engleski

Was Croatia ever part of the Carolingian empire?

Departing from the history of reception of early medieval Croatia in international scholarship (as detected in a series of recent studies and monographs) I propose to analyze the destiny of the Croatian project “The Croats and the Carolingians”. The highpoint of the project was the exhibition which took place in Split (20 December 2000 – 31 July 2001) and Brescia (9 September 2001 – January 6 2002) as a part of the international project Charlemagne – The Creation of Europe. Participation of a large number of Croatian scholars who contributed to a series of publications connected to the exhibition lead to organizers' expectations that the project will make visible impact on international academic community. However, although it has been praised as “bringing new historiographic perspective” promising to change the historiography of Eastern Adriatic in the early middle ages (G.P.Brogiolo), this re-discovery or “invention” of rich Carolingian heritage does not seem to have had affect on international scholarship. The failure of particular agendas connected to the project opens a series of questions about the problems in communication between the local/regional/national scholarly communities and the international scholarly audiences. Part of the problems that have plagued relations between European East and West for decades seems to have been replaced by a series of new issues connected to political and social changes in the 1990s. While previous period saw sometimes radical estrangement of the two „blocs“, the new possibilities – all positive developments notwithstanding – seem not to have always lead to expected successful interactions between the two scholarly camps. In an attempt to detect particular problems underlining these issues, I propose to examine both the problems connected to local scholarly communities, but also particular elements of what I would dare to term “subtle academic colonialism”. The presentation will, therefore, examine the relations between national scholarly community often identifying itself as „custodians of the local knowledge“ and representatives of the international scholarly community who often see themselves as correctors called to „shape the proper discourses“ on the particular regional histories.

Early Middle Ages; Croatian Principality; Carolingian Empire; ideology; identity politics; local knowledge

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