacy. Through these temporary insights, I believe that the notion of a "catastrophic 14th century" in the Balkans has been oversimplified, which in turn is a result of modern tendencies to equate the political order with centralized state institutions. By focusing on kinship as a strategy for structuring the discourse of legitimacy and shaping a common political culture, this article demonstrates the limitations of traditional views of the 14th century and highlights a more inclusive approach to this critical but poorly understood blend of medieval Balkan and Late Byzantine history.

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