Dayton - Album

The project is based on the book by Ambassador Richard Holbrook “To End a War”. The objective was to map out the art of complex negotiations through illustrated chronology of the events that took place in 1995 across Bosnia and Herzegovina, former Yugoslavia, Western Europe and the USA – eventually materializing in the Dayton Peace Accords and ending the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Album contains textual chronology and analysis of the events visualized through hand-drawn illustrations. It provides behind-the-scene insight into U.S. diplomatic efforts to end a war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At all stages of the war, we aimed to deal only with facts supported by first-hand testimonies and thus decided to include Richard Holbrooke's book “To End a War” in our archiving project. Thanks to the author, we were permitted to use dialogues and statements of the warring parties, and the international community rallied around the project of ending the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which also ended the siege of Sarajevo. This map of the negotiations is the undisputable testimony of the positions and objectives of all parties involved in the process of ending the war and the final decisions that resulted in the Dayton Peace Agreement.

Anyone involved in the revision or denial of this agreement should be aware of the facts which led to the signing of the agreement, i.e. how the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina ended. This is also an important document on the balance of power on the international diplomatic, political, and military scene at the end of the 20th century and the functioning of the U.S. administration within their foreign policy objectives at the time. Finally, as the educational model for contemporaries and future generations, it is an essential part of our archive collection.

Special thanks to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and his publisher Random House, Inc. New York for permission to use ‘To End A War’ book for the original FAMA Album (2000) project: ‘The Dayton Peace Accords: Mapping Negotiations’.