Demographic Engineering and the Unionist Legacy

Abstract

Population transfers are commonly viewed as part of a large-scale, liberal technocratic effort to formalize displacement. A survey of the concept of demographic engineering permits a more dynamic interpretation of the mechanisms employed to force population movements and in particular the strategies underpinning them. Attempting to conceptualize forced migration in these terms has the potential to yield a more comprehensive understanding of the broader currents and practices in which it was embedded during the interwar period. The Young Turks and more especially the Committee of Union and Progress provide an exemplary case of a top-down exercise in demographic engineering designed to achieve ethnic homogeneity which reconfigured the map of the Balkan peninsula.