Product Description: Borders are usually understood as divisions between cultures, languages and political and confessional systems. Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, however, borders and frontiers were not conceived of as straight lines marking territories and political dominions, but they were mostly perceived as symbolic areas which, instead of purely dividing, were rather contested and debated zones...read more

Product Description: This text defines the importance of the Balkans and of the "Ottoman factor" for the Habsburg foreign relations, and names those territories in the peninsula which had particularly high or low values for the Empire as land for territorial expansion.