Zuzana Polácková

This scholarly work on Montenegro’s history and its social, political, and cultural traditions eschews a conventional chronological framework, where each chapter might delineate a distinct historical era. Instead, the authors adopt a thematic lens, delving into four pivotal themes that span an extended timeline. Montenegro’s political and cultural development was intricately tied to migration flows and the emergence of broader multicultural dynamics across the western Balkans. Orthodox, Catholic, and Islamic communities, though often in contention, coexisted as integral groups within the region. Consequently, political and military strife, multicultural intricacies, and migration patterns emerged as the primary forces shaping the histories of both the western Balkans and Montenegro itself. Over the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, the prospect of harmonious interreligious and interethnic coexistence steadily eroded, with Muslim Slavs and Albanians frequently targeted by the dominant Montenegrin faction. Montenegro charted its own distinct course toward modernity, unfolding at its own deliberate pace. Yet, with the restoration of independence in the early twenty-first century, the nation seized an opportunity to evolve its earlier, incomplete modernity into a more liberal form, paving the way for integration into the European fold.

This book is a contribution to European comparative history involving Portugal and Slovakia, but also the larger geographic units of Iberia and Slavic Central Europe. While developments in Portugal and Slovakia predominate, Spain, the Czech lands, and other regions are discussed as well. The subjects investigated include the position of women and the activities of messianic thinkers in the seventeenth century as well as semi-fascist Catholic political movements in the twentieth century. The authors look at the subject matter from the viewpoint of politics, social phenomena, and culture. The cultural dimension includes religion and ideology, both of which have clearly been of critical importance in Portuguese and Slovak history. It also includes problems of ethno-linguistic and national identity and the more recent phenomenon of multiculturalism, whose social promotion is controversial and uncertain.