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The Balkans - National Identities In A Historical Perspective

edited by: Stefano Bianchini and Marco Dogo
published by: A. Longo Editore
pp: 176
ISBN: 88-8063-176-4
price: € 15.49

Book's frontpage

The European perception of Balkans peoples and their accomplishments, for good or bad, has a long history which is itself a part of European political and cultural evolution. Western public knowledge of the uneven course of state-building and nation-building processes in the Balkans has been more often than not filtered through the Great Powers' interests and strategies. The sovietisation of most part of the region, after World War II, further blurred local national profiles; nor have these been made sharper by the stereotypes adopted by media commentators interpreting the "return to diversity" and the transition to political pluralism in the region.

What is perhaps most difficult to grasp for the western public is that, in the Balkans, "transition" - with perduring uncertainty - has been going on for two centuries, and during this time people have been accumulating expectations and frustrations, surprising achievements and abysmal catastrophes.

In the last few years political and economic systems, and even borders, have been dramatically changing in the Balkans through the interplay of world, continental and local forces. National identities are being reshaped in the process. The overall orientation of such phenomena is outside the scope of historians' work.


Nonetheless, with this collection of essays the History Research group of the International Network "Europe and the Balkans" intended to contribute to the stabilizing of perceptions through historical criticism. Unsettled national questions and current political strains may have crept into the group's work. To the intelligent reader, what this collection has so lost in scholarship, it has gained as a witness of our time.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements by the Co-Editors
 
Foreword by Stefano Bianchini and Marco Dogo
 
Marco Dogo, Introduction. Historians, nation-building, perceptions

Armando Pitassio, The Building of Nations in South-Eastern Europe. The cases of Slovenia and Montenegro: a Comparative Approach

Marco Dogo, The Balkan Nation-States and the Muslim Question
Francesco Guida, The Concept of Europe in Romania and Romania's Image in Western Europe
Thoma Murzaku, Albanian Issue Viewed in the Frame of General Problems of the Balkans
Joze Pirjevec, Muslims. Serbs and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina: the Burden of a Tragic History
Vera Vangeli, The National Identity of Macedonia Between The Past and the Present
Francesco Privitera, Between Yugoslavism and Separatism. The Role of Intellectuals in Yugoslavia
Tsvetana Gueorguieva, Bulgarians Between East and West

List of Contributors

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