[ALBSA-Info] Fwd: [balkans] Book Review: Gerolymatos, The Balkan Wars. Myth, Reality, and the Eternal Conflict. Reviewed by Srdjan Vucetic

[Agron Alibali]

  Florian Bieber <fbieber at yahoo.com> wrote: From Florian Bieber Mon Jan 28 06:57:08 2002
To: balkans at yahoogroups.com
From: Florian Bieber 
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 15:57:08 +0100
Subject: [balkans] Book Review: Gerolymatos, The Balkan Wars. Myth, Reality, and
the Eternal Conflict. Reviewed by Srdjan Vucetic

Balkan Academic Book Review 3/2002

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André Gerolymatos, The Balkan Wars. Myth, Reality, and the Eternal Conflict. Toronto: Stoddart, 2001. 320 pp.,  39.95 CAD, ISBN 077373290x (hardcover).

Reviewed by Srdjan Vucetic (Free University of Berlin & York University, Toronto), Email: djine at zedat.fu-berlin.de. 

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A different version of this book published by Basic Books under the title "The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution and Retribution from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond" is available through Amazon.com



Click here to order book from Amazon

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The main issue that Gerolymatos addresses in his book is the origins and dynamics of the Balkan wars. “War, more than anything else, has marked the evolution and decline of Balkan empires and societies, and the use of violence as a political, cultural, and economic mechanism has been a key factor in the Balkan powder keg” (p. 88-9). For the author, central to contemporary Balkan conflicts are the past conflicts and mythologies that arose from them. Ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia can be traced to the fourteenth and fifteenth century, not just to the political schemes of the nationalistic elites in the 1990s. Organized violence can in turn be seen as cyclical or spiral. But this is by no means unique to the peninsula. What the outsiders often see to be endemic is the application of total war, which includes suicide missions, ethnic cleansing, systematic rape, massacres etc. (p.130) 

To support his thesis, the author provides a sweeping review of the Balkan conflicts from Byzantium to the NATO intervention over Kosovo, organized by themes such as brigandry or nationalism. Much of the material, especially in the later chapters, will be familiar to students of Balkan history. Responsible for the wars are familiar agents: the great powers and, in the last two centuries, the expansionist Balkan nation-states. But the history of organized violence in the region also belongs to local warlords, irregulars as well as to various political conspirators. These agents, Gerolymatos argues convincingly, are important political and social fixtures, particularly in the domain of mythmaking. Indeed, the author authoritatively demystifies various images, which play an important role in some historical memories: the (last) fall of Constantinople, battle of Kosovo, Suliot dance of death, the execution of Euphrosyne of Ioannina, Russia’s pan-Slavism and pan-Orthodoxy, and the birth of the Balkan state (esp. p. 133) are particularly well-assessed. In addition to military and political history, the book offers brilliant insights into sociological phenomena. For example, the discussions of the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire, of the importance of land, or of the famed Albanian prowess in guerrilla warfare are both penetrating and comprehensive. 

Gerolymatos raises questions for future research in one intellectually enticing area. The book approaches counterfactual reasoning on a few occasions (pp. 8, 17, 28, 46), but does not pursue it for the reasons of brevity and/or conservatism. Counterfactuals are “what ifs” and “might-have beens” of history. They are an important mechanism of evaluation and are extremely useful in tackling the problems of motive and outcome. The Kosovo legend rests on the counterfactual: the Serbs could have defeated the Ottomans only if they had been united (namely, if Vuk Brankovic had not betrayed them). The implication is that Serbia would have been able to remain strong and free and the course of history would have been different. Careful counterfactual experimentation would include considering additional possibilities that might have followed from the Kosovo counterfactual (how would the Ottomans have responded? For one, would they have given up on the conquest of Europe entirely?). The exercise would enable the researcher to determine the viability of alternative outcomes and thus at assess the strength of the historical claims upon which the Kosovo legend rests.

That historical assessment is largely based on comparison is a point made often in this book. Perhaps for the reasons of structure, Gerolymatos sometimes insists on “historical echoes” or points of direct comparison. For example, a 1914 Carnegie commission report on the massacre in the Greek village of Doxato is juxtaposed to the 1994 UN War Crimes Report on the Medak Pocket carnage; Smyrna of 1922 is compared to Srebrenica of 1995, the Greco-Turkish exchange of population is equated with the contemporary phenomenon of ethnic cleansing and so on. From a scholarly point of view this has the virtue of offering a benchmark against which to chart more precisely the continuity and change in the Balkans. But it is precisely the emphasis on the regularity of these historical echoes that implies the stereotypical otherness of the region. Also, because these pairings are illustrative rather than thorough, they leave an impression that there has been no qualitative progress in the social and political life in the peninsula. With respect to international relations, the author confidently asserts that the “great game” has not changed, save for a change of some of the players; it is now the U.S. and Russia which vie for control of the peninsula (p. 244). The only way out, concludes Gerolymatos, is the integration of Southeastern Europe into the EU.  

Inevitably in such a sweeping analysis, there is so much that is left out. In keeping with his argument, Gerolymatos has chosen to somewhat sacrifice empirical breath for temporal depth. But not all battles, themes and certainly not all kinds of myths are common to all Balkan communities (pp. xi, 14, 46). Simply regarded though the lenses of national history, the narratives about the Greeks and Serbs predominate against other histories. The book suffers from too great a disregard to what may be seen as ‘Balkan periphery.’ The themes and myths of the Romance languages-speaking Balkan communities are underrepresented in Gerolymatos’discussions. The Slovenes do not enter the picture at all (because [they] “never achieved any form of independence [and because they] suffered none of the upheavals that afflicted their fellow Slavs in the southeastern Balkans.” p. 124). The criteria used to discount the Slovenes are not applied to include the Montenegrins. The tiny kingdom no doubt received its share of typical Balkan turmoil and enjoyed centuries of semi-independence. Finally, the author indeed has a soft spot for the “clinical studies of strategy, tactics, battles and sieges” (p. 237). These would have been enhanced by the use of more detailed maps (one map of the region is no great help). This minor critique notwithstanding, Gerolymatos has entirely succeeded in writing a valuable work on the Balkan wars. Well-written and backed by an impressive command of broad range of literatures, this book should be read both by historians and by a more general audience. 


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This an earlier book reviews are available at: www.seep.ceu.hu/balkans

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© 2002 Balkan Academic News. This review may be distributed and reproduced electronically, if credit is given to Balkan Academic News and the author.For permission for re-printing, contact Balkan Academic News. 

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