The Wars of Yesterday: The Balkan Wars and the Emergence of Modern Military Conflict, 1912-13. Edited by Katrin Boeckh and Sabine Rutar
Though persistently overshadowed by the Great War in historical memory, the two Balkan conflicts of 1912–1913 were among the most consequential of the early twentieth century. By pitting the states of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro against a diminished Ottoman Empire—and subsequently against one another—they anticipated many of the horrors of twentieth-century warfare even as they produced the tense regional politics that helped spark World War I. Bringing together an international group of scholars, this volume applies the social and cultural insights of the “new military history” to revisit this critical episode with a central focus on the experiences of both combatants and civilians during wartime.
Reviews
“This is a well-curated and well-intended collection of essays. The editors and contributors have brought considerable knowledge and insight of the Balkan wars into the mainstreams of the New Military History. The collective linguistic and research scope of the contributors is comprehensive. Students and scholars of southeastern Europe will read these essays with profit, but it is the fields of European and global war studies that will benefit most from this excellent volume.” • Slavic Review
“This excellent volume is a timely addition to the literature on the Balkan Wars and beyond. Its versatility, diversity, and empirical depth are bound to make a serious impact in the field.” • Uğur Ümit Üngör, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Katrin Boeckh is a Senior Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg and a Professor for East and Southeast European History at the LMU Munich. She is the author of Von den Balkankriegen zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Kleinstaatenpolitik und ethnische Selbstbestimmung auf dem Balkan (1996) and co-editor, with Sabine Rutar, of The Balkan Wars from Contemporary Perception to Historic Memory (2017).
Sabine Rutar is a Senior Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies. She is Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly Südosteuropa: Journal of Politics and Society and the author of Kultur – Nation – Milieu: Sozialdemokratie in Triest vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (2004).
Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
PART I: INTRODUCTIONS
Introduction: The Wars of Yesterday: The Balkan Wars and the Emergence of Modern Military Conflict, 1912/13. An Introduction
Katrin Boeckh and Sabine Rutar
Chapter 1. ‘Modern Wars’ and ‘Backward Societies’: The Balkan Wars in the History of Twentieth-Century European Warfare
Wolfgang Höpken
PART II: BEYOND THE BALKANS: DIPLOMATIC AND GEOPOLITICAL ASPECTS
Chapter 2. Ottoman Diplomacy on the Origins of The Balkan Wars
Gül Tokay
Chapter 3. Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Balkan Wars: A Diplomatic Struggle for Peace, Influence, and Supremacy
Alma Hannig
Chapter 4. Not Just a Prelude: The First Balkan War Crisis as the Catalyst of Final European War Preparations
Michael Hesselholt Clemmesen
PART III: ARMIES, SOLDIERS, IRREGULARS
Chapter 5. The Ottoman Mobilisation in the Balkan War. Failure and Reorganisation
Mehmet Beşikçi
Chapter 6. The Thracian Theatre of War 1912
Richard C. Hall
Chapter 7. Morale, Ideology, and the Barbarization of Warfare among Greek Soldiers
Spyridon Tsoutsoumpis
Chapter 8. A Forgotten Lesson: The Romanian Army between the Campaign in Bulgaria (1913) and the Tutrakan Debacle (1916)
Claudiu-Lucian Topor
Chapter 9. Serbian Chetniks. Traditions of Irregular Warfare
Alexey Timofeev
PART IV: CIVILIANS, WOUNDED, INVALIDS
Chapter 10. The Future Enemy’s Soldiers-To-Be: Fear of War in Trieste, Austria-Hungary
Sabine Rutar
Chapter 11. The Plight of the Muslim Population in Salonica and Surrounding Areas
Vera Goseva and Natasha Kotlar-Traykova
Chapter 12. Cleansing the Nation: War-Related Demographic Changes in Macedonia
Iakovos D. Michailidis
Chapter 13. Jewish Philanthropy and Mutual Assistance Between Ottomanism and Communal Identities
Eyal Ginio
Chapter 14. The Assistance of the British Red Cross to the Ottoman Empire
Oya Dağlar Macar
Chapter 15. War Neurosis and Psychiatry in the Aftermath of the Balkan Wars
Heike Karge
Conclusion
Katrin Boeckh and Sabine Rutar
Index
446 pages, 4 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-78533-774-1 $135.00/£99.00 Hb Published (January 2018)
ISBN 978-1-78920-843-6 $29.95/£23.95 Pb Published (December 2020)
https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BoeckhWars