South-East European History – serie

Bringing together twelve experts from nine countries, this volume explores intelligence and diplomatic activities, both historical and contemporary, in the Balkan region. Covering a wide range of periods and radically different historical conditions, the various contributions are united by a common theme: the intimate relationship between diplomacy and intelligence. Subjects include: the Venetian dragomans of Zara; ‘informal diplomacy’ between Bulgaria and Turkey; ‘diplomacy without a state’ (Adam Czartoryski’s ‘embassy’ in Paris); diplomacy and diplomats in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1943); case studies on diplomats Otto von Essen, Stojan Novakovič, Adam Czartoryski, Josip Djerdja, and Jovan Dučić; British policy toward Albania during the Second World War; diplomatic relations between Switzerland and Albania; the 1992 ‘arms delivery scandal’ in Bulgaria; and the normalization of Bulgarian bilateral relations with Turkey. "A volume of notable orginality, both in respecte of its disciplinary contribution to the history of intelligence and diplomacy, but also in its geographical focus. As is demonstrated admirably in this collection of papers, the Balkans have been down the centuries and remain an area of competing strategic interests." - Dennis Deletant, Emeritus Professor, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

The book is devoted to the phenomenon of football in the Balkans. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the political instrumentalisation of football and its social significance in the region. In doing so, it offers readers an in-depth look at Balkan societies and the determinants of their political and social functioning. The topics are geographically wide-ranging, covering Greece, Romania, the former Yugoslavia and the states that emerged from its disintegration: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Across these regions, the contributors cover issues including the legitimacy of power, political manipulation, problems of political transition, corruption, collective identity, nationalism and antagonism between the Balkan nations, and armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Collectively they offer a number of fresh perspectives in conveying a sense of the complexity and diverse historical experiences of football across the Balkans. The book is aimed at a wide academic audience as well as journalists, analysts, and enthusiasts of sport and the Balkans.

Described as the "sick man of Europe" by the Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century was in terminal decline. The newly independent Balkan states—Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria—each had significant ethnic populations who had remained under Ottoman rule. Under the guidance of Russia, which had its own interests in south-east Europe, they joined forces against the Ottomans, under the name of the Balkan League, in 1912.In the first phase of the Balkan Wars, Bulgarian, Greek, Montenegrin and Serbian armies fought together against the Ottoman Empire, dealing the Ottomans a heavy defeat in a result that made headlines around the world. In the second phase, the Balkan states fought each other, and Romania also entered the war. In the conflict’s aftermath, new borders failed to satisfy any of the belligerent parties. Interventions by the Great Powers further increased tensions in the region. As the ultimate result, the first bullet that triggered the First World War was fired in Sarajevo in June 1914.The causes and effects of the Balkan Wars have remained controversial despite the passage of time. In this volume, writers from various Balkan nations and from across various disciplines have come together under the aegis of the Balkan History Association to address little-known and little-studied aspects of the wars. Collectively they analyze a huge range of political, historical, medical, sociological and religious aspects of the conflict. The book, with its ground-breaking content and unique bibliographies, will be an important guide for undergraduate and graduate students studying the political, military and social history of the Balkan Wars and the Balkan nations."The Balkan Wars of 1912/13 were a disaster for the Ottoman Empire, a triumph for the Balkan governments, and a tragedy for the population of the belligerent states.This well structured collection brings together contributors from various backgrounds. Together they help to understand overarching issues far beyond the military event, and especially the still underresearched Ottoman perspective."—Katrin Boeckh, LMU Munich/IOS Regensburg

The Eastern Orthodox Churches in post-communist Eastern Europe are embroiled in long-running conflicts over ownership of territory, saints, sites, nations, and history. These often violent conflicts reflect political and national rivalries, most explicitly in former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. They are often understood as simplified ethnic-national tensions with religious overtones, but, as this book demonstrates such an assessment overlooks the deeper theological and historiographical framework.Nationalisation of the Sacred offers a detailed analysis of the theological backdrop to these conflicts. It analyses how various strands of Eastern Orthodoxy have adapted to the contemporary political context, a process where history, memory, and politics are transformed to fit the needs of rival nations and churches. The book provides an in-depth analysis of this process and the transformations in church-related conflicts in post-communist Montenegro, where the Serbian Orthodox Church has been pitted against a rival Montenegrin church and Montenegrin government.Additionally the book provides an up-to-date and unique analysis of Eastern Orthodox historiography, modern Serbian theology, religion in Montenegro more broadly, and the roots of the violent clash between Orthodox believers and the Montenegrin government in 2019-2021.

This book explores the channels through which Islamic fundamentalism has spread among Muslim populations in the Balkans since the fall of communism. The authors collectively examine political and religious ties between Balkan Muslims and various private organizations and state institutions in Muslim states, with a particular focus on the reception of Salafism and its Saudi version, Wahhabism. In that context, they debate the extent to which war crimes committed by Muslims during the Yugoslav Wars were motivated by Salafism, rather than being a result of domestic ethno-national conflicts. Finally, the book also addresses the ideological climate that has generated volunteers for Islamic State (Daesh) in recent years.Cumulatively these essays emphasize the risks to national security in the Western Balkans represented by the return of Islamic State fighters and the spread of so-called jihadist-Salafism within Muslim communities. The volume is intended to help the reader understand the Balkan states’ foreign policy as a response towards the Muslim world in the context of the global war against terrorism. It is the outcome of a research project of the Balkan History Association. "This volume shows that Muslim communities in the Western Balkans face intense propaganda from radical Islam and the incitement of hatred and interreligious divisions, aiming to indoctrinate moderate and tolerant Balkan Muslims. Kosovar youth, for instance, are exposed to a radical ideology which, under the influence of imams trained in fundamentalist madrassas in the Middle East, aims to create a new kind of Muslim, one who is ignorant of the past, of national identity and the values of democracy, and who is concerned only with 'Islamic' values propagated through Salafism."—Kolë Krasniqi, University "Haxhi Zeka" in Peja, Kosovo"Although Islam has historically been a socio-cultural pillar of Southeast European societies, the recent turmoil and failed revolutions across the Muslim world have influenced sections of Muslim communities in the region. This excellent collected volume is a much-needed attempt to trace the subtle workings of re-Islamisation and changes in traditional Muslim identities under the influence of foreign forms of Islam. All chapters show remarkable scholarly achievement and the fruitfulness of pursuing interdisciplinary perspectives on the development of Balkan Muslims communities since 1989."—Francesco Trupia, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland

Initiated by the Balkan History Association, this unique interdisciplinary volume explores the complex history of cultural, diplomatic and religious relations between Serbia and Romania during the late nineteenth and twentieth century. The authors, scholars with a wide range of academic backgrounds, address these themes in the context of Austro-Hungarian imperialism, the interwar period and the Communist era. The essays in Part I examine diplomatic, political and military relations, while those in Part II explore intellectual and artistic links between the two countries, including religion, literature and the visual arts.This is a landmark publication, the first of its kind in English, and will leave readers with a more comprehensive understanding of cultural and political relations in Southeastern Europe."This volume, the first of its kind, covers political diplomatic, cultural and religious relations between the Romania and Serbia, seen through the processes that shaped the two nations over the past two centuries, but also through case studies of prominent diplomats, educators, artists, rulers and statesmen. The result is a comprehensive survey of Romanian-Serbian relations based on serious archival research, leading to new and more inclusive perspectives. I am quite convinced that the collection will become a standard guide for all those interested in the relations between Serbs and Romanians."—Prof. Slobodan G. Markovich, University of Belgrade"Historically, relations between neighboring nations and the people who populated them, have at various points been plagued by conflict. Yet it is difficult to cast complete blame on either side as it can be surmised that the actions taken were a result of people subject to their times. However, aside from confrontations, neighboring states also cooperated, fought together in the interest of common values, against invaders, while they also intermarried, thus enhancing both cultures. The present volume is a successful attempt by Romanian and Serbian specialists to find the political-diplomatic, cultural, and artistic interferences, that amounted to the elements of cooperation between Romanians and Serbs in the last centuries. Such instances of alliance, far from few in number, certainly prevailed in the history of the two nations, and they shaped the destiny of Romania and Serbia into the modern and contemporary eras."—Prof. dr Ioan Bolovan, Institutul de Istorie “George Bariţ” Cluj-Napoca and University Babeș-Bolyai Cluj-Napoca

The book is a first attempt to analyze the complex problems of Romanian etymology in English. Romanian is a Romance language, but it also inherits an old Pre-Romance layer represented by both Indo-European and Pre-Indo-European elements such as Greek and Albanian. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 is an extensive introduction which summarises the archaeological, historical, and linguistic problems of southeast Europe, with a focus on Romanian and its neighboring languages (the Slavic languages and Hungarian). It reviews various hypotheses regarding the region’s prehistoric cultures and how they developed across millennia; it continues with the Thracian cultural groups, which represent the substratum of Romanian, and how these groups underwent a long and complex process of Romanization; and finally, it analyzes the migration period and the new cultural groups that emerged during this long period.Part 2, the dictionary, includes more than 5,000 entries reflecting the representative vocabulary, but also rare and dialectal words, and words referring to flora and fauna. It covers the old Latin heritage, the substratum heritage, and Slavic, Hungarian and Ottoman influences, as well as some relevant neo-Romance elements ("the New Romanization of Romanian", a mainly nineteenth-century process.). Part 3 includes a glossary, as well as lists of the relevant prehistoric roots quoted in the dictionary.

This edited collection sheds new light on the complex dialogue between religion and science which played out at universities in South-East Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This discourse took place against a backdrop of great political, cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity, as well as the long-term transition from Habsburg rule to new nation states. The book’s contributors—an international team of scholars with a wide range of expertise—delve into a range of key questions, including the influence of political regimes on faculties of theology and implications for university autonomy, the role of theology as a science in defining the status of these faculties, and the development of science in the face of religious divisions.The book will appeal to readers interested in religious and intellectual history, the history of science, and the relationship between faith and science, as well as all those interested in South-East Europe either side of the First World War."The collection holds significant value for graduate and postgraduate students, especially when studying the relationship between faith and science, the approach to theology as a science, and critical examination of specific dogmatic and ecumenical matters. The contributors to this volume provide insightful analyses on these topics, making it an indispensable resource for scholars seeking to enrich their understanding of these complex areas of inquiry."—Ante Mateljan, Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Split, Croatia

This book examines patterns of behavior during an era of mass brutality by analyzing, in a transnational context, mechanisms of violence and ethnic cleansing in the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. The main goal is to incorporate these conflicts into the broader discussion of the Greater War (1917–1923), thereby challenging western, Eurocentric dominance of historiography about the First World War. In contrast to earlier works of the political, diplomatic, and military history of the Balkan Wars, this book deals with what took place behind the front lines. Panagiotis Delis explores interactions between the regular army, irregulars, and local civilians, and discusses how the collective experience of war generated an undeclared ‘war on the sidelines’.The Balkan Wars: Notions of Violence and Ethnic Cleansing on the Eve of the First World War is a fascinating new assessment of an important but often neglected conflict. It is also a major new contribution to our understanding of the mechanisms of violence and ethnic cleansing.The Balkan Wars have a special place in the history of twentieth-century violence and one that is not often recognised in Western scholarship. As Panagiotis Delis shows in his excellent book, many of the logics and practices of violence that came to dominate in Europe between 1914 and 1945 were anticipated in the Balkan Wars.—Robert Gerwarth, Professor, Director, UCD Centre for War StudiesThis is a rigorously researched and masterfully analyzed study of violence at the local level, offering an indispensable comparative perspective on several Balkan borderlands.—Theodora Dragostinova, Professor of History, The Ohio State UniversityPanagiotis Delis holds a PhD in history from Simon Fraser University. He serves as a permanent civil servant and as research associate at the University of Athens.

Published to mark the three decades of a war whose grievances have never been satisfactorily resolved, The Armed Conflict of the Dniester: Three Decades Later brings together an international team of experts to discuss the causes and repercussions of the military operations carried out in 1992. Against the backdrop of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the region of Transnistria—a strip of land between the Dniester river and the Ukrainian border—proclaimed independence from Moldova in 1990. In a development with notable contemporary resonances, the separatist movement was backed by Moscow, leading to intervention by the Russian Fourteenth Army alongside paramilitary formations recruited from former Soviet states. The subsequent conflict with Moldovan forces was brought to an end by the 1992 ceasefire, but few were satifised with the arrangement, and the political status of Transnistria has been unresolved ever since.This book—the result of collaboration between The Laboratory for the Analysis of the Transnistrian Conict (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania) and the Balkan History Association—presents a wide range of voices, and seeks to be non-partisan in its approach. Among the issues it tackles are the political and geopolitical causes of the war; the documentary sources and their analysis; quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the combat forces, their levels of training and professionalism, command structures, tactics, weapons, and equipment; the organization and actions of the paramilitaries; the interests of Russia, Moldova, and other international actors, and their political and military actions; and finally the political and patriotic capital generated by the war.The book will be useful to scholars and students, but also to all those involved in the observation and regulation of the Dniester conflict. Finally, anyone interested in the evolution and status of ‘frozen conflicts’—particularly in light of recent events in Ukraine—will find much of interest.

This edited collection presents a wide-ranging survey of forced deportations by totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe throughout the 20th century. _e chapters focus on deportation policies and practices among regimes in Romania, Ukraine, Albania, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, and the former U.S.S.R, collectively highlighting the long-term effects of these policies and their significance to contemporary societies in Eastern Europe.Deportation was a pervasive phenomenon, with socio-economic, demographic, and political implications that have structurally affected the shape and composition of contemporary European societies. Whether considering political repression, ideological clashes, social upheavals, territorial claims, ethnic cleansing, or conflicts within and between societies, deportation was a destabilizing factor across all aspects of twentieth-century East European history.Applying cross-disciplinary perspectives, each case study makes extensive use of archival material or oral histories, presenting the stories of those "undesirables" who were cast out by political systems and the communities torn apart by their removal. These snapshots are not just memories of a time gone by, but visceral encounters with individuals, communities, ethnic and religious groups – a scholarly gaze into experiences that spanned across various realms, from the physical to the psychological and the profoundly spiritual. In tracing the impact of these policies down to the present day, the authors not only recount and reassess the dark tides of history but also contemplate the resilience of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity.This volume stands as a crucial resource for researchers, educators, and policymakers. The result of a project initiated by the Balkan History Association, this volume stands as a crucial resource for researchers, educators, and policy makers.

The book is concerned with the history of football and its role in Balkan society. The aim is to analyse and discuss various aspects of football as a social and political phenomenon. Collectively the authors address the following themes: football's political background over the years; the formation and development of fan culture; the importance of football for various social groups and nationalities; the cultural framework; and the impact of football on international relations. The following regions are included: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Hungary.The book complements and is a thematic development of the issues raised in the volume Football in the Balkans I: Internal Views, External Perceptions (Peter Lang, 2023). Both volumes present the interplay between sport and politics and the shaping of sport policy in the Balkan countries. This is a project initiated by the Balkan History Association and carried out in cooperation with the Centre for Research on the History of German and European Sport of the Willy Brandt Centre at the University of Wrocław in Poland.

As turbulent events – including war, civil war, armed intervention, humanitarian crises and civil unrest – unfold around the globe, the actions of various types of paramilitary organization have attracted considerable attention in academic circles, as well as among the public. Bringing together a wide range of respected authors from a variety of academic backgrounds, this volume builds on a rapidly developing literature on paramilitarism, with a focus on the Balkans, East-Central Europe, and the Caucasus. Chapters cover historical examples and various aspects of paramilitarism, including relationships with the state, legal contexts, conduct towards civilian populations, governance, recruitment, links to organized crime or terrorism, violence, and memory and legacy. Overall, this book aims to reassess the existing body of knowledge, and to offer a new theoretical conceptualization of paramilitarism spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is the outcome of a research project initiated by the editors and supported by the Balkan History Association.

This landmark edited collection offers a new series of studies of power, religion and language in the literature of the Slavic Christian world. The focus is on how saints became symbols of power during conversion and the process of transition to Christianity. Studies of locally venerated saints provide a road into early Slavic societies because saints and their cults existed and were sustained for a wide variety of reasons. Rulers and church-leaders alike needed symbols and narratives to maintain and expand their power, and hagiographies allow us to study how this power was brokered, shared and grasped by elites. Collectively, the authors in this volume pursue the idea that saints are an outward expression of Christianity becoming embedded and localized in the newly Christianized societies of East and Central Europe. The period covered here stretches from the Macedonian dynasty in Eastern Rome (c. 800) to the rise of Muscovite rule in Russia (c. 1600). The main focus is on the Slavic religious traditions but, as this volume demonstrates, Greek and Baltic traditions were also significant.This book will be essential reading for researchers and students interested in the religious and cultural history of Eastern Europe, the cult of saints, and the rise of Christendom.

The cult of St. Jovan Vladimir, historical ruler of Duklja in the early eleventh century, is one of the oldest Slavic saint's cults in Southeastern Europe. Over time, the cult developed into a number of distinctive offshoots, and played a significant role in church- and nation-building in the region. St. Jovan Vladimir has become a symbol of nationalism in several of the region's modern states, but also a source of transnational cooperation between Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim religious communities. This study show the crossroads of national and religious movements in the many cults, sites and litterature. This book is the first of its kind to assess the origins and evolution of the many cults, and their literature and sacred sites, from the death of St. Jovan Vladimir to the current revival across Southeastern Europe. It offers important new insights into the historic building blocks of nationalism and contemporary religion, and will appeal to all those interested in the religious and cultural history of the region.

This landmark edited collection investigates parks as places of pivotal significance in the social, cultural, architectural and economic history of the Balkan capitals. Parks are not simply places of recreation and retreat: they are a palimpsest where memory and identity are contested, where monuments of historical events are treasured or torn down, a constantly evolving microcosm of the urban landscape. They shelter activists, dissidents and conspirators; inspire writers and painters; host cultural, sporting and political events; mitigate pollution and allow nature to intrude into urban life. Focusing on parks in Athens, Belgrade, Chişinău, Skopje, Sofia and Zagreb, the authors of this volume take an interdisciplinary approach to the function of parks in the Balkan capitals. Collectively they engage with a huge range of historical and ethnographic sources, including novels, diaries, statues, maps, plans and interviews. In this context, they also examine concepts such as ‘invisible spaces’, ‘urban fragments’, ‘place and non-place’, creating a complex picture of mainstream and alternative use over the centuries. The first study of its kind, Parks in the Balkan Capitals will be essential reading for all those interested in the social and cultural history of the great cities of southeastern Europe. It is a project initiated by the Balkan History Association.

This volume, which brings together a selection of papers presented at an international conference marking the bicentennial of the 1821 uprising in Wallachia and the Etairia movement in Moldavia, is situated at the intersection of established and emerging historiographical trends. The events triggered by the uprising led by Tudor Vladimirescu and the Etairia movement — traditionally associated with the concept of revolution, but more recently interpreted as a secessionist movement of the Balkan Orthodox peoples from the Ottoman Empire — have been characterized as an ‘epoch threshold’. Originally conceptualized by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg, the notion of an ‘epochal threshold’ refers to a significant marker of an almost imperceptible transition between two historical eras. This concept provides a productive framework for a substantive debate, one that seeks to move beyond entrenched historiographical stereotypes.The fifteen studies included in this volume operate within this thematic and methodological horizon. They aim to analyze the cultural and political transformations of the period, offering new insights by examining the discursive practices and forms of solidarity that defined this transitional era.

The contributions brought together in this landmark edited collection focus on Cyrillic manuscripts and early printed editions from around 900 to 1800. They address a wide variety of topics that have not received sufficient attention in Western scholarship, including material, visual, and textual aspects. Collectively, the authors discuss scribal practices and multilingual manuscripts; visual exegesis; paleography; codicology and online databases; migration of manuscripts; fragmentology and digital reconstruction; and machine learning approaches, HTR models for transcriptions, and multi-spectral macrophotography.The project was initiated by the Balkan History Association and represents the work of twenty-one scholars from eight different countries.

The result of a research project by the Balkan Historical Association, this landmark edited collection explores various aspects of Russian influence in the Balkan region over the past three centuries. The concepts of Pan-Slavism and the Slavic brotherhood are well established due to long-established historical, religious and cultural ties. But relations between the Balkan countries and Russia have never been static. In this context, the authors of this volume aim to address Russia’s changing interests in the Balkans, and the responses from Balkan countries and other Great Power competitors. Perhaps most importantly, what might this long and complex historical engagement mean for the future of the area and for possible conflicts to come? The volume, which is a project initiated by the Balkan History Association brings together an impressive range of disciplinary expertise to address these questions and many others, and will be of interest to all those engaged in historical research on South-East Europe.