Studies on South East Europe

Sabine Rutar (Ed.)

Beyond the Balkans

Towards an Inclusive History of
Southeastern Europe

LIT

Studies on South East Europe

edited by

Prof. Dr. Karl Kaser

(Graz)

vol. 10

LIT

Beyond the Balkans

Towards an Inclusive History
of Southeastern Europe
edited by

Sabine Rutar

LIT

To the memory of Klaus Tenfelde (1944 2011)

He was many things, but no Southeast Europeanist.
Yet, without his intellectual curiosity and generous support
this project would never have gotten off the ground.

Editing work on this volume was generously supported by

the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg.
Cover Image:
Drawing by Y. Hakan Erdem (Istanbul), Bochum, January 2007
Layout and typesetting: Jelena Jojevic
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
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ISBN 978-3-643-10658-2
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Contents
Sabine Rutar"
Introduction: Beyond the Balkans"

Part I
Space and Temporality, Entanglement and Transfer
John Breuilly
Nationalism and the Balkans: A Global Perspective

29

Diana Mishkova
On the Space-Time Constitution of Southeastern Europe

47

Guido Franzinetti
Irish and Eastern European Questions

67

Vangelis Kechriotis
Requiem for the Empire: Elective Affinities Between the
Balkan States and the Ottoman Empire in the Long 19th Century

97

Augusta Dimou
Towards a Social and Cultural History of Cooperative
Associations in Interwar Bulgaria

123

Wim van Meurs

The Burden of Universal Suffrage and Parliamentary
Democracy in (Southeastern) Europe

161

Helke Stadtland
Sakralisierte Nation und skularisierte Religion:
Beispiele aus dem Westen und Norden Europas

181

Katrin Boeckh
Perspektiven einer Religions- und Kirchengeschichte
des sdstlichen Europas: Netze ber Raum und Zeit

199

Part II
Approaching Agency
Y. Hakan Erdem
Turks as Soldiers in Mahmud IIs Army: Turning the
Evlad- Fatihan into Regulars in the Ottoman Balkans

227

Stefano Petrungaro
Fire and Honour. On the Comparability of Popular
Protests in late 19th Century Croatia-Slavonia

247

Borut Klabjan
Puzzling (Out) Citizenship and Nationality: Czechs in
Trieste before and after the First World War

265

Vesna Drapac
Catholic Resistance and Collaboration in the Second
World War: From Master Narrative to Practical Application

279

Sabine Rutar
Towards a Southeast European History of Labour:
Examples from Yugoslavia

323

Part III
Creating Meaning
Stefan Rohdewald
Nationale Identitten durch Kyrill und Method:
Diskurse, Praktiken und Akteure ihrer Verehrung
unter den Sdslawen bis 1945

357

Stefan Ihrig
Why Them and Not Us? The Kreuzzeitung,
the German Far Right, and the Turkish War of
Independence, 1919-1923

377

Amaia Lamikiz Jauregiondo

Maintaining Alternative Memories under an
Authoritarian Regime: Basque Cultural Associations
in the 1960s and Early 1970s

405

Falk Pingel
Begegnungen mit einem Kulturkampf.
Notizen zur internationalen Bildungsintervention
in Bosnien und Herzegowina

423

Vanni DAlessio
Divided and Contested Cities in Modern European History.
The Example of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina

447

Contributors

477"

Index

483"

Sabine Rutar
Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

This book outlines research perspectives for southeast European history, envisaging it as a comprehensive part of European and global history. It does so in a
way that is significantly different from previous approaches. The debates about
the mental map of the Balkans as the negative alter ego of the West (Maria
Todorova), on the one hand, and about the construction of the Balkans as a historical space sui generis (Holm Sundhaussen), on the other, provide the framework for the reflections presented here. The chapters follow a methodological
consensus intended to foster a comprehensive inclusion of southeastern Europe
in European and global history writing.
Before going into details, a word on a linguistic convention applied in this
volume: a decade ago, Karl Kaser proposed a conceptual change away from the
rather rigidly perceived geographical spatial container of Sdosteuropa towards
the more open term sdstliches Europa.1 This linguistic trick has also been
adopted in other areas; with the foundation of research centres like the Gieener
Zentrum stliches Europa it has been institutionalized. The terms westliches
Europa and stliches Europa have become conventions among scholars, and
such usage is most probably independent of Kasers suggestion.2 Thus a more
general trend to semantically de-essentialize (historical) space is noticeable. In
English, the same semantic difference can be signalled by the use of capital or
small letters. Consequently, Western Australia is a fixed geographical space,
while western Texas is simply the loosely defined western part of Texas. However, English native speakers have confirmed my doubts about the transferability of this difference to the terms Southeastern Europe vs. southeastern Europe
and Western Europe vs. western Europe. Be that as it may, in this volume, the
authors have chosen not to capitalize geographical directions, and their intention
is precisely to emphasize the dynamics, flexibilities, temporalities, constructed
nature and hermeneutic semantics of any spatial definition and boundary.3

1
2

Karl KASER, Sdosteuropische Geschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft, Wien, Kln, Weimar 22002, 22-23.
Examples are Hartmut KAELBLE, Kalter Krieg und Wohlfahrtsstaat. Europa 1945-1989, Mnchen 2011; Martin SCHULZE WESSEL, Nationalisierung der Religion und Sakralisierung der
Nation im stlichen Europa, Stuttgart 2006.
For a global perspective on geographic-historical (mis-)conceptions of space cf. Martin W.
LEWIS / Karen E. WIGEN, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, Berkeley
1997.

Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

This book does not attempt comprehensive thematic coverage. The contributors specialize either in southeast or west European history and have written essays guided by a corresponding theoretical, methodological, and conceptual interest. They problematize concepts of space, time, and scale, and they touch upon questions of nationalism, imperialism, ethnicity, religion, cultural reference
systems, practices of remembrance and symbolic semantics, citizenship, statebuilding, democratization, dictatorship, political parties, fascism, national socialism, collaboration, resistance, as well as aspects of military, war and postwar, economic, media, labour, and urban history. The books focus lies on historical agency and on what Alf Ldtke and others after him have conceptualized
as Eigen-Sinn. Although the concept Eigen-Sinn has seen a certain proliferation,
it has rarely been used in studies of southeastern Europe. The concept describes
contexts of interaction and communication as well as the institutions and networks that configure human motivations, loyalties, and actions, both individually and as patterns. It has mostly been applied to the study of authoritarian societies.4
This volumes most serious omission, it seems to me, is the lack of gender
and/or womens history. I attempted to find a suitable author on this topic, but
for one reason or another no text materialized. Other important fields of historical research have not been included, either. But I am less concerned about thematic omissions. Clearly there are more themes than could possibly have been
dealt with in any one volume. What is important is the common tune struck up
by the analogous approaches to questions of writing European and global history from a southeastern perspective.
Structural Devices and Imaginaries
The Balkans still tend to be characterized, often in a rather unreflective manner,
as negative, backward, chaotic, and violent terms like powder keg and balkanization immediately come to mind. With reference to eastern and western
types of European nationalisms, Maria Todorova aptly notes that the representation of European space in western societies is underpinned by a mental pattern
that is guided by a qualitative hierarchy in which whoever is on top precedes the
others in time. As a consequence, societies defined as Western are by definition the progressive ones that have discovered things. Their eastern neighbours,
logically, are only derivatives of the original, and thus of inferior quality. They
4

Alf LDTKE, Eigen-Sinn. Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis
in den Faschismus, Hamburg 1993; Thomas LINDENBERGER (ed.), Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn
in der Diktatur. Studien zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR, Kln, Weimar, Wien 1999.
Inspiring are also many of the contributions to Belinda DAVIS / Thomas LINDENBERGER / Michael WILDT (eds.), Alltag, Erfahrung, Eigensinn. Historisch-anthropologische Erkundungen,
Frankfurt/M. 2008.

Sabine Rutar

are, in short, subaltern importers of others ideas.5 From such a perspective,

even nationalism, which is a global phenomenon that developed consecutively
over the long dure, ends up being interpreted in a hierarchical and qualitative
manner, and a rather narrowly European one, too. The eastern and southeastern
variants of nationalism are characterized as less progressive, less civil, more
ethnic and substantially more negative than their western counterparts. Todorova argues that exploring the dialogical nature of historical development
could help to create a more balanced picture, analogous to what Reinhart Koselleck has called the contemporaneity of the uncontemporaneous, that is the
temporal layers of diverse duration and origin which however take effect contemporaneously.6 Koselleck has never been understood as wishing to do away
with historical temporal sequences and this is not Todorovas goal, either. Her
plea is directed against the moralizing stance inherent to the progress vs. backwardness dichotomy and towards a more complex perspective. In this sense, she
advocates a decisive spatial and temporal dynamization of historical thinking.7
The contributors to this volume accomplish just that. They invite us to engage in a dialogue that strengthens our consciousness of yet unexplored potential and also to reflect upon our own cultural framing. This amounts to an updated variant of what Jrgen Kocka wrote more than a decade ago with reference to east central Europe: the imperative is to take up the challenge to create a
comparative and entangled European history that includes, in a balanced manner, all of Europes subregions.8 A vast array of topics remains understudied,
and the heuristic potential is enormous. This is particularly true with regard to
methodological and theoretical connections to wider European and global
themes. By fostering the dialogue not only in the fields of social and cultural

Maria TODOROVA, The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of
Eastern European Nationalism, in: Slavic Review 64 (2005), no. 1, 140-164, 149-150. Cf. also
Stephen SHULMAN, Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East Dichotomies in the Study of
Nationalism, in: Comparative Political Studies 35 (2002), no. 5, 554-85. On the not to be underestimated self-identifications of southeast Europeans in this regard cf. Alexander KIOSSEV,
Self-Colonizing Metaphor, in: Zbynek BALADRN / Vit HAVRNEK (eds.), Atlas of Transformation, Prague / Zrich 2010, available at http://monumenttotransformation.org/atlas-oftransformation/html/s/self-colonization/the-self-colonizing-metaphor-alexander-kiossev.html.
Reinhart KOSELLECK. Zeitschichten. Studien zur Historik, Frankfurt am Main 2000, 9. The
concept originally refers back to Ernst BLOCH, Erbschaft dieser Zeit, Frankfurt/M. 1962 (orig.
1935), 104 and passim.
TODOROVA, The Trap of Backwardness, 145. Cf. the analogous reflections in Ivn Zoltn
DNES, Liberalism and Nationalism: An Ambiguous Relationship, in: Id. (ed.), Liberty and
the Search for Identity. Liberal Nationalisms and the Legacy of Empires, Budapest / New
York 2006, 1-17, 3 and 8: A way should be found to avoid the usual schematic models of the
original backwardness of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, the different romantic nationalistic Sonderwegs and their various national uniqueness mythologies [emphasis in the
original, S.R.].
Jrgen KOCKA, Das stliche Mitteleuropa als Herausforderung fr eine vergleichende Geschichte Europas, in: Zeitschrift fr Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 49 (2000), no. 49, 159-174.

10

Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

history, but also in the new political history, the interrelations and transfer
routes between southeastern Europe, the rest of the continent, and the world become apparent. Until now, these connections have largely been hidden beneath
both lingering mental mappings and the institutionalized boundaries between
so-called general history and its geographically defined subdisciplines. Unfortunately, twenty years after the end of the bipolar system, ten years after the first
EU enlargement eastwards, and at the moment when the second Yugoslav successor state, Croatia, joins the union, there continues to be relatively little discussion among geographically defined subdisciplines, and especially so when it
comes to the Balkans. An intensified methodological and theoretical dialogue
could contribute significantly to fostering empirical research that either confirms or rejects what, until now, has largely been framed by persistent and exclusionary mental mappings.
To be sure, for southeast European historical studies (and related fields), Carsten Goehrkes and Heiko Haumanns point about eastern Europe remains valid:
studying it in the framework of a separate subdiscipline will only become superfluous when historians have achieved an equal standing among themselves. This
goal must be accomplished with regard to historians linguistic training and
their cultural predispositions, regardless of whether they study Russia, Hungary,
Serbia, England, France or Switzerland.9 From the postulate to do away with
Eastern European History10 to the so-called spatial turn the search for specific
historical features and structures that define historical regions11 the debate has
focused on east central and eastern Europe, largely ignoring southeast European
regions.12

10

11

12

Carsten GOEHRKE / Heiko HAUMANN, Osteuropa und Osteuropische Geschichte. Konstruktionen Geschichtsbilder Aufgaben. Ein Beitrag aus Schweizer Sicht, in: Jahrbcher fr Geschichte Osteuropas 52 (2004), no. 4, 585-596, 591.
Jrg BABEROWSKI, Das Ende der Osteuropischen Geschichte, in: Osteuropa 48 (1998), no. 89, 784-99. His was a reply to Thomas BREMER / Wim van MEURS / Klaus MLLER, Vorwrts
in die Vergangenheit? Zur Zukunft der Osteuropaforschung, in: ibid. 48 (1998), no. 4, 408416. Cf. also the subsequent reaction by Dietrich BEYRAU, Totgesagte leben lnger. Die
Osteuropa-Disziplinen im Dschungel der Wissenschaften, in: Osteuropa 48 (1998), no. 10,
1041-1049; for a synthesis of the discussion e. g. Stefan CREUTZBERGER et al. (eds.), Wohin
steuert die Osteuropaforschung? Eine Diskussion, Kln 2000.
In the path of Karl SCHLGEL, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit. ber Zivilisationsgeschichte und
Geopolitik, Mnchen 2003. Cf. Ulrike JUREIT, Raumbilder sind die Trume der Gesellschaft. Zur Organisation des Nebeneinanders, in: Id., Das Ordnen von Rumen. Territorium
und Lebensraum im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Hamburg 2012, 7-29, esp. 10-15, for a critical
assessment of the consequences of the so-called spatial turn.
In a rather defensive dialectic (with regard to the subdiscipline Eastern European History)
Frithjof Benjamin SCHENK, Der spatial turn und die Osteuropische Geschichte, in: H-Soz-uKult, 1 June, 2006, available at <http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/forum/2006-06-001>.
In what sounds like an echo of what is put forth in this volume, he pointed out that precisely
the field of tension between the perspective onto a historical region as an invention, construction and product of processes of perception and communication on the one hand, and its un-

Sabine Rutar

11

Todorovas exposition of the persistence of (negative) mental maps of the

Balkans13 was countered by Holm Sundhaussen, who constructed the Balkans as
a historical region that is distinguished by nine elements: 1) instability and ethnic heterogeneity; 2) loss and late perception of ancient heritage; 3) ByzantineOrthodox heritage; 4) anti-western dispositions and patterns of cultural distancing from western and east central Europe; 5) Ottoman-Islamic heritage; 6)
socio-economic backwardness in the modern era; 7) the modalities of state and
nation-building processes; 8) mentality and inclination to historical mythopoesis; 9) the Balkans as an instrument of Great Power politics. It is not the individual elements, he continued, but their clustering over a long period of time that
turns the region into something historically specific.14 Todorova denounced the
(cultural) presupposition that the West is naturally inscribed with features
and values like tolerance, democracy, and rationality, while these same features
are equally naturally declared to be non-existent in the Balkans. Hence the
proposal to Europeanize, indeed globalize, the Balkans since the only valid
presupposition is that the historical complexity of the Balkans as a European
subregion can only be understood within a wider European and global context,
and without declaring the subregion West to be the norm and the subregion
Southeast to be its deviation.15 Sundhaussen declared himself in favour of difference, i.e. in favour of the right of this historical-cultural entity located in the
area south of the Danube and Sava rivers, to be different. Both Todorova and
Sundhaussen have a point. It quickly became apparent that they were concerned
about quite different matters: Todorova about imaginaries, and Sundhaussen
about spatial boundaries that can claim historical legitimacy. The latter later

13

14

15

derstanding as a structural and structuring space on the other offers plurifold linkages to
analogus terrains of European history writing.
Maria TODOROVA, Imagining the Balkans, New York 1997. Todorova drew on Milica BAKI4HAYDEN, Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia, in: Slavic Review 54
(1995), no. 4, 917-931. Among the pertinent works on discursive Balkanism that followed
suit are Vesna GOLDWORTHY, Inventing Ruritania. The Imperialism of the Imagination, London 22013 (orig. 1998), Pamela BALLINGER, Definitional Dilemmas: Southeastern Europe as
Culture Area?, in: Balkanologie 3 (Dezember 1999), no. 2, 73-91; Duan I. BJELI4 / Obrad
SAVI4 (eds.), Balkan as Metaphor. Between Globalization and Fragmentation, Cambridge/Ma.
2003.
His reaction was to the quite poor German translation of TODOROVA, Imagining the Balkans, see Die Erfindung des Balkans: Europas bequemes Vorurteil, Darmstadt 1999. Cf.
Holm SUNDHAUSSEN, Europa balcanica. Der Balkan als historischer Raum Europas, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 25 (1999), n. 4, 626-653. Following this essay, the debate between
the two scholars continued in the same journal, cf. Maria TODOROVA, Der Balkan als Analysekategorie: Grenzen, Raum, Zeit, in: ibid. 28 (2002), n. 3, 470-492; Holm SUNDHAUSSEN,
Der Balkan: Ein Pldoyer fr Differenz, in: ibid. 29 (2003), n. 4, 608-624.
TODOROVA, Der Balkan als Analysekategorie, 489.

12

Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

summarized the previous debate with Todorova and wrote about the mingling
of mental map and historical region.16
Writing European and Global History
In so-called general European history writing, southeastern Europe has largely
been omitted, and maybe it is here that the notions of being different and of being constructed as the spatial and temporal other have led to the most regrettable consequences. A lively debate about a renewed European history, which has
been broadened and enhanced by analytical categories like translocality, transregionality, transnationality and globality, has been under way for years. Participants have sought to include the eastern European space in this debate. Yet, for
the most part they have done so to the exclusion of the southern part of eastern
Europe.17 In fact, the latter continues to be consciously excluded from histories
of Europe and the world.18 Apart from certain historical moments, southeastern

16

17

18

Holm SUNDHAUSSEN, Die Wiederentdeckung des Raums: ber Nutzen und Nachteil von Geschichtsregionen, in: Konrad CLEWING / Oliver Jens SCHMITT (eds.), Sdosteuropa. Von vormoderner Vielfalt und nationalstaatlicher Vereinheitlichung. Festschrift fr Edgar Hsch,
Mnchen 2005, 13-34, 30. For a good overview of the semantics of the concepts Balkans,
Southeastern Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and of the historiographic debates connected to them cf. Stefano PETRUNGARO, LEuropa dellEst, o a est dellEuropa. In
margine a un dibattito intorno a mental maps, confini e balcanismo, in: 900. Per una storia del
tempo presente 10 (2004), 77-86; for Germany cf. Dietmar MLLER, Southeastern Europe as a
Historical Meso-region: Constructing Space in Twentieth-Century German Historiography,
in: European Review of History 10 (2003), no. 2, 393-408.
Cf. the forum Zur Europizitt des stlichen Europa, May/June 2006, available at <http://
hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/index.asp?id=744&pn=texte>; Anna Veronika WENDLAND,
Randgeschichten? Osteuropische Perspektiven auf Kulturtransfer und Verflechtungsgeschichte, in: Osteuropa 58 (2008), no. 3, 59-116. Of the vast literature on how to
conceptualize comparative, entangled, relational, and global history I mention only Jrgen
OSTERHAMMEL, Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des Nationalstaats: Studien zu Beziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisationsvergleich, Gttingen 22003, who does consider the southeast European space; Heinz-Gerhard HAUPT / Jrgen KOCKA (eds.), Beyond Comparison? Debates on
Comparative and Transnational History in Germany, New York 2008, who do not take much
account of it. The contributions to Agnes ARNDT / Joachim C. HBERLEIN / Christiane
REINECKE (eds.), Vergleichen, Verflechten, Verwirren? Europische Geschichtsschreibung
zwischen Theorie und Praxis, Gttingen 2011, are a welcome exercise in both including eastern Europe and reflecting upon the western bias (Bo Strth, 67). Unfortunately, no southeast Europeanist has been invited to contribute to this volume, either. To be sure, Hungary is
included (as a part of east central Europe, Mrkus KELLER), as well as a comparative look at
the British and Habsburg Empires (Bruno GAMMERL).
Josep FONTANA, The Distorted Past. A Re-interpretation of Europe, Oxford 1995, is a case in
point, providing for an otherwise fascinating reading. Another history of Europe that omits
the Balkans and Turkey is Rainer LIEDTKE, Geschichte Europas. Von 1815 bis zur
Gegenwart, Paderborn 2010. Omitting this other, this periphery Balkans seems particularly
telling in volumes that expressis verbis are concerned with Europes fringes and with pro-

Sabine Rutar

13

Europe is deemed too peripheral to be of much relevance, even in those accounts that do not programmatically exclude it. Ultimately, in both European
and global histories, one does not learn much about southeastern Europe.19 Instead, information is communicated in a subtle way and/or without much reflection. It genuinely comes across as a negative or at best completely uninteresting other. To be sure, such othering has been practiced not only in the
western part of the continent, but also in east central Europe, eastern Europe,
and not least within southeastern Europe itself.20
This is not to say that works that attempt to take a genuinely comprehensive
European approach do not exist. They do mostly in the form of collective volumes and online projects. These works signal that the path paved by the authors
of this volume has in fact begun to be trodden, albeit cautiously and often as an
effect of individual academic networks rather than programmatic research. But
this may be a harbinger of things to come.21

19

20

21

cesses of othering, cf. Frank BSCH / Ariane BRILL / Florian GREINER (eds.), Europabilder im
20. Jahrhundert. Entstehung an der Peripherie, Gttingen 2012; Bo STRTH (ed.), Europe and
the Other and Europe as the Other, Bruxelles et al. 42010 (2000). Both volumes include eastern Europe, yet focus on non-European areas.
Examples are Julian JACKSON (ed.), Europe 1900-1945, Oxford 22009; and Mary FULBROOK
(ed.), Europe Since 1945, Oxford 32009. Both volumes are part of the Short Oxford History
of Europe and both feature chapters on Europes interconnections with the wider world
(Rajnarayan CHANDAVARKAR, Imperialism and the European Empires; and David
ARMSTRONG / Erik GOLDSTEIN, Interaction with the Non-European World). Other examples
include Tony JUDT, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945, New York 2005; Hartmut
KAELBLE (ed.), The European Way. European Societies During the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries, New York 2004; Peter N. STEARNS (ed.), Encyclopedia of European Social History. From 1350 to 2000, 6 vols., New York et al. 2001; David REYNOLDS, One World Divisible: a Global History since 1945, London 2000; Gran THERBORN, European Modernity and
Beyond: the Trajectory of European Societies, 1945-2000, London / Thousand Oaks/Ca.,
1995. Eric J. HOBSBAWMs eminent trilogy also belongs here (The Age of Capital, 1848-1875,
London 1977; The Age of Empire, 1875-1914, London 1987; Age of Extremes. The Short
Twentieth Century 1914-1991, London 1994).
Cf. KIOSSEV, Self-Colonizing Metaphor. On the southern part of eastern Europe in the context
of a problematization of the spatial category of the European south cf. Stefan TROEBST, Le
Monde mditerranen Sdosteuropa Black Sea World. Geschichtsregionen im Sden Europas, in: Frithjof Benjamin SCHENK / Monika WINKLER (eds.), Der Sden. Neue Perspektiven auf eine europische Geschichtsregion, Frankfurt/M. 2007, 49-73.
Cf. the online portals Europische Geschichte Online, available at <http://www.ieg-ego.eu>,
the Themenportal Europische Geschichte, available at <http://www.europa.clio-online.de/site/lang__de-DE/40208781/default.aspx>. A pioneering Berlin institution, the Zentrum fr Vergleichende Geschichte Europas (2001-2004), saw its follow-up in the Berliner
Kolleg fr Vergleichende Geschichte Europas (2004-2009). Today the institution continues in
spirit at the former managing director Arnd Bauerkmpers Chair for History of the 19th and
20th Century at the Free University. Unfortunately, in spite of Holm Sundhaussens having
been one of the Directors both of the Zentrum and the Kolleg, it carried out only few research
projects dealing with Europes southeastern part. The potential to take the initiative seems in-

14

Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

Two books by Hartmut Kaeble, one of the most renowned German scholars
of European social history, illustrate just how pervasive the established patterns
of perception are.22 My aim here is not to criticize, but rather to illustrate pars
pro toto how mental maps forcefully condition our thinking. The Europeanization of Europe, a process of different, yet entangled developments, should
give credit to the complexities of Europeanization, Kaelble and his co-editor
Martin Kirsch write in the introduction to their volume Selbstverstndnis und
Gesellschaft der Europer: Aspekte der sozialen und kulturellen Europisierung
im spten 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Europeans ways of seeing themselves and
their society: Aspects of social and cultural Europeanization in the late 19th and
20th centuries). This volume advocates the imperative to comprehend this concept [of Europeanization, S.R.] not as a closed European history, but as one of
Europes entanglements and relationships with global history. Researching
transfer and entanglements, the volumes editors continue, poses a challenge
for historical research on Europe, as such research in most cases cannot be conducted only bilaterally, but must scrutinize a network of transfers and entan-

22

herent here, though. In print cf. Adrian BRISKU, Bittersweet Europe. Albanian and Georgian
Discourses on Europe, 1878-2008, New York / Oxford 2013, a study that originates in a
framework of so-called general history, albeit one situated at another of Europes fringes,
the Helsinki-based ERC project Europe 1815-1914. Between Restoration and Revolution,
National Constitutions and Global Law: an Alternative View on the European Century, led
by Bo Strth. But see also Pim DEN BOER et al. (eds.), Europische Erinnerungsorte. Mythen
und Grundbegriffe des europischen Selbstverstndnisses, 3 vols., Mnchen 2012; Pavel
KOLT / Milo TEZNK (eds.), Historische Nationsforschung im geteilten Europa 1945-1989,
Kln 2012; Isabella LHR / Matthias MIDDELL / Hannes SIEGRIST (eds.), Kultur und Beruf in
Europa, Stuttgart 2012 (Schriftreihe Europische Geschichte in Quellen und Essays 2); Arnd
BAUERKMPER, Das umstrittene Gedchtnis. Die Erinnerung an Nationalsozialismus, Faschismus und Krieg in Europa seit 1945, Paderborn 2012; Werner DAUM u. a. (eds.), Handbuch der europischen Verfassungsgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert. Institutionen und Rechtspraxis im gesellschaftlichen Wandel, vol. 2: 1815-1847, Bonn 2012; ARNDT / HBERLEIN /
REINECKE (eds.), Vergleichen, Verflechten, Verwirren?; Iris SCHRDER / Hannes SIEGRIST
(eds.), Europa und die Europer. Quellen und Essays zur modernen europischen Geschichte.
Festschrift fr Hartmut Kaelble zum 65. Geburtstag, Stuttgart 2005; Mark MAZOWER, The
Dark Continent. Europes 20th Century, London 1998. More than a decade earlier and before
the fall of the so-called Iron Curtain, a German-based Handbook of European Economic and
Social History demonstrated what a history that includes all European subregions might look
like, cf. Wolfram FISCHER et al. (eds.), Europische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte vom
Ersten Weltkrieg bis zur Gegenwart, Stuttgart 1987 (Handbuch der europischen Wirtschaftsund Sozialgeschichte 6); Id. et al. (eds.), Europische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte von
der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, Stuttgart 1985 (Handbuch der europischen Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 5).
Kaelble was a director of the Berlin-based Zentrum fr Vergleichende Geschichte Europas
and the Berliner Kolleg fr Vergleichende Geschichte Europas. Beside him, Holm
Sundhaussen, Manfred Hildermeier and Jrgen Kocka were part of the directorate of these
two institutions.

Sabine Rutar

15

glements amongst many European countries.23 In the contributions to this volume, Europe is most frequently seen in relation to the USA, but some of the essays link Europe with Latin America, Asia, Russia, the Arab countries, the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey. There are also reflections on Europes eastern borders, which vividly illustrate discursive changes and their motives in the 19th
and 20th centuries. As the nucleus of Europe emerges, however, it is defined by
basic Christian values, the enlightenment, achievements in parliamentary governance and the rule of law, and Cold War anti-communism. This amounts to a
focus on western Europe and the world to the exclusion of the European peripheries in the east and southeast, not to mention the north, south, and in fact
the continents geographical far west.24 While the Balkans are by no means
defined as an extra-European territory, they are perceived as even more peripheral than the easternmost rim of eastern Europe. The Balkans exist beyond the
editors interest; they are clearly not worth problematizing. The paths from
western Europe towards Turkey and the Arabic and Islamic worlds lead across
nowhere. The editors thereby forgo the opportunity to see these regions as connected.25 The Balkans are only mentioned in passing in Kaelbles concluding
chapter when he refers to the discussion over Europes border in the East and
Southeast in the framework of EU enlargement [my emphasis, S.R.].26 The
European peculiarities upon which Kaelble reflects here include forms of organizing the family, labour, social milieux, the city, the welfare state, consumption, as well as religion, the public sphere, intellectuals, state administration, the
rule of law, industrial relations, migration, and minorities. These aspects of European history are examined against a decidedly west European backdrop, leading to astonishing formulations like the following: Still, the average age of

23

24

25

26

Hartmut KAELBLE / Martin KIRSCH, Einleitung: Zur Europisierung des Selbstverstndnisses

und der Gesellschaft der Europer im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, in: Id. (eds.), Selbstverstndnis
und Gesellschaft der Europer. Aspekte der sozialen und kulturellen Europisierung im spten
19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt/M. et al. 2008, 11-26, 13-14.
Cf. on neglected European peripheries in European history writing Diana MISHKOVA / Bo
STRATH / Balzs TRENCSNYI, Regional History as a Challenge to National Frameworks of
Historiography: The Case of Central, Southeastern, and Northern Europe, in: Matthias
MIDDELL / Lluis ROURA (eds.), Transnational Challenges to National History-Writing, Basingstoke 2013, 257-314.
Recently attention has been drawn to the historical elements shared by the Balkans and the
Near and Middle East, which certainly could help overcoming Euro-centric/western reductive
patterns of thought, cf. Karl KASER, The Balkans and the Near East. Introduction to a Shared
History, Wien et al. 2011 (Studies on South East Europe, 12); Eyal GINIO / Karl KASER (eds.),
Ottoman Legacies in the Contemporary Mediterranean. The Balkans and the Middle East
Compared, Jerusalem (forthcoming).
Hartmut KAELBLE, Europisches Selbstverstndnis und Gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen im
20. Jahrhundert, in: Id. / KIRSCH (eds.), Selbstverstndnis und Gesellschaft der Europer, 421447, 435.

16

Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

marriage in Europe is significantly higher than in the United States or in Eastern Europe [] [my emphasis, S.R.].27
Several years later, in 2011, Kaelble published his Kalter Krieg und
Wohlfahrtsstaat. Europa 1945-1989 (Cold War and welfare state: Europe
1945-1989).28 Here, he wishes to ask what accounts for European history as a
whole. Yet, he immediately adds the caveat that the really important European tendencies rarely touched all of Europes subregions. Thus, he also wishes to point out intra-European differences, their increases and decreases. He
continues that he has no intention of producing, based on such differences, a
dogma of a continent of exceptional internal diversity. Instead, he wishes to
pursue each epochs indelible differences and commonalities in a way that no
handbook on the history of Europe since 1945 has yet accomplished.29
Kaelble suceeds impressively in this endeavour. Perhaps most conspicuously,
he refrains from any moral judgment in describing the developments of the
Cold War and the welfare state in both liberal capitalist and state socialist economies. He describes both as characterized by euphoric planning,30 which provides the basis for a common, if varied narrative of modernization and industrialization (as well as relative prosperity and social security) in both the East
and the West. At the end of the Cold War divide, Kaelble argues, European
societies were closer than ever before. To be sure, Kaelbles argument is convincing not least because he focuses on societal, cultural, and economic history
rather than on political developments. No attempt is made to problematize the
concepts of democracy and dictatorship let alone relate them to one another as
part and parcel of contemporary European history and thus transcend the bipolar
systemic divide in terms of a comprehensive political history of Europe after
1945.
On a more subtle level, the difficulty of setting aside long-rehearsed mental
patterns pervades this book as well. At times Kaelble sweeps aside differences
with statements couched in the expression Europe as a whole (Europa als
Ganzes).31 He does sometimes go on to expand on this whole with differentiat-

27
28

29
30
31

Ibid., 439.
KAELBLE, Kalter Krieg und Wohlfahrtsstaat. Europa 1945-1989. The book appeared in the 10volume series European History of the C.H. Beck publishing house, which aims at making
accessible the newest state of the art of research on European history in an up-to-date manner, cf. the information on the series available at <http://www.chbeck.de/Kalter-KriegWohlfahrtsstaat/productview.aspx?product=862921>.
KAELBLE, Kalter Krieg und Wohlfahrtsstaat, 9-10.
Ibid., 112.
Ibid., 93: In the 1950s and 1960s, Europe as a whole was urbanized once and for all. 179:
Between 1970 and 1980, prices rose on the average two-and-a-half-times in Europe as a
whole, according to offical documents. 190: The share of students per age-group by the
1950s and 1960s had quasi quadrupled in Europe as a whole, rising from 4% to 15%. 191:
In the 1950s and 1960s, in Europe as a whole men gained five, women as many as six years
in life expectancy []. 214: In both western and eastern Europe the state in this epoch [the

Sabine Rutar

17

ing details. Elsewhere, on the contrary, he points to an alleged unavailability of

information with regard to eastern Europe.32 As a consequence, while more generic treatments of East vs. West come across as balanced, those aspects
treated in an in-depth manner are taken predominantly from the western part of
Europe. To be sure, Kaelble makes it quite clear that certain developments occurred much more quickly in the eastern and southeastern parts of Europe. Urbanization and industrialization processes, for example, continued apace in eastern Europe even as western Europe experienced stagnation, if not decline in
these areas. Indeed, these divergent trajectories account for the structural similarities that European societies had reached by the end of the Cold War.33
Nevertheless, the mental map of the western scholar interferes. Kaelble maintains, for example, that while some European states were still colonial rulers
after 1945, others had quite recently been a sort of colony themselves.
Kaelble applies the latter description to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, the countries of the Balkans, Finland, and Ireland under imperial rule.34
This experience as a sort of colony was relived, he continues, in Soviet domination after 1945.35 But what is a sort of colony in the first place? And can the
Empires and the Soviet sphere simply be subsumed under such a sort of
common denominator?
Anna Veronika Wendland has noted an important difference between colonial and imperial societies. Colonial societies acted against a hegemonic Europe. Imperial (and, in a different way, Soviet) societies, however, acted against
local elites and power structures perceived to inhibit these societies otherwise
natural path towards Europe. The countries under Tsarist, Ottoman, and Habsburg imperial rule as well as those later under Soviet influence perceived themselves as intrinsically European. They did not consider themselves extra-European, as the colonized countries did.36 In a complementary vein, yet from a
completely different perspective, Alexander Kiossev sees the cultural identities
of the small nations in the east emerging as a spin-off in the process of Eurocolonial hegemony, in an asymmetrical symbolic exchange with the colonial
center. Thus, these states cultures were not created by the imperial power as a

32
33
34

35
36

1970s] ended up with an amounted lack of trust. 245: Around 1990 in Europe as a whole
more than two fifths of all employees still worked in the industrial sector, many more than in
any other region of the world.
Ibid., for example on pages 125 and 232.
Ibid., 93 and 125.
Ibid., 49. Cf. the conspicuous conceptual and perceptive difference between this stance of
empires as colonizers and Kiossevs defining Europe or the West as the disseminator of
a Europe-centered colonial conceptual repertoire transferred via local intermediary intellectuals, cf. KIOSSEV, Self-Colonizing Metaphor, 2.
KAELBLE, Kalter Krieg und Wohlfahrtsstaat, 51.
WENDLAND, Randgeschichten?, 106-107.

18

Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

colony of sorts, but rather by the urges of an imaginary imposed by the processes of modernization and colonization in the West.37
What is more, if the experiences of colonies and sort-of-colonies are seen
as somehow analogous, should this observation not have inspired more in-depth
reflection on newly established links between former colonies and Europe after
1945? The non-aligned movement is a case in point. Yugoslavia, one of the
movements leading countries, was composed of former sort-of-colony regions, yet it lay outside the Soviet sort-of-colonial sphere. Kaelble hardly
even mentions the 1948 split between Stalin and Tito he refers to it as the
Yugoslav conflict38 and does not list the non-aligned movement among Europes five new developments in global relations before the mid-1970s.39 European governments did not attempt to counteract their regional interdependencies conditioned by the Cold War order and the will of the two superpowers,
Kaelble maintains. He simply notes that the only exception to this rule was
the politics of global cooperation of the non-aligned states of the Yugoslav
President Tito together with the Indian Prime Minister Nehru and the Egyptian
President Nasser.40 An exceptionalism established in this succinct way reads
like a missed opportunity for a more inclusive narrative. This is especially true
because the non-aligned movement did attempt to challenge the bipolar world
order. On the whole, the book contains much more information on non-European contexts than on southeast European ones.
The trap of the western mind snaps firmly shut in the epilogue. Here Kaelble,
who set out to sketch the really important European trends, asks whether the
events of 1989 can be defined as a European event. Decisive in the interpretation of 1989 as a European event, he writes, is the fact that 1989/90 also
deeply changed the political landscape in western Europe.41 Ergo really important European trends only occur when the subregion western Europe is involved. Had the systemic change of 1989 in the east not also affected the west,
it would only have been an east European event, not a really important European trend. Understandably, scholars who focus on eastern and/or southeastern
Europe in their work or on any European periphery, or on global history, for
that matter , cannot but wish for substantial corrective research that challenges
such lingering mental patterns.

37
38
39
40
41

KIOSSEV, Self-Colonizing Metaphor, 4.

KAELBLE, Kalter Krieg und Wohlfahrtsstaat, 65 and 113.
Ibid., 147; cf. also the subchapter De-Colonisation, 154-164.
Ibid., 168.
Ibid., 271.

Sabine Rutar

19

Beyond the Balkans

Diana Mishkova has pointed out that
if over the last decades the study of the Balkans has laid claim to the status
of a meaningful field of research that is, if the field has generated knowledge that could affect the methods and categories used by other fields (such
as historiography, anthropology, cultural studies) as well as the theoretical
(Western) models of exploring the Other the credit should largely be
given to those projects that have involved the field in a direct dialogue with
the theoretical and conceptual discussions unfolding in other areas.42

Karl Kaser struck up the same tune when he wrote that

the comparison of European cultures and historical-anthropological approaches [are] those most interesting for our discipline [i. e. Southeast European History, S.R.]. These are also the fields in which Southeast European
History can offer relevant knowledge, thereby contributing to an innovation
of general history.43

As a matter of fact, studies in modern southeast European history can hardly do

without reference to France, Great Britain, Germany, and even Italy. Yet, western European societies are usually studied without taking account of, say, Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria, or Greece. The contributions to this volume prove that
this approach lacks historical legitimacy.
In January 2007, historians of southeastern and western Europe convened to
foster dialogue. The conference took place at the Institute for Social Movements
in Bochum, a place where the Balkans are not usually the primary focus of
scholars attention. The workshop turned out to be an explorative historiographical laboratory in which the participants problematized the analytical categories of space, time, comparison, transfer, and entanglement for European social history of the 19th and 20th centuries from a southeastern perspective, challenging many western European mental parameters. In his keynote lecture,
Holm Sundhaussen outlined several fields of research that could contribute to
the evenly matched inclusion of southeastern Europe in European historiography. These included philo-Serbian attitudes in the German-speaking lands of
the early 19th century,44 the positive reputation of socialist Yugoslavia, as well
as manifold processes of modernization that await more intensive research from

42
43
44

Diana MISHKOVA, Symbolic Geographies and Visions of Identity. A Balkan Perspective, in:
European Journal of Social Theory 11 (2008), no. 2, 237-256, 238.
KASER, Sdosteuropische Geschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft, 5.
Cf. from the perspective of the literary scholar Boris PREVII4, Die topologische Festschreibung Sdosteuropas aus dem Geist der Dichtung: Goethe und Vuk Karadi5, in: Markus
WINKLER / Ralf SIMON (eds.), Die Topographie Europas in der romantischen Imagination.
Fribourg 2009, 137-154.

20

Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

a comprehensively European and global perspective. These processes include

the pronounced urban-rural contrasts between the elites and the masses, research on (changing) value systems, and the history of migration, all of which
could contribute significantly to overcoming the single national master narratives that have largely functioned in isolation from each other.45 The question of
why some countries on the European periphery that were economically backward in comparison to the European centre in the 19th century succeeded in
catching up, while others have been unable to do so, has not been comprehensively answered.46 The fact that similar questions have instead been tackled by
experts on extra-European societies indicates that the field of Southeast European History has ignored important issues, Sundhaussen maintained. Perhaps
most importantly, and not only with regard to the tasks he mentioned,
Sundhaussen pointed out that literally hundreds of thousands of sources from
the period since the second half of the 19th century remain unexplored.47
After the conference, the dialogue between the participants continued, and
several more advocates of the common cause were found before this book finally materialized. Its chapters are the result of an intense practising of what
Mishkova calls the direct dialogue with the theoretical and conceptual discussions unfolding in other areas.
Future research will need to develop the integration of studies of representation and imagination (mental mapping) with those based on historical documentation. This will allow to counterbalance the stereotypes and prejudices which
are alive and well with empirical studies that focus on historical agency within
social structures, cultural contexts, and the new history of the political.48 The
intention should not be to do away with difference in the name of a normalization of the Balkans in favour of Europe. That would be just as misguided as is
the current discriminating against the Balkans. Instead, the objective should be
45

46

47

48

Cf. from the perspective of the history of migration Ulf BRUNNBAUER, Der Balkan als
translokaler Raum. Verflechtung, Bewegung und Geschichte, in: Sdosteuropa-Mitteilungen
(2011), no. 2, 79-94. Christiane REINECKE, Migranten, Staaten und andere Staaten. Zur Analyse transnationaler und nationaler Handlungslogiken in der Migrationsgeschichte, in: ARNDT
/ HBERLEIN / REINECKE (eds.), Vergleichen, Verflechten, Verwirren?, 243-267, using the example of German and British migrants, aptly illustrates how migrants are focal points of both
national and transnational logics of migration regimes as well as of individual action, in many
ways fostering the nation rather than transnationalizing it.
Cf. as an important step into the right direction Bogdan MURGESCU, Romnia 3i Europa.
Acumularea decalajelor economice (1500-2010), Ia3i 2010. In his long dure economic history of Romania, Murgescu takes an in-depth comparative outlook on Denmark, Ireland, and
Serbia/Yugoslavia.
Cf. the conference report, Revisiting South Eastern Europe. Comparative Social History of
the 19th and 20th Centuries, Bochum, 25-28 January, 2007, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, 14 March,
2007, available at <http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=1510>.
Cf. the pointed essay on stereotypes and prejudices between the centre and the periphery by
Augusta DIMOU, European History and European Stories. Ironic Encounters Between the
Canon and the Fringes, in: Silvia MARTON (ed.), Europe in Its Making, la3i 2006, 237-254.

Sabine Rutar

21

to ensure a serious historical comprehensiveness that seeks to establish both differences and shared ground. In fact, a global history perspective can serve as a
corrective here.
After the First World War, the nation state appeared as the essence of modernity, indeed the final goal of history. The historicization of this nation state
premise has been under way for a while, albeit much more in a declaratory than
in a factual manner. In an almost counter-cyclical manner, the nation state
framework has found favour in the study of southeast European states over the
last two decades. Nationalism has filled much of the ideological void left by the
demise of state socialism. The historicization of the recent past and the systemic
change of 1989/91 has just begun. Under no circumstances, however, can the
contemporary history of southeastern Europe be written as a continuation of the
shipwreck narrative that implicitly or explicitly assumes that the regions
nationalizing, modernizing, and state-building projects of the 20th century were
doomed to fail because they were, by definition, backward and characterized by
absences.49 It might help to remember that the premise of an original matrix
against which everything else is to be measured and the feeling of backwardness
that results from such measuring are by no means exclusive to the historiography on southeastern Europe. For decades, German national self-identifications
have been conditioned, to varying degrees, by the imaginary of a belated Sonderweg.50
The history of Yugoslavia is a case where teleological ex post facto interpretations have been particularly evident. The most pressing question has been why
so much violence was generated in the course of the countrys break-up. All too
often, explanations have implied that the multinational state was doomed from
its beginnings, thus approaching it with yet another pre-set analytical grid. If in
hindsight, a core feature of Yugoslav statehood from 1918 onwards may appear
to have been its failure to create sustainable legitimacy, suggesting that it was
doomed from the beginning disregards the fact that generations of state engineers did not intend their project to fail.51 Ultimately, Jrgen Kockas observa-

49

50

51

Cf. KIOSSEV, Self-Colonization, on the degree to which this is a mental framework also in the
region itself; Maria TODOROVA, The Process of Remembering Communism, in: ibid. (ed.),
Remembering Communism. Genres of Representation, New York 2010, 9-34, for a general
assessment of the state of the art of the (comparative) history of state socialism (s).
Cf. Reinhart KOSELLECK, Deutschland eine versptete Nation, in: Id., Zeitschichten. Studien
zur Historik, Frankfurt/M. 2000, 359-380; Thomas WELSKOPP, Identitt ex negativo. Der
deutsche Sonderweg als Metaerzhlung in der bundesdeutschen Geschichtswissenschaft der
siebziger und achtziger Jahre, in: Konrad H. JARAUSCH / Martin SABROW (eds.), Die historische Meistererzhlung. Deutungslinien der deutschen Nationalgeschichte nach 1945,
Gttingen 2002, 109-139.
Sabrina P. RAMET, The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918-2005,
Washington/DC 2005, is a sophisticated analysis that nevertheless proceeds from this analytical flaw. By flatly declaring the Titoist state to be illegitimate, for example, Ramet dispenses
with the need to consider its legitimizing efforts. However, she also insists on the emergence

22

Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

tion remains valid that the historians task is to investigate the differing paths
that have led to civil society in Europe and strive for a typology of these paths,
instead of declaring one path as the norm and the others as exceptions.52 Or,
one might add, as failures.
The same is true when it comes to a more adequate inclusion of southeastern
Europe in European and global history. Comparison, transfer, and entanglement
can be vehicles with which to turn the stances of both Todorova and Sundhaussen into points of departure for fruitful research. We need meso- and microhistorical approaches that lead to detailed research on specific social groups, social
and political movements, ideological currents, and that focus on defining their
objects of study ex novo, applying a definition that places them in a comprehensively European and global investigative framework. Such approaches should
nurture the historiography on southeastern Europe with a methodological innovation that will verify or reject existing mental maps of the Balkans. The ultimate goal must be to historicize rather than perpetuate them.
Taking up the admonition of Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace Francis, who
have argued that orientalist studies are actually interested in the West and
therefore substantially marginalize the Balkans yet once more,53 I maintain that
only a history that engages in a lively debate with the methodological, theoretical, and conceptual framings of so-called general history can make visible the
peculiarities of the region, and its heuristic and conceptual borders. Structural,
historical-regional reflections la Sundhaussen must be counterbalanced with
the problem of a category that was an object of geopolitical instrumentalization
from its inception and in turn played a substantial role in creating (academic)
institutions dedicated to this region in the first place.54 The great potential inherent in an intensified entangled academic dialogue between historical sub-disci-

52
53
54

of a crisis of legitimacy, thus producing both a paradox and a circular argument. Useful
against any type of teleological history writing is John BREUILLY, Conclusion: National Peculiarities?, in: Id., Labour and Liberalism in Nineteenth Century Europe. Essays in Comparative History, Manchester 1992, 273-295, 278-279: Historians seek to understand change over
time. They cannot wipe from their minds their knowledge of how more recent history relates
to more distant history. Nor should they, even if they could, because it would involve tossing
away the one advantage the historian enjoys over the historical actors that is, knowing what
comes next. What, of course, is objectionable is the assumption that what comes next had to
come next or to analyse earlier situations in terms of the forces promoting or hindering the
later events.
KOCKA, Das stliche Mitteleuropa als Herausforderung, 172.
Wendy BRACEWELL / Alex DRACE-FRANCIS, South-Eastern Europe: History, Concepts,
Boundaries, in: Balkanologie 3 (1999), no. 2, 47-66, 60.
Cf. Mathias BEER (ed.), Sdostforschung im Schatten des Dritten Reiches: Institutionen - Inhalte - Personen, Mnchen 2004; MLLER, Southeastern Europe as a Historical Meso-region;
also Carl FREYTAG, Deutschlands Drang nach Sdosten. Der Mitteleuropische Wirtschaftstag und der Ergnzungsraum Sdosteuropa 1931-1945, Gttingen 2012. An
important more general contribution in this context is JUREIT, Das Ordnen von Rumen.

Sabine Rutar

23

plines defined by the geographical area they study and including all European
regions has been nicely summarized by Thomas Welskopp: 1) to identify
questions that [] would probably never have come up otherwise; 2) eventually, to correct false presumptions; 3) to define more precisely possible fields of
research; 4) to broaden the general perspective, without losing sight of details
and the empirical.55 Analyses of mental maps and of discourses will become
more convincing if they are firmly tied to historical analyses that interconnect
social contexts and make transfer empirically visible. In this manner, the relationship between imaginaries and empirical evidence will eventually become
more balanced.56 The concluding words of Mark Mazowers Dark Continent are
conducive to this aim: If Europeans can give up their desperate desire to find a
single workable defintion of themselves and if they can accept a more modest
place in the world, they may come to terms more easily with the diversity and
dissension which will be as much their future as their past.57
Towards an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe
The basic aim of the chapters in this book is the creation of an entangled,
translocal, and transregional vision of southeastern Europe that incorporates Europe and the wider world. The authors work towards this goal in a variety of
ways. Some place more emphasis on the meta-level; others focus on an empirical case exemplary for many others; some combine both of these approaches.
All highlight the potential of a history of entanglements, transfers, and comparisons that takes historical agency seriously.
The volume consists of three parts. The first contains chapters on Space and
Temporality, Entanglement and Transfer and problematizes, firstly, metahistorical issues: questions of Balkan nationalism in a global perspective (John

55

56

57

Thomas WELSKOPP, Stolpersteine auf dem Knigsweg. Methodenkritische Anmerkungen zum

internationalen Vergleich in der Gesellschaftsgeschichte, in: Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte 35
(1995), 339-367, esp. 363-365. To mention two studies that have accomplished this in terms
of intra-southeast European comparison, focusing on Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece
cf. Diana MISHKOVA, The Interesting Anomaly of Balkan Liberalism, in: DNES (ed.), Liberty
and the Search for Identity, 399-456; Augusta DIMOU, Entangled Paths Towards Modernity.
Contextualizing Socialism and Nationalism in the Balkans, Budapest 2009. Cf. also Roumen
DASKALOV / Tchavdar MARINOV (eds.), Entangled Histories of the Balkans, vol. 1: National
Ideologies and Language Policies, Leiden 2013.
Cf. Johannes PAULMANN, Regionen und Welten. Arenen und Akteure regionaler Weltbeziehungen seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, in: Historische Zeitschrift 296 (2013), no. 3, 660-699, for a
lucid reflection on this relationship and, in reality, for the whole contextualisation of perspectives and methodological building blocks with a practical intention for research (ibid.,
669) undertaken in this volume.
Mark MAZOWER, Epilogue: Making Europe, in: ibid., Dark Continent. Europes Twentieth
Century, New York 2000 (orig. 1998), 395-403, 403.

24

Introduction: Beyond the Balkans

Breuilly); the space and time constitution of southeastern Europe (Diana

Mishkova); the analogies and differences between Irish and eastern European
questions (Guido Franzinetti); and the elective affinities between the new Balkan states and the declining Ottoman Empire (Vangelis Kechriotis). In the second half of this part, authors explore comparative and/or entangled perspectives of exemplary historical phenomena: the social and cultural history of
cooperativism (Augusta Dimou); universal suffrage as part of democratization
processes and of interwar autocratic reactions to them (Wim van Meurs); as
well as issues of nationalism, secularization, religion, and church history (Helke
Stadtland and Katrin Boeckh).
The second part of the volume approaches historical agency and Eigen-Sinn
in imperial military history (Y. Hakan Erdem); in the social history of peasants
(Stefano Petrungaro); in issues of citizenship and loyalty (Borut Klabjan); concerning resistance and collaboration in World War II (Vesna Drapac); in labour
history (Sabine Rutar). The authors in the third part exemplify how discourses,
constructions and articulations of meaning can be pursued in an entangled and
comparative manner. They focus on discourses and practices of veneration
(Stefan Rohdewald); on ideological transfer generated and guided by the media
(Stefan Ihrig); on the practice of an alternative culture under conditions of dictatorship (Amaia Lamikiz Jauregiondo); on conflictual constructions of meaning
in a postwar society (Falk Pingel); and on a broad perspective on issues of contention and meaningfulness in the history of multiethnic, multireligious cities in
Europe and beyond (Vanni DAlessio). This last chapter closes the circle, delivering an illustration of the reflections found in John Breuillys opening chapter
on the global perspectives of Balkan nationalism. Within this circle, the other
chapters also speak to each other with regard to broader and multilayered issues concerning the historical scrutiny of Europe and the world from a southeast
European perspective which the reader is invited to discover and explore.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the support and advice of the colleagues and institutions that made the publication of this book possible, and to express my sincere gratitude to everyone involved in this project.
Karl Kaser accepted the volume into his series Studies on South East Europe, and magnanimously supported it throughout the longish period of its development. The same is true of the Vienna-based Lit Verlag editor, Richard
Kisling. I thank them both for this opportunity for fruitful cooperation.
The Institute for Social Movements at the Ruhr-University in Bochum provided both logistical and financial support for the conference Revisiting Southeastern Europe. Comparative Social History of the 19th and 20th Centuries (25 28 January, 2007). That conference is at the root of this volume, so a special
thank you is due to the institutes former managing director, Jrgen Mittag. The

Sabine Rutar

25

volume is dedicated to the institutes former director: Klaus Tenfelde. Without

his intellectual curiosity and generous support, this project would never have
gotten off the ground. His passing in 2011 has been a lasting shock.
The Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg
generously funded the book during its final editing stage. Thus, a second special
thank you is due to the institutes directors, Ulf Brunnbauer and Jrgen Jerger.
The institutes chief of administration, Angelika Meier, helped tackle the administrative issues.
Without the opportunity to take a one year sabbatical, made possible by a fellowship at the Imre Kertsz Kolleg in Jena, this book would still not be ready
for publication. Accordingly, a third special thank you is due to the Kollegs directors, Joachim von Puttkamer and Wodzimierz Borodziej. I am grateful to
them for the ideal working conditions that allowed me to spend an extremely
productive year at the idyllic Prinzessinnenschlsschen.
My sincere gratitude is also due to Augusta Dimou, Michal Kope7ek,
Dietmar Mller, Boris Previi5, Natali Stegmann, and Joachim von Puttkamer,
who read and commented on the introduction and my own contribution to the
volume. Marian Rothstein read, commented on, and corrected several contributions. Her continuous support, growing out of twenty years of friendship, kept
me going throughout the long and sometimes tedious hunt for the devil in the
details of the editing process.
Each author whose work appears in this volume engaged in an intensive dialogue with the editor; everybodys input was well above-average. Methodologically connecting what might otherwise have been an excessively shimmering
topical kaleidoscope was no easy task. It was only through extended debates
and discussions that the book gained its present shape. Thanks are due to all of
the authors for their diligence, good ideas, passion, and, not least, for their patience with an editor distracted by other obligations for long periods of time.
Y. Hakan Erdem drew what has become the books cover image while listening to the papers and discussions during the 2007 Bochum conference. I
would like to sincerely thank him for providing this unique cover; especially
because he created the image without any intention of having it published.
In preparing the book for print, Jelena Jojevi5 was a model assistant efficient, thorough, and sensitive to every detail. Steve Milder assiduously edited
the non-native speaker English language texts. Anne Elisabeth Boden gave the
final touch to the introduction. A final thank you is due to all three of them.
Sabine Rutar, Jena / Potsdam, June 2013