Download or read book Images of Imperial Legacy written by Tea Sindbaek and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2011 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been a tendency to view the history of the Balkans as essentially determined by historical legacies. Whether in scholarly literature or in popular discourse, the Ottoman or Habsburg pasts are thought to be accountable for a large variety of phenomena ranging from democratic culture (or the lack thereof) and adaptability to a free market economy to nepotism and the filthiness of public facilities. By contrast, the papers in this volume demonstrate that "legacies" are not unchanging determinants. Instead, they are very much open to constant reinterpretations and re-assessments depending on conditions in the present; they are, in short, as much shaped by the present as they are by the past. (Series: Studien zur Geschichte, Kultur und Gesellschaft Sudosteuropas - Vol. 10)