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 all seek to treat the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled, histories, transfers and crossings. This goes along with an interest in the way ideas, institutions and techniques were selected, transferred and adapted to Balkan conditions and how they interacted with those conditions. The volume also invites reflection on the interacting entities in the very process of their creation and consecutive transformations rather than taking them as givens.
Contributors include: Alexander Vezenkov, Constantin Iordachi, Raymond Detrez, Ronelle Alexander, Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov.
Roumen Daskalov is professor of modern history at the New Bulgarian University and at the Central European University. He is the author of nine books, most recently Debating the Past: Modern Bulgarian History from Stambolov to Zhivkov (Budapest, 2011).
Tchavdar Marinov (PhD in history, EHESS) is researcher at the French School at Athens. He is the author of The Macedonian Question from 1944 to the Present: Communism and Nationalism in the Balkans (Paris, 2010, [in French]).
"The first volume of Entangled Histories of the Balkans, edited by Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov, reads like one would wish all histories of South-eastern Europe to read: deconstructivist, de-essentializing, focused on processes, entanglements, shared history [...] In a nutshell: the six authors have laid the foundation for a research agenda, that will provide South-eastern Europe with the historiographical position it deserves: an exciting place in world history." – Sabine Rutar, in: H-Soz-u-Kult
4. Formulating and Reformulating Ottomanism (Alexander Vezenkov)
5. Famous Macedonia, the Land of Alexander: Macedonian Identity at the Crossroads of Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian Nationalism (Tchavdar Marinov)
SECTION TWO
Section introduction: Languages and Language Policies in the Balkans (Alexander Vezenkov)
6. Language and Identity: The Fate of Serbo-Croatian (Ronelle Alexander)
7. In Defense of the Native Tongue: The Standardization of the Macedonian Language and the Bulgarian-Macedonian Linguistic Controversies (Tchavdar Marinov)
8. The Albanian Language Question: Contexts and Priorities (Alexander Vezenkov)
Index
All those interested in modern history of the Balkans, the construction of national ideologies and the language policies in Europe, as well as in transnational approaches to nationalism