Abstract
Reviewed by: Dmitar Tasić, University College Dublin Centre for War Studies, Ireland
The recent centenary of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) occasioned several international conferences and published volumes. The politically damaging association of these wars with the wars of Yugoslav succession from the 1990s nonetheless stimulated the appearance of new scholarship on the topic in several languages. Pettifer and Buchanan’s War in the Balkans: Conflict and Diplomacy before World War I, contains only 12 contributions, compared with 87 in the two volumes of Mustafa Turkeş’ The Centenary of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913): Contested Stances (2014). Still, this new volume offers new and valuable scholarship, primarily because it places the wars in the broader context of the beginning of the twentieth century, as well as by bringing new interpretations of their consequences.
Its chapters are grouped into three sections: Contested Inheritance; International Dimensions; and The Bitter Inheritance. Tom Buchanan’s contribution ‘The Balkan Wars after 100 Years’ gives an overview of the theme as well as some new conclusions and interpretations useful for future research. It breaks with the existing interpretations of the Balkans as a region of embedded violence, and shows how events on the European periphery can have strong impact on the rest of the Continent.
Sabrina P. Ramet’s chapter, ‘Realpolitik of Foreign Policy Surrealism’ is an interesting attempt at interweaving philosophy and history. Unfortunately some of her points, expressed in the spirit of ‘what if…’ are confusing, and are mixed together with reminiscences of the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This can be puzzling to those not familiar with Balkan peculiarities. Her highlighting of the crucial role played by the Great Powers in creating the myth of ‘ancient hatreds’ in the region suggests a good direction for future research.
Other chapters deal with a variety of themes. Eric Beckett Weaver’s ‘Yugoslavism in Hungary during the Balkan Wars’ presents a formidable quantity of material to show the broader significance of the Balkan Wars and their relationship with the Great War, its causes and aftermath. The significance of modern medicine in fighting cholera throughout the Balkan war theatre is demonstrated in Christian Promitzer’s chapter ‘Combating Cholera during the Balkan Wars: The Case of Bulgaria’, which also discusses the situation in the other belligerents. Bernd J. Fischer in ‘The Balkan Wars and the Creation of Albanian Independence’ challenges existing narratives on the continuity of the Albanian struggle for independence, bringing in new shades into this complex and colourful topic. The place and importance of the Balkan Wars in the collective memory of the Macedonian people is considered by Biljana Vankovska in her contribution ‘History and Memoires of the Balkan Wars in the Republic of Macedonia: Debates over the Past’. She explores how the Balkan Wars and Great War have been treated both in present-day Macedonian official historiography, and during the period of socialist Yugoslavia.
James Pettifer in his chapter ‘After the Golden Age? – The Journalism of the Balkan Wars’ presents and analyses the writing of several prominent British journalists who covered the events from the Balkan battlefields. Although the use of the telegraph in the second half of the nineteenth century meant that war reporting itself became almost instant, journalists’ memoirs published after the war provide valuable material both on the wars themselves and on the journalists’ standpoints and personal beliefs.
Jasmina Knežević’s chapter ‘Croatian Nationalism and the Balkan Wars’ presents a great deal of information and detail on developments in Croatia and Dalmatia, both on the official political scene and in public opinion. She analyses how the First and Second Balkan Wars influenced developments in the political agendas of the major parties, and the emergence of strong pro-Yugoslav feelings among the younger population on the eve of the Great War. In ‘Macedonia – The Crisis After the Paris Peace Conference’, Melina Grizo examines the diplomatic dispute over Macedonia, in which Bulgaria sought a revised peace treaty while Yugoslavia sought to maintain the status quo. Using extensive research of the most recent literature, she presents the history of the dispute and the involvement of the Great Powers in it.
A bold – and successful – attempt to present the Balkans as an integral part of a broader European history is Enika Abazi’s ‘Between Facts and Interpretations: Three Images of the Balkan Wars’. She challenges the conventional West European image of the Balkans, which gives prominence to the wars of 1912–1913. Her unbiased, original and balanced approach, particularly when compared with the ambitious concept of Ramet’s contribution, confirms the old saying that less is more. Abazi’s observation that ‘the division of the Balkans from European West is articulated to help constitute a space of moral superiority for the West’ would (and should) provoke scholarly debate and some new interpretations and conclusions. The same can be said for the contribution of Helen Katsidakis who gives a detailed picture of the rivalries between Balkan Christian nations before and during the Balkan Wars. James Pettifier gives his concluding thoughts in a twelfth chapter.
Western historiography becomes interested in certain periods and regions either because of a practical political need to understand the background to turbulent events, or to mark important anniversaries. Until recently, the Great War was popularly associated only with the trenches of the Western front, yet now, thanks to the centenary, we know not only about other theatres of war but also about the war’s social, cultural or religious aspects. The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 are no different. During the violence of the 1990s, the wars of 1912–1913 were often invoked, without regard to developments and changes. Now we can hope for quality scholarship on the Balkans in connection with the anniversaries of events in the interwar years. These contexts, and those of the Second World War and the Cold War, should help us better understand the long and often traumatic history of this undoubtedly European region.