Adriatic

February 28, 2022
A trip around the Adriatic Sea opens a window onto Europe’s evolving consciousness, argues this labyrinthine political travelogue. Foreign affairs analyst Kaplan (Balkan Ghosts) travels along the Adriatic coast from Italy through Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, visiting locales from Venice to Corfu, touring churches, ruminating on 3,000 years of history, conferring with intellectuals and perusing Dante, Ezra Pound, and other poets for clues to the region’s character. He contends that the area’s mash-up of cultures—East and West; Byzantine, Ottoman, and Hapsburg; Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Muslim—provides a promising model of “fluid and multiple” identities for a Europe inundated by migrants. Kaplan serves up his trademark mix of grand geopolitical themes and evocative sightseeing—“Ravenna is a Byzantine jewel of barrel-vaulted brick bearing all the subtle and complex hues of a dying autumn leaf”—in prose that brings to mind a freewheeling, movable seminar. Unfortunately, the resulting lessons tend toward trite truisms—“Europe must aspire to universal values, and yet be anchored to its local beliefs and cultures”—rather than substantive insights. This tour through modern Europe is more diverting than essential.

March 15, 2022
The veteran journalist and foreign affairs specialist tours the historic sea and delivers his usual penetrating observations. Fans of Kaplan's work have squirmed through his graphic Balkan Ghosts (1993) and absorbed astute analyses of today's international relations in The Return of Marco Polo's World (2018). Both books are key forerunners to this insightful take on the stormy history and geopolitics of nations bordering the Adriatic: Italy and Greece as well as Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, and Montenegro. Chronicling his travels up the Italian east coast through Rimini, Ravenna, Venice, and Trieste, he writes about many familiar elements of European history through the centuries, but these serve mostly as historical background for the author's often insightful musings on Italian art, architecture, and literature. Absorbing Roman and then Byzantine culture, Christian Italy successfully fended off Islamic influences and has remained united for two centuries. Matters are different when Kaplan leaves Trieste and enters the nations formed when Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991. An unhappy mixture of cultures, languages, and religions, the people of this region have passed more than 1,000 years divided among three empires--Habsburg, Venetian, and Ottoman--and retain bitter memories of their treatment under each one. Circling the Adriatic, Kaplan finally arrives in Corfu, an island within swimming distance of post-Stalinist Albania but vibrantly Greek. The author repeatedly points out that while Europe's population is stagnant, population explosions in Africa will lead to further tumult involving economics, climate change, resources, and migration. "With Africa's population set to climb over the course of the century from 1.1 billion to perhaps 3 or 4 billion," writes Kaplan, "migration will be a permanent issue for a country like Croatia with a Mediterranean coastline and a negative birthrate." Croatia is only one of many nations in the region that will face significant obstacles in the coming decades. Another characteristic Kaplan travelogue, often both riveting and disheartening.

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