Final Report Summary - ENTANGLED BALKANS (Balkan Histories: Shared, Connected, Entangled)
Modern Balkan history has traditionally been studied by national historians in terms of separate national histories taking place within bounded state territories. The far fewer historians engaged in Balkan studies have a somewhat broader perspective. Yet, with a few notable exceptions, this is done with the essentialist presumption of firmly established and almost immutable entities of the interactions (usually ethnic groups).
In this research we applied a different approach and treated the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled, histories, transfers and crossings from both without and within. This also invites reflection on the interacting entities in the very process of their creation rather than taking them as givens. We explored in this vein a variegated number of topics grouped along several axes.
One set of researches focuses on the formation of national ideologies and identities in constant interaction between communities, or rather, between their activists engaged in struggles of cultural affirmation and territorial separation. We explored the Romanian-Greek and Bulgarian-Greek interactions and entanglements, the abortive attempt to create a wider Ottoman identity, and the formation of a Macedonian national ideology in intense disputes with, but also borrowings from, Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian nationalism. A related group of contributions deals with the formation of literary languages and language policies, again guided by the idea of differentiation from, and opposition to, neighboring peoples. We explored the fortunes of Serbo-Croatian, the standardization of the Macedonian language and the formation of the literary Albanian language.
Another set of contributions examines the transfer and adaptation of ideas and institutions in the region. We first dealt with the debates that the various imports occasioned in the receiver societies by trying to distance ourselves from the highly critical opinions of “forms without substance”. We then explored the transfer and adaptation of liberalism, socialism, agrarianism, fascism and communism by taking special interest in the way ideas and institutions were selected, transferred and adapted to local conditions and how they interacted with those conditions, resulting in mélange and hybridization. The transfers and imports were guided by one central issue: the adaptation to modernity and the search for paths of national development. This produced various modernities in the region most often experienced as deficient and stunted.
Another axis of research delves into legacies in the Balkans and how these were appropriated by historiographies often at war with each other. Paradoxically, it is in debates on division of legacies that the interconnectedness of the Balkan peoples transpires most clearly. The legacies addressed are emblematic of the region: the Byzantine and the Ottoman legacy, which stand in continuity, but also the Thracian legacy as representative of the “Thracian-Illyrian” paleo-Balkan culture. Treated are also more specific issues, such as how Bulgarian and Romanian historians still fight over the two Bulgarian medieval kingdoms. Another example is how historians of the various Balkan nations try to “synchronize” their histories with the (Western) European historical evolution by discovering their own “Renaissances” and “Enlightenments” while trying hard to ignore the Ottoman context.
Another set of contributions engages theoretically with
ways of making Balkan history and their political motivations and try to demonsrate the advantages of the transnational approaches and its consequences for regionalism. There are finally some case studies ranging from perceptions of space and time to architecture and cinema that demonstrate again the interconnectedness and exchanges. Thus we presented an open-ended paradigm that can accommodate a lot of potential researches.
In this research we applied a different approach and treated the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled, histories, transfers and crossings from both without and within. This also invites reflection on the interacting entities in the very process of their creation rather than taking them as givens. We explored in this vein a variegated number of topics grouped along several axes.
One set of researches focuses on the formation of national ideologies and identities in constant interaction between communities, or rather, between their activists engaged in struggles of cultural affirmation and territorial separation. We explored the Romanian-Greek and Bulgarian-Greek interactions and entanglements, the abortive attempt to create a wider Ottoman identity, and the formation of a Macedonian national ideology in intense disputes with, but also borrowings from, Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian nationalism. A related group of contributions deals with the formation of literary languages and language policies, again guided by the idea of differentiation from, and opposition to, neighboring peoples. We explored the fortunes of Serbo-Croatian, the standardization of the Macedonian language and the formation of the literary Albanian language.
Another set of contributions examines the transfer and adaptation of ideas and institutions in the region. We first dealt with the debates that the various imports occasioned in the receiver societies by trying to distance ourselves from the highly critical opinions of “forms without substance”. We then explored the transfer and adaptation of liberalism, socialism, agrarianism, fascism and communism by taking special interest in the way ideas and institutions were selected, transferred and adapted to local conditions and how they interacted with those conditions, resulting in mélange and hybridization. The transfers and imports were guided by one central issue: the adaptation to modernity and the search for paths of national development. This produced various modernities in the region most often experienced as deficient and stunted.
Another axis of research delves into legacies in the Balkans and how these were appropriated by historiographies often at war with each other. Paradoxically, it is in debates on division of legacies that the interconnectedness of the Balkan peoples transpires most clearly. The legacies addressed are emblematic of the region: the Byzantine and the Ottoman legacy, which stand in continuity, but also the Thracian legacy as representative of the “Thracian-Illyrian” paleo-Balkan culture. Treated are also more specific issues, such as how Bulgarian and Romanian historians still fight over the two Bulgarian medieval kingdoms. Another example is how historians of the various Balkan nations try to “synchronize” their histories with the (Western) European historical evolution by discovering their own “Renaissances” and “Enlightenments” while trying hard to ignore the Ottoman context.
Another set of contributions engages theoretically with
ways of making Balkan history and their political motivations and try to demonsrate the advantages of the transnational approaches and its consequences for regionalism. There are finally some case studies ranging from perceptions of space and time to architecture and cinema that demonstrate again the interconnectedness and exchanges. Thus we presented an open-ended paradigm that can accommodate a lot of potential researches.