Kosovo : A Short History

Rating:
Summary: wrong, preposterous, biased and entirely wothless...
Review: angelical albanians vs serbian monasteries, that would be right relation in the aftermath of Kosovo war...
If I could rank this piece of the albanian
propaganda gibberish with five negative stars I would certainly do...

Rating:
Summary: Like a book on Windows XP written during the alpha testing
Review: Being an Albanian Kosovar my self I would say the book is suprisingly well writtin. Malcolm covers many aspects of Balkan and Albanian history without asuming, and gives relative information according to his statements. I would not say he is leniant to this or that side or he is full of propoganda, I would say this is the best read you will find on a region so unknown to the outside. The truth is a great percent of books on this are completely biased against Albanians in general. I consider this a "middle of the road" perspective and would definately reccomend it to anyone interesting in the region. Its funny I'm not even surprised at some of the reviews it has got and to the reply the stated the Serbian post WW2 census on Albanians in Kosova...sorry to kill your vision but I, and many more Shiqptar's can trace their ancestry down to the 14 century.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: Enjoyed it very much. Malcolms narrative is superb, and his investigations into so-called truths or myths are brilliant.

Definitely a must-read.

Rating:
Summary: A book for anyone truly interested about Kosova
Review: I have to admit, my Kosovar Albanian conscience sometimes got in the way when reading this book. This was due simply to the fact that the author (as he says himself in the preface) sought on to devalue all the myths about Kosova and tell its history based on facts and facts only, something that at times, viewing it subjectively, I did not like. However, when thinking rationally and reviewing the book objectively, one cannot help but emphasize the importance the author gives the authentication of his version of the history. The fact that every single theory or opinion expressed is backed with as many sources as there virtually exist is a strong enough reason to give this book its relevance it surely deserves.
Malcolm uncovers Kosova's history of all its myths and legends of all the sides involved with a detailed study of an over a thousand year spand of time of the area, leaving out only the truth as it is today based on the existing resources. This is a book for anyone truly interested in Kosova's history.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly researched but does become partisan
Review: I was not sure whether to give Malcolm's book a 3 or 4 stars but because it is such a well-researched book, I decided to give it 4, although I would probably agree with the overall rating for his book so far- 3 and a half.
As there is so much to say about his book, this will be a thorough review.

First of all, Malcolm has clearly gone out of his way to write the most extensive book on Kosovo's history of any Western historian. I disagree with the notion that he simply wrote this book to earn some money because the time, help and resources he would have required travelling around Europe to various national libraries, looking through archives from hundreds of years back, asking people for their opinions etc must have been at great financial, as well psychological, cost to himself.
Saying that however, one can see that he visited the Zagreb national library and the library in Tirana but did not visit any libraries in Belgrade, probably the largest city in south-eastern Europe and in this case for Malcolm's research, a vital institution of knowledge.

I reject the excuse that he did not have the time or that the sources in Belgrade's library would have been highly biased in regards to his research because the same could be argued about the sources in Zagreb and Tirana.
Another criticism that I would make is that all of the people that he acknowledges at the beginning of his book are non-Serbs, either Croats, Albanians, Bosnians or Westerners which raises questions about his objectivity.

Now, to the book. I think that the earlier chapters on Kosovo's history are relatively well-balanced but do get the impression that he reserves a disproportionately larger share of the book to talking about the history of the Albanians, rather than the history of Kosovo's Serbs (from the 16th century onwards)
I think that the area of Kosovo that he calls "Eastern Kosovo" is also quite neglected historically, whereas he reserves alot of paper for Western Kosovo, possibly because that area had a much larger population.

From the period 1912-1941, however, Malcolm is blatantly partisan in favour of the Albanians, although certainly the Albanians did suffer terribly at the hands of the Belgrade and local Serbian administrators,leaders and armed forces. While commenting on the atrocities carried out by the Chetniks, Serbian and Montenegrin armies, such as forced conversions in the Pec area, massacres at Urosevac etc he doesn't reserve any space for atrocities committed against Serb civilians in Kosovo, which I find astounding. With Kosovo during WW2 he takes a far more balanced approach and states that Albanians and Serbs were committing atrocities against each other, although the Serbs were clearly receiving the worst of the treatment. However, he then quotes one Croat and one Serb historian and one claims that 3,000 Albanians were killed altogether and the other states that 14,000 were killed. There is a huge discrepancy of 11,000 which is not explained by Malcolm. Also, both generally agree that between 3 and 4,000 Serbs died; how is that so, if he stated previously that they bore the brunt of the atrocities? His own view about the Italian and German occupation of Kosovo seems to be relatively benign as well, and there is no criticism of the highly nationalist Balli Kombetar movement in Kosovo during this period.

Finally, his last two chapters from 1945-1997 are generally fair although I would raise one point. He claims that only about 0.4% of Serbs that emigrated from the period 1966-1980's said they left because of harrassment and violence by Albanians. I personally find this very hard to believe, because there has been plenty of documented evidence to support the theory that many Serbs were leaving because of coercion and violence. Its true that the Albanians have the highest birth rate in Europe and that the economic conditions were poor but to say that 99.6% of Serbs left for these two reasons alone is erroneous.

So, to sum up. Malcolm has clearly done some excellent research on Kosovo and I think that it is completely unfair and incorrect to say that his book is biased all the way through and therefore not worthy to be called a history book. Also, some reviewers criticise Malcolm for using alot more Albanian sources than Serbian ones. I suppose this is understandable, considering that at the time of writing 90% of Kosovo's population was Albanian.
Its also misleading to say that whenever he does quote a Serb, it is simply to attack or negate Serbian beliefs and ideologies.

Malcolm has used a wide variety of Serbian sources and has also disregarded and corrected certain Albanian myths as being false or exaggerations. For example, the notion that Albanians were always a majority in Kosovo and how some Albanian writers refer to the Presevo valley in southern Serbia as "Eastern Kosovo", the claim that 40,000 Albanians died in Kosovo during WW2, etc.
A highly enjoyable book which is slightly spoiled in some chapters due to partisan views.









Rating:
Summary: worthles...
Review: In his Kosovo; A Short History, Mr. Malcolm fails to explain how over 200 historic churches, monasteries and other holy sites dating back a thousand years happen to be in Kosovo. Are the Serbian claims to Kosovo any less than the claims of European Jews to Israel some 2000 years after they left? Serbian claims to Kosovo are much stronger than Croatian claims to Krajina. And how many states' territorial integrity would remain intact, if Noel Malcolm's one-sided quasi-historical research religious intolerance were applied elsewhere in the world?

Rating:
Summary: A surprisingly historically significant history lesson
Review: Kosovo: A Short History was a great, long read. Noel Malcolm paints a factual picture on Balkan history. From the Illyrians to Tito. This is a must read if you really want to untangle the webs of this immensly historical region. It really made me see how this deep rooted hatred still exists and how the Albanian population was victimized

Rating:
Summary: Extremely Detailed Historical Account of Kosovo
Review: Like most Americans, i did not know much about the history of Kosovo and the surrounding areas. When the mass genocide of Albanians took place in the 1990's, i too became interested in learning the history behind the ethnic strife in this region of the world. One reviewer mentioned that Mr. Malcolm cashed in on the strife to sell his book. This may be true, but Mr. Malcolm posseses a deep understanding of the Balkans so as not to undermine the validity of the book or his authority in writing it. The book was well written and well researched. Only a person with a great deal of prior knowledge on this subject could undertake this project to educate readers on a subject matter that has been virtually ignored in the context of world history. i highly recommend this book. i particularly enjoyed Malcolm's profile of Tito's regime.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkable book. A short history. A thorough history.
Review: Remarkable for its thoroughness in its research. Malcolm has dug up many documented sources that seem not to have seen the light of day for some time. According to Malcolm, "there is not a single library, in Western Europe or even in the Balkans, that offers all the relevant materials under one roof." That is a tragedy. But it goes along way to explaining the distortions of the region's history. The citation list for this book is a virtual tour of libraries and holdings in the cities and towns of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires and those of the Great Powers of the 19th century. Again this isn't surprising as a great deal of the historical mythology was created during the last half of the 19th century.

"Kosovo: a short history" is remarkable in its clear, readable prose. This is not a dull text. And the region and its history should have been better known to the West. Right through the book, well-known historical figures make cameo appearances. My favourite was a fellow who in 1912 or 1913 was " shocked by the evidence he encountered of atrocities by Serbian and Bulgarian forces." The fellow would later become better known as Leon Trotsky. But the book is full of these oddities. It isn't surpising. Look at a map and Kosovo was an overland route to the Middle East - and a bulwark of the Ottoman Empire against Western and Central Europe: Christian Europe. I should have known all this much earlier, but - like most western educated historians - I didn't pay enough attention.

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best
Review: There are so many books on the subject out there, the discriminate reader might have some trouble finding something worth their time and money. However, on the subject of Kosov the best of the whole lot is Noel Malcolm's "Kosovo: A Short History". Why?

1. He's neither Albanian nor Serb
2. Great educational pedigree *the finest education UK and US can offer*
3. The most impressive bibliography
4. Great narrative writing style
5. Whereas he demolishes more Serb myths (simply because they have more) he tackles Albanian myths as well.

6. One such Albanian myth is continous Albanian majority in Kosovo. While Albanian presence in the region has been continuous and SUBSTANTIAL, his research and educated opinion conclude that Albanians have only been a majority there for the past 300 years or so with the serbs number continuously dwindling for whatever reasons, none of which is immigration from Albania proper.