The Identity Question Regarding the Macedonian Nation and Minorities

2022 ◽  
pp. 209-228
Author(s):  
Vemund Aarbakke

This chapter intends to outline the place of Macedonia in the nation-building process that took place in South-East Europe with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Macedonia became the place where national aspirations converged and came into conflict with each other. This gave it a special role in the national narratives of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece both internally and in foreign politics. The (federal) Macedonian state that emerged after WWII sought to carve out its own trajectory in a space that was already occupied physically and ideologically by its neighbours. This led to a conflict that lurked under the surface for most of the Cold War but came out in the open with the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The chapter seeks to clarify some of the central issues related to Macedonian nationality and minorities in the Balkan and European context.

Author(s):  
Davide Rodogno

This book examines the European roots of humanitarian intervention as a concept and international practice during the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the politics and policies of Great Britain and France. It challenges two assumptions: first, that humanitarian intervention is a phenomenon of international relations that appeared after the end of the Cold War and second, that it emerged abruptly during the nineteenth century. Focusing on the Ottoman Empire, the book investigates when, where, who, how, and for what reasons a humanitarian intervention was undertaken from 1815 to 1914. It argues that the primary motivation of humanitarian intervention is to end massacre, atrocity, and extermination or to prevent the repetition of such events, to protect civilian populations mistreated and unprotected by the target-state government, agents, or authorities. This introduction discusses the concept of rights, including natural rights, before the nineteenth century and provides an overview of the questions, assumptions, and issues raised in the book.


Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Samson

For the purposes of this article, “the Balkans” refers to the territories of present-day Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and the successor states of Former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia). The geographical scope has been determined principally by Ottoman presence and legacy in Europe, though the European part of present-day Turkey is not included. Nor is Hungary, despite the Ottoman presence there, since its cultural history is more closely aligned to Habsburg Central Europe. Conversely, Slovenia, which was never occupied by the Ottomans, is admitted, since it was drawn into the political communities of the two Yugoslav states. These days it is usual to describe the wider region as South East Europe, implying an accommodation to the European project. In contrast to this, the term “Balkans” has acquired pejorative connotations in some circles, signifying what is taken to be the darker past of the region. The art music of the Balkans is not widely known. Of individual composers, only George Enescu and Nikos Skalkottas have achieved anything like international visibility, though Josip Slavenski and Manolis Kalomiris are highly valued in some quarters. As a result, the major studies of art music are by native scholars, and in languages that are arcane to most. Yet there is no option but to persevere, since these studies are in many cases the only source of detailed information, especially given the absence of published scores for much of the repertory. In contrast, the traditional music of the region has been much foraged by scholars from without, and notably by North American academics. Partly because premodern music-making survived longer in the Balkans than in many other parts of Europe, ritual repertories from agrarian communities have highly distinctive qualities, and have often been subject to appropriation, a prey to exoticist agendas from without or to nationalist agendas from within. It is partly to correct an ideologically motivated imbalance in coverage that a number of younger scholars have been giving greater attention to Ottoman-influenced urban traditions from the early 20th century, and to present-day popular music. A separate scholarly thread running through literature on the region concerns the Orthodox chant that is found across the Christian Balkans. There is an industry of publication in this field, much of it dealing with the distribution and provenance of specific manuscripts. It should be noted that although this is a transnational repertory, it is frequently incorporated within national narratives. Once again, it has fallen to younger scholars to mitigate the distorting effects of this national perspective, notably by examining the connections that exist between Orthodox traditions and Ottoman sanat (art) music.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Morys

This article documents and analyses monetary reform in Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Romania from 1815 (Serbian autonomy within the Ottoman Empire) to 1910, when Greece became the last country in the region to join the gold standard. It explains the five key steps towards monetary reform which the four countries took in the same chronological order, and asks why national coinage and the foundation of a bank of note issue came late in the reform process. The South-East European countries tried to emulate West European prototypes, yet economic backwardness meant such institutions were often different from the outset, remained short-lived or both.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (Summer 2020) ◽  
pp. 41-45
Author(s):  
Michaël Tanchum

Turkey’s new expeditionary capability, resting on enhanced naval capacity and new forward bases, is the logical result of Turkey’s post-Cold War strategic reorientation. Moving beyond the Cold War framework, Turkey's strategic goal is to become an interregional power that will set the terms for a new pattern of connectivity between Europe, Africa and Asia. ‘Reclaiming’ a foreign policy prerogative exercised by the Ottoman Empire but discontinued after Turkey’s founding following the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey's policymakers are seeking to move beyond the Lausanne orientation that informed Turkey’s 1952 NATO accession and persisted throughout the duration of the Cold War. This study examines Ankara's challenge of calibrating the use of its hard power instruments to serve its post-Lausanne strategic orientation toward establishing a Turkey-centered, interregional connectivity.


2019 ◽  
pp. 45-81
Author(s):  
Wen-Qing Ngoei

This chapter analyzes American responses to Britain’s nation-building policies in Malaya during the British campaign against the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), a struggle that London dubbed the Malayan Emergency. It shows that as U.S. policymakers cast about for how to deal with the challenges of decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, they drew special inspiration from the British nation-building colonialism. To preserve its imperial influence in Southeast Asia, Britain had cultivated Malaya’s anticommunist nationalists and together they forged a popular multiracial political alliance that undermined the mostly Chinese MCP’s appeal to Malaya’s hundreds and thousands of ethnic Chinese. When Malaya gained independence in 1957, its relative stability and leaders’ determination to side with the West was received by U.S. leaders as a notch on the belt.


1968 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 480-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfram F. Hanrieder

The traditional distinction between domestic and foreign politics, made by both decision-makers and analysts, is increasingly called into question by contemporary historical developments. The cold-war conflict and the attending mobilization of military, socioeconomic, and psychological resources by the superpowers and their allies; ventures of regional economic integration; the changing nature of the nation-state; the close connection between the conditions prevailing in the international system and the attempts made by the new states to modernize and to coalesce into viable societies—these are just a few examples of how foreign and domestic policy projects have become overlapping and perhaps entirely inseparable.


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