The Balkan Wars: violence and nation-building in the Balkans, 1912–13

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the place of the Balkan Wars (1912–13) within the framework of the evolution of the modern nation-state in the region. The two Balkan Wars represented a form of ‘people’s war’ insofar as the region’s nation-states collectively marshalled their resources to prosecute wars of national liberation against a declining imperial power but also against the indigenous peoples who were deemed to represent the progeny of the Ottoman state. This article explores patterns in the evolution of political violence in the region, and in doing so seeks to address the impact of the Balkan Wars on the region and its societies. The critically important decade between the First Balkan War (1912) and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) can be seen as an integral whole. The Balkan Wars were not simply a prelude to the First World War but rather, when viewed in the sequence of conflicts played out to 1923, one of the catalysts for forced population displacement. Rather than viewing the Balkan Wars only in a regional context, as the endpoint of a century of national liberation struggles, they may be regarded equally as marking a beginning, even as one of the starting points in the history of twentieth-century violence in Europe, in terms of the role of the state, the trend towards more radicalized forms of warfare (i.e. widespread and systematic attacks against civilians) and their homogenizing, ‘ethnic’ character.