Entangled Histories Of The Balkans Shared Pasts Disputed Legacies

Modern Balkan history has traditionally been studied by national historians in terms of separate national histories taking place within bounded state territories. The authors in this volume take a different approach. They view the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled histories. This regards the treatment of shared historical legacies by rival national historiographies. The volume deals with historiograpical disputes that arose in the process of “nationalizing” the past. Contributors include: Diana Mishkova, Alexander Vezenkov, Roumen Daskalov, Tchavdar Marinov and Bernard Lory.

Volume 4 is the last in the 'Entangled Balkans' series and marks the end of several years of research guided by the transnational, "entangled history" and histoire croisée approaches. The essays in this volume address theoretical and methodological issues of Balkan or Southeast European regional studies-not only questions of scholarly concepts, definitions, and approaches but also the extra-scholarly, ideological, political, and geopolitical motivations that underpin them. These issues are treated more systematically and by a presentation of their historical evolution in various national traditions and schools. Some of the essays deal with the articulation of certain forms of "Balkan heritage" in relation to the geographical spread and especially the cultural definition of the "Balkan area." Concepts and definitions of the Balkans are thus complemented by (self- )representations that reflect on their "cultural" foundations.

Modern Balkan history has traditionally been studied by national historians in terms of separate national histories taking place within bounded state territories. The authors in this volume take a different approach. They view the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled histories. This regards the treatment of shared historical legacies by rival national historiographies. The volume deals with historiograpical disputes that arose in the process of “nationalizing” the past.

'Entangled Balkans III' deals with historical legacies in the Balkans and the way they were appropriated by the modern Balkan national historiographies; also with disputes that arose in the course of “nationalizing' a shared past.

The present volume is the last in the Entangled Balkans series and marks the end of several years of research guided by the transnational, “entangled history” and histoire croisée approaches. The essays in this volume address theoretical and methodological issues of Balkan or Southeast European regional studies—not only questions of scholarly concepts, definitions, and approaches but also the extra-scholarly, ideological, political, and geopolitical motivations that underpin them. These issues are treated more systematically and by a presentation of their historical evolution in various national traditions and schools. Some of the essays deal with the articulation of certain forms of “Balkan heritage” in relation to the geographical spread and especially the cultural definition of the “Balkan area.” Concepts and definitions of the Balkans are thus complemented by (self-)representations that reflect on their cultural foundations.

Bulgaria’s entangled Muslim and Orthodox Christian pasts still shape contemporary notions of identity, religion, and politics—and secularism—in unexpected ways. This book freshly looks at how these vital traditions come up against one another and the challenges of the world today.

In The Cold War from the Margins, Theodora K. Dragostinova reappraises the global 1970s from the perspective of a small socialist state—Bulgaria—and its cultural engagements with the Balkans, the West, and the Third World. During this anxious decade, Bulgaria's communist leadership invested heavily in cultural diplomacy to bolster its legitimacy at home and promote its agendas abroad. Bulgarians traveled the world to open museum exhibitions, show films, perform music, and showcase the cultural heritage and future aspirations of their "ancient yet modern" country. As Dragostinova shows, these encounters transcended the Cold War's bloc mentality: Bulgaria's relations with Greece and Austria warmed, émigrés once considered enemies were embraced, and new cultural ties were forged with India, Mexico, and Nigeria. Pursuing contact with the West and solidarity with the Global South boosted Bulgaria's authoritarian regime by securing new allies and unifying its population. Complicating familiar narratives of both the 1970s and late socialism, The Cold War from the Margins places the history of socialism in an international context and recovers alternative models of global interconnectivity along East-South lines. Thanks to generous funding from The Ohio State University Libraries and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

This introduction to contemporary historical theory and practice shows how issues of identity have shaped how we write history. Stefan Berger charts how a new self-reflexivity about what is involved in the process of writing history entered the historical profession and the part that historians have played in debates about the past and its meaningfulness for the present. He introduces key trends in the theory of history such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, constructivism, narrativism and the linguistic turn and reveals, in turn, the ways in which they have transformed how historians have written history over the last four decades. The book ranges widely from more traditional forms of history writing, such as political, social, economic, labour and cultural history, to the emergence of more recent fields, including gender history, historical anthropology, the history of memory, visual history, the history of material culture, and comparative, transnational and global history.

The tumultuous history of the Balkans has been subject to a plethora of conflicting interpretations, both local and external. In an attempt to help overcome the stereotypes that still pervade Balkan history, Battling over the Balkans concentrates on a set of five principal controversies from the precommunist period with which the region’s history and historiography must contend: the pre-1914 Ottoman and Eastern Christian Orthodox legacies; the post-1918 struggles for state-building; the range of European economic and cultural influences across the interwar period, as opposed to diplomatic or political intervention; the role of violence and paramilitary forces in challenging the interwar political regimes in the region; and the fate of ethnic minorities into and after World War II, particularly Jews, Muslims and Roma. In an attempt to give a voice to eminent local authors, the chapters provide samples of new regional scholarship exploring these contested issues—most of them translated into English for the first time—and are prefaced with historiographical overviews addressing the state of the debate on these specific controversies. These translations help bridge the language barriers that often separate scholarly traditions within Southeast Europe, as well as scholars in Southeast Europe and English-speaking academia. This volume will enable readers to identify common patterns and influences that characterize the writing of history in the region, and will stimulate new transnational and comparative approaches to the history of the Balkans.