This is a rich yet succinct account of an underexplored story: the consequences of the Great War for the region which ignited it. It offers a fascinating tapestry: the collapse of Empires, the birth of Turkey and Yugoslavia, Greece as both victor and loser, Bulgaria's humiliating defeat; bitter memories, forced migrations, territorial implications and collective national amnesias. The legacies live on. The contributions in this volume significantly enhance the debate about how the Great War is remembered in South East Europe, and why it still evokes such strong emotions and reactions, more than a century after its beginnings.
Balkan Legacies is a study of the aftermath of war and state socialism in the contemporary Balkans. The authors look at the inescapable inheritances of the recent past and those that the present has to deal with. The book’s key theme is the interaction, often subliminal, of the experiences of war and socialism in contemporary society in the region. Fifteen contributors approach this topic from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and through a variety of interpretive lenses, collectively drawing a composite picture of the most enduring legacies of conflict and ideological transition in the region, without neglecting national and local peculiarities. The guiding questions addressed are: what is the relationship between memories of war, dictatorship (communist or fascist), and present-day identity—especially from the perspective of peripheral and minority groups and individuals? How did these components interact with each other to produce the political and social culture of the Balkan Peninsula today? The answers show the ways in which the experiences of the latter part of the twentieth century have defined and shaped the region in the twenty-first century.
In late 2007 and early 2008, world-renowned historians gathered in Kansas City for a series of public forums on World War I. Each of the five events focused on a particular topic and featured spirited dialogue between its prominent participants. In spontaneous exchanges, the eminent scholars probed each other’s arguments, learned from each other, and provided insights not just into history but also into the way scholars think about their subject alongside and at times in conflict with their colleagues. Representing a fourth generation of writers on the Great War and a transnational rather than an international approach, prominent historians Niall Ferguson and Paul Kennedy, Holger Afflerbach and Gary Sheffield, John Horne and Len Smith, John Milton Cooper and Margaret MacMillan, and Jay Winter and Robert Wohl brought to the proceedings an exciting clash of ideas. The forums addressed topics about the Great War that have long fascinated both scholars and the educated public: the origins of the war and the question of who was responsible for the escalation of the July Crisis; the nature of generalship and military command, seen here from the perspectives of a German and a British scholar; the private soldiers’ experiences of combat, revealing their strategies of survival and negotiation; the peace-making process and the overwhelming pressures under which statesmen worked; and the long-term cultural consequences of the war—showing that the Great War was “great” not merely because of its magnitude but also because of its revolutionary effects. These topics continue to reverberate, and in addition to shedding new light on the subjects, these forums constitute a glimpse at how historical writing happens. American society did not suffer the consequences of the Great War that virtually all European countries knew—a lack of perspective that the National World War I Museum seeks to correct. This book celebrates that effort, helping readers feel the excitement and the moral seriousness of historical scholarship in this field and drawing more Americans into considering how their own history is part of this story.
In the winter of 1915, following the invasion of Serbia by the Central Powers, the Serbian Army retreated across the mountains of Albania and Montenegro together with thousands of civilians. Around 240,000 lost their lives. Today, the story of the retreat is little known, except in Serbia where it is represents the heroic Serbian sacrifice in the Great War. In this book Alex Tomić examines the centenary events memorializing the First World War with the retreat at its core, and provides a persuasive account of the ways in which the remembrance of Serbian history has been manipulated for political purposes. Whether through commemorations, ceremonies, or grass- root initiatives, she demonstrates how these have been used as distractions from the more recent unexamined past and in doing so provides an important new perspective on the cultural history of commemoration.
By narrating the Sarajevo assassination in a broad historical context, Misfire contends that the most consequential political murder in modern history would have remained inconsequential if not for the decisions made by the leaders of Europe's Great Powers.
Exploring how the U.S. military can move beyond Iraq and Afghanistan Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. military has been fighting incessantly in conflicts around the globe, often with inconclusive results. The legacies of these conflicts have serious implications for how the United States will wage war in the future. Yet there is a stunning lack of introspection about these conflicts. Never in modern U.S. history has the military been at war for so long. And never in U.S. history have such long wars demanded so much of so few. The legacy of wars without end include a military that feels the painful effects of war but often feels alone. The public is less connected to the military now than at any point in modern U.S. history. The national security apparatus seeks to pivot away from these engagements and to move on to the next threats—notably those emanating from China and Russia. Many young Americans question whether it even makes sense to invest in the military. At best, there are ad hoc, unstructured debates about Iraq or Afghanistan. Simply put, there has been no serious, organized stock-taking by the public, politicians, opinion leaders, or the military itself of this inheritance. Despite being at war for the longest continuous period in its history, the military is woefully unprepared for future wars. But the United States cannot simply hit the reset button. This book explores this inheritance by examining how nearly two decades of war have influenced civil-military relations, how the military goes to war, how the military wages war, who leads the military and who serves in it, how the military thinks about war, and above all, the enduring impact of these wars on those who waged them. If the U.S. military seeks to win in the future, it must acknowledge and reconcile with the inheritance of its long and inconclusive wars. This book seeks to help them do so.
This book centers on the Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, published in Washington in the early summer of 1914 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The volume was born from the conviction that the full assessment of the significance of the Carnegie Report—one of the first international non-governmental fact-finding missions with the intention to promote peace—requires a deeper exploration of the context of its birth. The authors examine how the countries involved in the wars handled the inquires of the Carnegie Commission and the role of the report in the remembrance of the wars in the respective states. Although the report considered both the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan nation-states insufficiently civilized to wage wars within the limits of the codes of conduct of international law, this orientalist conclusion can in part be explained by the liberal internationalist strategy of the Carnegie Endowment, and of the commission members’ professional, political, and ethnic background. Overshadowed by the outbreak of World War I, the Carnegie Report’s direct impact on international arbitration or international criminal law was limited, yet—in the authors’ opinion—it ultimately contributed to the further juridification of international relations
In The Balkan Wars 1912-1913, Richard Hall examines the origins, the enactment and the resolution of the Balkan Wars, during which the Ottoman Empire fought a Balkan coalition of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia. The Balkan Wars of 1912 - 1913 opened an era of conflict in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, which lasted until 1918, and which established a basis for problems which tormented Europe until the end of the century. Based on archival as well as published diplomatic and military sources, this book provides the first comprehensive perspective on the diplomatic and military aspects of the Balkan Wars. It demonstrates that, because of the diplomatic problems raised and the military strategies and tactics pursued to resolve those problems, The Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 were the first phase of the greater and wider conflict of the First World War.
The Balkans, war, and migration / Nedim Ipek -- The Balkan wars and the refugee leadership of the early Turkish republic / Erik Jan Zürcher -- The traumatic legacy of the Balkan wars for Turkish intellectuals / Funda Selçuk Şirin -- The loss of the lost : the effects of the Balkan wars on the construction of modern Turkish nationalism / Mehmet Arısan -- What did the Albanians do? : postwar disputes on Albanian attitudes / Çağdaş Sümer -- The legacy and impacts of the defeat in the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 on the psychological makeup of the Turkish officer corps / Doğan Akyaz -- The influence of the Balkan wars on the two military officers who would have the greatest impact on the fortunes of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey / Preston Hughes -- More history than they can consume? : perception of the Balkan wars in Turkish republican textbooks (1932-2007) / Nazan Çiçek -- Chronology of the Balkan wars
From 1967 to 1974, the military junta ruling Greece attempted a dramatic reshaping of the nation, implementing ideas and policies that left a lasting mark on both domestic affairs and international relations. Bringing together leading scholars from a range of disciplines, The Greek Military Dictatorship explores the junta’s attempts to impose authoritarian rule upon a rapidly modernizing country while navigating a complex international landscape. Focusing both on foreign relations as well as domestic matters such as economics, ideology, religion, culture and education, this book offers a fresh and well-researched study of a key period in modern Greek history.
