Stefan Troebst - Böcker

Nation states and minorities resort more and more to violence when safeguarding their political interests. Although the violence in the Middle East has been dominating world politics for some time now, European governments have had their share of ethnic violence to contend with as this volume demonstrates. And as the case studies show, ranging as they do from the Basque Country to Chechnya, from Northern Ireland to Bosnia-Herzegovina, this applies to western Europe as much as to eastern Europe. However, in contrast to other parts of the world, instances where political struggles for power and social inclusion between minorities and majorities lead to full-fledged inter-ethnic warfare are still the exception; in the majority of cases conflicts are successfully de-escalated and even resolved. In a comprehensive conclusion, the volume offers a theoretical framework for the development of strategies to deal with violent ethnic conflict.

Nation states and minorities resort more and more to violence when safeguarding their political interests. Although the violence in the Middle East has been dominating world politics for some time now, European governments have had their share of ethnic violence to contend with as this volume demonstrates. And as the case studies show, ranging as they do from the Basque Country to Chechnya, from Northern Ireland to Bosnia-Herzegovina, this applies to western Europe as much as to eastern Europe. However, in contrast to other parts of the world, instances where political struggles for power and social inclusion between minorities and majorities lead to full-fledged inter-ethnic warfare are still the exception; in the majority of cases conflicts are successfully de-escalated and even resolved. In a comprehensive conclusion, the volume offers a theoretical framework for the development of strategies to deal with violent ethnic conflict.

Following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in spring 2014 – 160 years after the Crimean War – and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Black Sea region has again become the focus of world history. In this handbook, international scholars from various historical and cultural disciplines provide deep historical insights into the structures of conflict, cooperation, and interrelations between the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe in the space referred to as the Black Sea world. The trans-maritime communication and intra-regional circulations, spanning from Antiquity to the present day via, Byzantium, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimean Khanate, the Venetian, Safavid, Ottoman, and Romanov empires, two World Wars, and the Cold War, highlight the autonomy of this historical region in the larger transcontinental setting – designated in various times and varying languages as the Pontus Euxinus, the Mare Maggiore, the Kara Deniz, the Chernoe More, or the Black Sea. "This voluminous edition sheds real light upon the history of the Black Sea region from antiquity until the end of the 20th century. Not only does this first-rate book provide a host of excellent historical essays across time, it also devotes considerable attention to important questions regarding how the Black Sea region is conceptualized and theorized. A very useful contribution." (James H. Meyer, Montana State University) "In the wake of several research projects, monographs and journals, this is the first groundbreaking handbook on the cohesive history of the Black Sea as a historical meso-region. It gathers 39 excellent contributions that provide the conceptual apparatus, survey the history of the region from a Greek to Byzantine to Ottoman lake, to conflicting rivalries, to its recent transformation from a quasi-Soviet to a quasi-NATO lake, examine the ideas that underpin the various national, ethnic and religious identities, research the different mobilities through migration, transport,infrastructure, and take stock of its turbulent history through conflicts and war.” (Maria Todorova, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) "Mostly the work of scholars from Central Europe and the Black Sea region, this massive volume focuses on the relationship between historical research and memory, in particular the difficulty of certain groups living in the region when confronted with empires and nation states, whose centers may be quite distant from the Black Sea. Attentive readers may thus view the present handbook not merely as a work of reference on history, memory and movement, but also as a testimony to the historical perspectives developed by a significant number of Central European and Black Sea scholars during the first quarter of the twenty-first century." (Suraiya Faroqhi, Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul)

In today's world, we can point to many international disputes and interstate conflicts fueled by past events. Historical resentments or memories of past suffering or fame are often used to justify political, economic and even territorial demands. Inter-state disputes and historical conflicts should be understood as evidence of political and social tensions related to active, serious differences in the assessment of the common past. The book explains the role of such conflicts in international relations and suggests ways of classifying them. It presents examples of the internationally relevant instrumentalisation of history from different regions of the world and outlines ways of overcoming them.

For the past ten years, human rights language has increasingly been employed by Armenian citizens when interacting with state actors in public spaces to protest government wrongdoings and press for change. This book examines the citizens’ exercise of their civil and political rights to put up claims regarding their social, economic and other rights through collective action as a platform for their claims-making. Through the research of key human rights actors, this book explores the ways in which universal human rights are debated, practiced, violated and experienced in Armenia. It reveals significant transformations with regard to both perceptions and practices of the notion of ‘a rights-bearing citizen’ manifest in speech and action, confrontations and interactions in ‘The Street’.

This book tells thestory of 64 Circassian families who during the Kosovo conflictin 1989/99 migrated from the Field of Blackbirds to the Republic ofAdygheya in the Russian North Caucasus, their historical “homeland”. It focuseson the identification process among the Kosovo Circassians before andafter this migration. In her approach, Marieta Schneider challengesthe nationalist assumptions of a non-conflicting relationship betweenidentity, ethnicity and culture and demonstrates the impact of theminority status on the identity formation of thisethnic community. By comparing national and minority politics both inex-Yugoslavia and in the USSR/Russian Federation, the author highlightsthe role linguistic, religious, cultural and social “boundaries”played in this process. The book provides new insights for thosewho study minority politics and identification processes in the Balkans, in theSoviet Union and in the post-Soviet realm.

Remembering Communism examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. The common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past.The volume deals with eight major thematic blocks revisiting specific practices in communism such as popular culture and everyday life, childhood, labor, the secret police, and the perception of “the system”.