Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185–1365 by István Vásáry (review)

REVIEWS 300 Court Midwife comes to us as part of the series, “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe,” edited by Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr. The given raison d’être of the series is to make available editions or translations of works containing an early modern (feminist) “other voice” in counterpoint to three thousand years of misogynistic “first” voices (xi). Rather than engaging with (or at least summarizing) obviously pertinent theories regarding the Other and “othering,” the editors choose to dedicate a large part of their introduction to cataloguing all of the major sources of misogynistic thought in Western culture from Plato and Socrates forward. The resulting history is (not surprisingly) spotty and oversimplified. Likewise, one could wish for a more careful deployment of concepts like “feminism,” “humanism” and “early modern.” The shortcomings of this introduction would be less irritating if they did not contrast so sharply with Tatlock’s careful characterization of Justine Siegemund as a complex figure whose experiences and writings defy easy categorization. Siegemund’s work, according to Tatlock, “belies the simple myth of a gender divide between the unscientific and traditional female practitioner on the one hand and the scientifically trained and progressive male professional on the other” (3). Siegemund seems at pains, in fact, to keep her discussion focused on professional concerns rather than gender. Tatlock’s own introduction reveals The Court Midwife to have been shaped as much by religious conflict, intense reflection on the institutionalization of medicine, and the challenges presented by the increasingly dynamic and cut-throat world of publishing as forces, as by gender-related forces. The “Other Voice” series promises to make available many interesting and valuable texts; it is to be hoped that the rather simplistic premise for the series won’t generally obscure the fascinating perspective individual editors and translators like Lynne Tatlock bring to these works. CHRISTINE THUAU, French & Francophone Studies, UCLA István Vásáry, Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185–1365 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005) xvi+230 pp. To our delight, Cambridge University Press is consistent in publishing monographs over a variety of topics related to Byzantine or East European medieval history. Not only do such works generally help the better understanding of events in the region, but sometimes they successfully raise debates relevant to the Western Middle Ages as well. István Vasáry’s recent book on the role of the Cumans and the Tatars in the political, military, and ethnic history of the Balkans and the lands north of the Lower Danube is a new contribution and will probably provoke the curiosity of many. The fact is that despite the huge significance of the interaction of the peoples of the steppe with the Russian principalities, the Byzantine area, and the Latin West, very little work on them has been made accessible to English-speaking readers. This volume by a senior Hungarian scholar who has done extensive work on the nomadic peoples of Inner Asia could be expected to help meet the need. The study of the nomadic peoples and their place within the Christian states of the European Southeast requires not only mastery of Latin, Greek, Slavic, and Turkic primary material, but sufficient familiarity with the historiographical traditions of the countries in REVIEWS 301 the region. Vásáry has made good use of his linguistic competence and introduces us to the political use of the past by regional nationalist agendas during the twentieth century. Tatars and Cumans have not been paid due attention mostly because neither of the present-day national states in the area identifies with them; their study has remained peripheral to the larger frame of national histories. In this sense, Vásáry’s book has made too timid a step in the direction of the Cumans’ and Tatars’ own history. The scope of his project is rather limited: instead of studying the political, economic or social history of the Cumans and Tatars, the author has contented himself with evaluating the weight of the two groups’ military and political (but not economic!) presence in the history of the Eastern Orthodox states of the period, mostly of the Second...