A History Of The War In The Balkans

This authoritative reference follows the history of conflicts in the Balkan Peninsula from the 19th century through the present day. The Balkan Peninsula, which consists of Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and the former Yugoslavia, resides in the southeastern part of the European continent. Its strategic location as well as its long and bloody history of conflict have helped to define the Balkans' role in global affairs. This singular reference focuses on the events, individuals, organizations, and ideas that have made this region an international player and shaped warfare there for hundreds of years. Historian and author Richard C. Hall traces the sociopolitical history of the area, starting with the early internal conflicts as the Balkan states attempted to break away from the Ottoman Empire to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that ignited World War I to the Yugoslav Wars that erupted in the 1990s and the subsequent war crimes still being investigated today. Additional coverage focuses on how these countries continue to play an important role in global affairs and international politics.

The Balkans is often described as a grim backwater, a "no man's land of world politics" in the words of a post-World War II study "foredoomed to conflict springing from heterogeneity." The stereotype is false, but it has been distressingly influential in shaping perceptions of the Balkan conflict and its origin. By encouraging pessimism about prospects for recovery, it may also make it more difficult to sustain commitments to post conflict peace building. This book seeks to refute simplistic "ancient hatreds" explanations by looking carefully at the sources and dynamics of the Balkan conflict in all of its dimensions.

In 1912, the Balkan states formed an alliance in an effort to break free from the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Forming an army of some 645,000 troops from Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenego, they took on a force of 400,000 Turkish soldiers. Both sides were equipped with the latest weapons technology. This book looks at the diverse and sometimes colourful uniforms worn by both sides, paying special attention to insignia, weapons and equipment. It also gives an overview of the campaigns that became a 'priming pan' of World War I.

Armed conflict on the territory of the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001 claimed over 200,000 lives, gave rise to atrocities unseen in Europe since the Second World War, and left behind a terrible legacy of physical ruin and psychological devastation. Unfolding against the background of the end of cold war bipolarity, the new Balkan wars sounded a discordant counterpoint to efforts to construct a more harmonious European order, were a major embarrassment for the international institutions deemed responsible for conflict management, and became a preoccupation for the powers concerned with restoring regional stability. After more than a decade of intermittent hostilities the conflict has been contained, but only as a result of significant external interventions and the establishment of a series of de facto international protectorates, patrolled by UN, NATO, and EU sponsored peacekeepers with open-ended mandates.

A contemporary history of the Balkans from the break-up of Yugoslavia to the present day, first published in 2006.

The history of the Balkans incorporates all the major historical themes of the 20th Century--the rise of nationalism, communism and fascism, state-sponsored genocide and urban warfare. Focusing on the centuries opening decades, War in the Balkans seeks to shed new light on the Balkan Wars through approaching each regional and ethnic conflict as a separate actor, before placing them in a wider context. Although top-down 'Great Powers' historiography is often used to describe the beginnings of the World War I, not enough attention has been paid to the events in the region in the years preceding the Archduke Ferdinand's assassination. The Balkan Wars saw the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the end of the Bulgarian Kingdom (then one of the most powerful military countries in the region), an unprecedented hardening of Serbian nationalism, the swallowing up of Slovenes, Croats and Slovaks in a larger Balkan entity, and thus set in place the pattern of border realignments which would become familiar for much of the twentieth century.

Though persistently overshadowed by the Great War in historical memory, the two Balkan conflicts of 1912–1913 were among the most consequential of the early twentieth century. By pitting the states of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro against a diminished Ottoman Empire—and subsequently against one another—they anticipated many of the horrors of twentieth-century warfare even as they produced the tense regional politics that helped spark World War I. Bringing together an international group of scholars, this volume applies the social and cultural insights of the “new military history” to revisit this critical episode with a central focus on the experiences of both combatants and civilians during wartime.

This book explores the historial role of the Balkan Wars. In Eastern Europe, the two Balkan Wars of 1912/13 had greater importance than the First World War for the construction of nations and states. This volume shows how these “short” wars profoundly changed the sociopolitical situation in the Balkans, with consequences that are still felt today. More than one hundred years later, the successors of the belligerent states in Southeastern Europe memorialize the wars as heroic highlights of their respective pasts. Furthermore, the metaphor that the Balkans were Europe’s “powder keg”, perpetuated at the beginning of the twentieth century in the face of these wars, was reactivated in both the West and the East up through the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The authors entangle the hitherto exclusive national master narratives and analyse them cogently and trenchantly for an international readership. They make an indispensable contribution to the proper integration of the Balkan Wars into the European historical memory of twentieth-century warfare.

This volume concentrates on the Balkan wars and World War II, focusing particularly on Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia since 1945.