Summary
Vlajko Begović: From the history of medieval Bosnia
The book "From the history of medieval Bosnia" by Vlajko Begović (1905-1989) was published in the edition of the Official Gazette from Belgrade. As we learn from the foreword signed by one of the reviewers, Dr. Sima Avramović, a professor at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, the manuscript of the book was completed back in 1975 and submitted for publication to the publishing house Svjetlost from Sarajevo. Because he refused to follow the instructions of the reviewer at the time, the author withdrew the manuscript from print and did not offer it to any other publisher. Almost 21 years after the author's death, the manuscript was found by his son and prepared for publication. Vlajko Begović was born in 1905 in the village of Fakovići near Srebrenica and was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a participant in the French resistance movement during World War II, and a high-ranking communist official and active socio-political worker in SFR Yugoslavia. For a time, he held the position of director of the newspaper Borba and published a large number of works on economic and political issues. In the preface to this rather small booklet (114 pages), the author points out that he is not a historian and that he wrote the work based on the results of Yugoslav historiography at the time. His intention was to bring the subject closer to as many readers as possible in one place, using simple language and journalistic style, and thus to make them interested in the recent works of historians who have already done a lot in the study of Bosnian medieval past. The chapters in the book are arranged chronologically and thematically, and the author focuses in particular on the origin and development of the medieval Bosnian state, its economic development, relations with Dubrovnik, social structure and relations, state governance and the division of power, the Church of Bosnia, the collapse of the Bosnian kingdom and culture. The two last chapters are particularly interesting, in which the author compares medieval Bosnia with the Serbian and Croatian medieval states, and in which he presents his opinions on the historical fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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