War and State Making at the End of Empire: Ottoman Collapse and the Formation of the Balkan States

Abstract

While the connection between war and state making in the ascendancy of the western state system has been well explored, the war‐state linkages in the peripheries of the Great Powers, especially in times of imperial decline and collapse, have attracted insufficient attention among peace and conflict studies analysts. This contribution helps to fill this gap by revisiting the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 to underpin correlations between state making and political violence in this case which scholars are only now starting to research in more detail. The article contributes above and beyond the existing state of scholarship by grounding the analysis in a focused and explicit comparison between state formation processes in the Balkans and those in western Europe, which have provided the template for modern state making in the rest of the world. The focus is primarily on the initial stages of state formation in the context of the growing influence of the Great Powers in the region and the emergence of nationalism as a rationale for the nation‐state notwithstanding the multiethnic setting.