The project “Ottoman Orient and East Central Europe" (Croatia/Germany) will hold a conference entitled The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth–Seventeenth Centuries: A Comparative Perspective on May 21-23, 2009.

The abstract (cf. Balkan Studies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) of Karl Kaser (Graz): Disciplinary Boundaries in Question: Balkan Studies in a Globalizing World

The disciplinary boundaries between Balkan Studies and Near East and/or Middle Eastern Studies were basically drawn in the course of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century within a certain political framework and as results of European political interests. Arabic and Islamic Studies were considered as the study of the culturally other. Balkan Studies in this period of time were conceived as the »orient within«. The dissolution of the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empires by the end of 1918 changed the political landscape. Near East and Middle East Studies received the flavour of British and French Colonial Studies, whereas the German Reich was interested to explore the designated food deliverer, the Balkans, within its concept of Großraumpolitik.