Dubrovnik: A Mediterranean Urban Society, 1300-1600.

Barisa Krekic, Dubrovnik: A Mediterranean Urban Society, 1300-1600 (Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS581.) Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1997. viii + 260 pp. $98.95. ISBN: 0-86078-631-5.

Since his native Dubrovnik/Ragusa has always been in the focus of Barisa Krekic's long and distinguished career, it should be stated at the outset that what Professor Krekic does not know about that pearl of the Dalmation coast is not worth knowing.

Indeed, if by some horrible misfortune the invaluable archives of the City Republic would perish, one could always rely on Krekic's oeuvre and his memory to reconstruct them. He must have inherited the task to record, review, and reinterpret all material that has to do with Dubrovnik from his teacher, Jorjo Tadic, the father of that genre, which Krekic then perfected in his many monographs and essays on the subject. The collection of articles under review testifies to Krekic's faithful love and penetrating knowledge of the region.

Ten of the essays are devoted to the development of Dubrovnik as a political unit and economic entity from the early Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century. These pieces address issues such as urban life which, based on the archival material, are investigated practically on a daily basis, but they also include a long-term analysis of the emergence, activities, and decline of some ruling patriarchal families. Urban slavery, the admitting and settling of Jewish traders, prostitution, homosexuality, but also famine, fire, natural disasters, and crime are brought into life from the pages of the conscientiously kept records.

In another group of essays the author investigates Dubrovnik's relations with the Mediterranean world. In these essays, Ragusa's central interests -- her commercial and political contacts, use of ports and rights of navigation vis-a-vis Venice -- are broached, but there is also discussion of the Balkan hinterland, and of the Ottoman world. Here too, the material emerges from the treasure trove of the archives of Dubrovnik, and Venice, the latter being another favorite hunting ground of Professor Krekic.

Last but not least, Krekic reports on that remarkable Latino-Slavic symbiosis, so characteristic of life in Dubrovnik and the Dalmation coast, especially during the late medieval period and the Renaissance. With all his expertise regarding the Balkan Peninsula -- the author is a trained and published Byzantinist, a student of G. Ostrogorsky -- Professor Krekic, whose forte is economic history; never claimed to be a literary scholar. Therefore, the only thread missing from this otherwise rich tapestry of Dalmatian life, is the discussion of its great vernacular literature, boasting such giants as Sisko Mencetic, Mann Drzic, or Marko Marulic, to whom merely a few lines are devoted in his closing essay.

Variorum publications feature works which have appeared before. These are usually not updated, and often the volume lacks a continuous pagination. However, in this case, the index includes useful directions to facilitate the finding of people, places, and events. By gathering those related articles into a single volume, Krekic achieved his goal: he has provided his appreciative readers with a unified picture of a great civilization on the Adriatic coast.