ivo banac a bit of nonteleological history one of the great problems is that our understanding of the common and individual histories of the south slavs and the other peoples of southeastern europe has not significantly benefited from critical historiography this is because nationalist historiographies regularly have explained modern developments as an aspect of unilinear design we have been taught to see connections that may be of our own making for example if we look at a current political map of the area and compare it to that from the era of settlements we will see that the present political divisions do not correspond to those from the early medieval period croatia is mainly a coastal area from the rasa river in istria to the cetina river a little bit to the east of the city of split down the coast from the original croatia we have a row of unfamiliar slavic territories that constantine vii porphyrogenitus the tenth century byzantine emperor historian called pagania literally land of the pagans zachlumia most of present day eastern herzegovina with the croatian peninsula of peljesac terbounia the trebinje area of eastern herzegovina with dubrovnik and its eastern coastal environs and dioclea the southern portions of contemporary montenegro with the bay of kotor and the northwesternmost portions of present day albania around lake skadar shkoder serbia is located in the hinterland of zachlumia terbounia and dioclea its center around ras near today's novi pazar in the sandzak bosnia was apparently within this territory but represented a negligible area around the source of the bosna river where we now find sarajevo and its environs and dalmatia in the tenth century this was a necklace of byzantine ruled roman coastal cities and island territories from krk in the north to ulcinj in the south moreover modern territoriality required a tradition that was itself a product of modernity thus unrelated traditions were merged to produce an idea of ethnic as opposed to cultural continuity the croat historical tradition goes back to the chronicle of the priest of dioclea a twelfth century text from bar in contemporary montenegro and its various translations for example marko marulic which were in turn incorporated into the early modern slavic and dalmatian histories of mavro orbin and ivan lucic ioannes lucius these works then became material for the croatianizing work of pavao ritter vitezovic croatia rediviva who was the most important influence on the revivalist generation of ljudevit gaj and that of postrevival integral nationalists like ante starcevic curiously the same histories orbin's were serbianized through the translations of sava vladislavic which then influenced the pioneering serbian histories of jovan rajic and were bulgarianized in the history of paisij hilandarski the bosnian historical tradition was somewhat more self contained it combined the franciscan memory of medieval bosnian statehood with the experiences of muslim ayan notable selfrule to argue for a uninational bosnia for example antun knezevic whose book was published between and clearly something has happened in the span of ten centuries pagania zachlumia and terbounia have disappeared the center of croatia has migrated from the adriatic to the north into medieval slavonia literally slavic land with zagreb at its head this happened in stages during the high middle ages the heart of croatia was on the una river now in northwestern bosnia this territory turkish croatia was lost to the ottomans in the sixteenth century and became a part of bosnia during the habsburg reconquest and the concomitant venetian operations in the seventeenth century the framework of modern croatia emerged in two extended shanks one to the north to modern slavonia the other in the south in modern dalmatia at the same time the zagreb area which was only dubiously croatian in the early middle ages became the heart of modern croatia the story of serbia is not much different serbia first migrated to the coast and assimilated dioclea then it moved to the ibar morava valleys then toward the valleys of struma and vardar in macedonia it reached the danube only as an ottoman vassal in the fifteenth century and its modern capital belgrade became truly serbian only in the course of karadjordje's uprising in bosnia too expanded under ban or prorex kulin r into the donji kraji literally lower lands around the vrbas river and the soli literally salt lands for centuries ottoman then modern tuzla and usora in its present northeastern corner later on at the height of its power in fourteenth century bosnia expanded into hum herzegovina and the drina river valley the westernmost regions were inc