Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Abstract
Although the historical process of globalization has promoted the nation-
state as a universal cultural form, national ideologies are far from uniform.
This article explores how the competing discourses of citizenship and nation-
hood evolved in Southeastern Europe throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. By comparing the articulation of Serb, Greek and
Bulgarian identities, the essay examines how regional historical factors led
to the concept of nationhood becoming central to the formation of national
identity among the region’s Eastern Orthodox Christians. It demonstrates
that the subsequent regional national rivalries have been the consequence
of the local peoples’ route towards modernity, and cannot be attributed to
a ‘clash of civilizations’. Rather, the history of Southeastern Europe suggests
that the production of heterogeneity is inherent in the globalization
process.
Key words
■ Balkans ■ ethnicity ■ globalization ■ minorities ■ nationalism
1368-4310[199905]2:2;233–247;007899
06 Roudometof (jr/d) 30/3/99 11:18 am Page 234
last two centuries, the global discourses of citizenship and nationhood have
shaped local ideologies and national identities in distinctly different ways. In
nineteenth-century Southeastern Europe, both citizenship and nationhood were
pursued, but the historical factors discussed in this essay led to the success of
nationhood. Subsequent national rivalries, or so-called ‘ethnic conflicts’, in
Southeastern Europe have been a product of the region’s reorganization accord-
ing to the Western European model of the nation-state; they cannot be attrib-
uted to a ‘clash of civilizations’.
the position of non-Serbs within this kingdom remained unclear. The elites of
the Serb state viewed Yugoslavia as an extension of Serbia: Serbia was the Pied-
mont of the South Slavs. Their claim to power was contested by the Croat elites,
who envisioned Yugoslavia as a confederation of equal nations, and this conflict
was to plague the new state for most of the twentieth century (Djilas, 1991;
Banac, 1984; Ramet, 1992). In many respects, the problem was similar to the
problems faced by other federal solutions, but Yugoslavism was unique in that it
had succeeded in becoming a real political solution.
The other major attempt to institutionalize citizenship took shape under the
aegis of the Ottoman reformers. From 1839, the Ottoman bureaucratic elites
attempted to develop the concept of Ottomanism as a means to create bonds of
social solidarity that could transcend religious or ethnic differences among their
subjects. However, the growing economic gap between the Muslims and the
Orthodox Christians presented an obstacle to the success of this approach. Politi-
cal liberalism would further the interests of the wealthy urban Ottoman Greek
communities, against the impoverished, and predominantly Muslim, peasantry.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Orthodox commercial
communities benefited from the growing incorporation of the empire into the
world economy, by serving as intermediaries between Western firms and
Ottoman markets. Their aspirations called for a reconstitution of the empire as
a multi-ethnic state, where they could exert influence beyond their status as reaya
(subject). This philosophy found support among Ottoman statesmen, and led to
the abortive effort to establish a constitutional monarchy in 1876 (Svolopoulos,
1980; Lewis, 1979; Braude and Lewis, 1982). The plan failed when Muslim tra-
ditionalists protested against the abandonment of Islamic principles, and Sultan
Abdul Hamid manipulated the situation to his own ends, ruling as absolute
monarch until 1908.
The reign of Abdul Hamid saw the growth of the dissident Young Turk move-
ment, itself divided into multiple factions. Two main groups dominated the
agenda: a liberal wing calling for political liberalism, which was supported by the
Ottoman minorities; and a more nationalistic wing calling for a revitalization of
Turkish identity (Hanioglou, 1995; Kitsikis, 1978; Kushner, 1977). The nation-
alistic tendency was more successful in the long run. From the 1890s, Ottoman
Muslim intellectuals re-evaluated their Turkish heritage and increasingly called
for a Turkish, as opposed to an Ottoman, identity. After the 1908 revolution, the
Young Turks became the dominant political force. Although widespread promises
were made to the Ottoman minorities, the Young Turks were in favor of cultural,
rather than political, Ottomanism. Their goal was to acculturate the minorities
in a common culture – and not to grant them equal status as minorities. The
choice was, to use contemporary vocabulary, one between assimilation, promoted
by the Young Turks, and multiculturalism, favored by the Ottoman minorities.
The Young Turks’ assimilatory policies after 1908 were greatly resented, and
provided the Balkan states with a rationale to unite against the Ottomans. By
1913, the Balkan states had defeated the Ottomans in the 1912–13 Balkan wars,
and had conquered most of the peninsula for themselves. Still, there remained
06 Roudometof (jr/d) 30/3/99 11:18 am Page 239
The specific reasons outlined above meant that citizenship failed to become the
dominant political feature in the emerging national societies of the region. While
these options were being pursued, the discourse of nationhood was also being
articulated within the confines of the new Balkan nation-states. Indeed, its
promotion by the local states was one of the factors that inhibited the success of
Ottomanism.
Nationhood implies a complex of ideas and mentalities concerning the politi-
cization of cultural life. Within the discourse of citizenship, membership of a
‘nation’ becomes a political issue of rights and duties, thus creating room for the
concept of ‘ethnicity’, which serves to designate distinctions of race, class, religion
or skin color within the industrialized democracies of the West (Gran, 1996;
Hobsbawm, 1996: 256–8). However, whilst ‘ethnicity’ serves in that case as a
complementary category, within the discourse of nationhood it provides the very
foundation of national identity, where cultural markers (religion, language, folk
culture) are elevated into determinants of the legitimate membership of a nation.
When social bonds are created by such a process, a different kind of national
identity is born, as membership of existing ethnies or ethnic communities is
politicized (Smith, 1986; Rothschild, 1981), thus transforming them into
nations.4
The articulation of nationhood found fertile ground in nineteenth-century
romanticism, which exerted considerable influence on the expression and the
reception of French, Italian and German nationalisms (Bereciatru, 1994: 42–6).
The ‘nationalities’ principle emerged after the 1789 French Revolution and after
the 1830 Revolution it gained considerable popularity. Throughout Europe,
movements such as Young Italy, Young Germany, Young Turkey, Young Ireland
and Young Switzerland proceeded to utilize the romantic spirit to create social
and cultural cohesion. Its ultimate codification was in the 1917 principle of self-
determination, which paved the way for the reconstruction of the political map
of Eastern Europe.
These international currents did not escape the attention of the newly formed
Balkan states, whose intelligentsia was eager to show its modernity by adapting
itself to the intellectual currents of the time. Between 1830 and 1880 a roman-
tic nationalist intelligentsia shaped the Greek, Serb and Bulgarian version of the
‘nation’ through such devices as historical narrative, religious symbolism, the
06 Roudometof (jr/d) 30/3/99 11:18 am Page 240
Conclusion
The argument in this article is that actual or potential ethnic conflicts in South-
eastern Europe are related to rivalries generated by the region’s reorganization
according to the Western European model of the nation-state, and not to a ‘clash
of civilizations’. The adoption of the nation-state was a manifestation of the
Balkan peoples’ ‘modernity’, not of their ‘backwardness’. The recurrent phenom-
enon of ethnic conflict is due not to ‘tribalism’, but to the adoption of nation-
hood as the foundational form of national identity among the Eastern Orthodox
Christians of the region. Thus, the experience of Southeastern Europe illustrates
the importance of the concept of globalization as part of historical and cultural
analysis, since it reveals the modernity of ‘local’ regional problems and their
connections to global processes.5
My discussion also highlights the structural and cultural difficulties involved
in any future EU expansion into Southeastern Europe. As Judt (1996: 41)
suggests, the foundational myth of modern Europe is to be found in the EU’s
claim that its rules, regulations and cosmopolitan culture should be extended to
the other European states. This proposition creates serious problems for a number
of Southeastern European states, where the institutionalization of nationhood has
been codified in their post-1989 constitutions (Hayden, 1992). Such a trend is
increasingly at odds with the prevailing international and EU standards. During
the second half of the twentieth century, state sovereignty has been radically
reconfigured, while human rights have become an issue of international import-
ance. The efforts of the local states to construct cultural homogeneity within their
territories has thus come under scrutiny by an international community which
no longer views such projects favorably.
However, this outcome is only one facet of the broader point supported by this
discussion, that is, that by understanding the impact of Western organizational
models in non-Western contexts we can better understand how homogeneity and
06 Roudometof (jr/d) 30/3/99 11:18 am Page 243
Notes
Partial support for the writing of this article was provided by the 1996–7 Mary Seeger
O’Boyle Post-Doctoral Fellowship of the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton
University. Earlier versions were presented at the 1998 World Congress of Sociology and
the 1998 American Sociological Association Annual Meetings. The article is in large part
a preview of an unpublished manuscript. The author would like to thank Professors
Roland Robertson (Sociology, University of Pittsburgh), Elizabeth H. Prodromou (W.
Wilson School, Princeton University) and Gerard Delanty (Sociology, University of Liver-
pool) for their helpful remarks in revising earlier drafts of the manuscript.
References
Ahmad, Feroz (1980) ‘Vanguard of a Nascent Bourgeoisie: The Social and Economic
Policy of the Young Turks, 1908–1918’, in O. Okyar and H. Inalcik (eds) Social and
Economic History of Turkey 1071–1920, pp. 329–50. Ankara: Meteksan.
Allardyce, Gilbert (1990) ‘Toward World History: American Historians and the Coming
of the World History Course’, Journal of World History 1(1): 23–76.
Alter, Peter (1989) Nationalism. London: Edward Arnold.
Anderson, Benedict (1983) Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Arai, Musami (1992) Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Bakic-Hayden, Milica and Hayden, Robert M. (1992) ‘Orientalist Variations on the
Theme “Balkans”. Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics’, Slavic
Review 51(1): 1–15.
Banac, Ivo (1984) The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
Barber, Benjamin (1995) Jihad Vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping
the World. New York: Ballantine.
Beck, Ulrich, Giddens, Anthony and Lash, Scott (1994) Reflexive Modernization: Politics,
Tradition, and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bendix, Reinhard (1978) Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Bereciatru, Gurutz J. (1994) Decline of the Nation-State. Rhino: University of Nevada Press.
Berlin, Isaiah (1981) Against the Current. New York: Viking Press.
Billig, Michael (1995) Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.
Braude, Benjamin and Lewis, Bernard, eds (1982) Christians and Jews in the Ottoman
Empire, Vol.1. New York: Holmes & Meier.
Brubaker, Rogers (1992) Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Brubaker, Rogers (1995) ‘National Minorities, Nationalizing States, and External
National Homelands in the New Europe’, Daedalus 124(2): 107–32.
Castellan, George (1984) ‘Facteur religieux et identité nationale dans les Balkans aux
XIXe–XXe siècles’, Revue Historique 27(1): 135–51.
Castellan, George (1985) ‘Le romantisme historique: une des sources de l’idéologie des
Etats Balkaniques aux XIXe et XXe siecles’, Etudes Historiques 3(1): 187–203.
Chirot, Daniel and Barkey, Karen (1984) ‘States in Search of Legitimacy: Was There
Nationalism in the Balkans of the Early Nineteenth Century?’, in Gerard Lenski (ed.)
Current Issues and Research in Macrosociology, pp. 30–46. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Connor, Walker (1993) ‘Beyond Reason: The Nature of the Ethno-national Bond’, Ethnic
and Racial Studies (16): 373–89.
Connor, Walker (1994) Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Djilas, Aleksa (1991) The Contested Country. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Djordjevic, Dimitrije (1970) ‘Projects for the Federation of South-East Europe in the
1860s and 1870s’, Balkanica I: 119–46.
Djordjevic, Dimitrije (1980) ‘Yugoslav Unity in the Nineteenth Century’, in Dimitrije
Djordjevic (ed.) The Creation of Yugoslavia 1914–1918, pp. 1–18. Santa Barbara: Clio.
Dragnich, Alexis N. (1989) ‘The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia: The Omen of the Upsurge
of Serbian Nationalism’, East European Quarterly 26(2): 183–98.
Ergil, Dogu (1975) ‘A Reassessment: The Young Turks, their Politics, and Anti-Colonial
Struggle’, Balkan Studies 16(2): 26–72.
06 Roudometof (jr/d) 30/3/99 11:18 am Page 245
Featherstone, Mike, Lash, Scott and Robertson, Roland, eds (1995) Global Modernities.
London: Sage.
Georgeoff, Peter J. (1973) ‘Educational and Religious Rivalries in European Turkey Before
the Balkan Wars’, in American Contributions to the Seventh International Congress of
Slavicists, pp. 143–70. Paris: Mouton.
Geyer, Michael and Bright, Charles (1995) ‘World History in a Global Age’, American
Historical Review 100(4): 1034–60.
Gran, Peter (1996) Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History. Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press.
Greenfeld, Liah (1991) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Grew, Raymond (1984) ‘The 19th Century European State’, in Charles Bright and Susan
Harding (eds), Statemaking and Social Movements, pp. 83–120. Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press.
Gross, Mirjana (1977) ‘Social Structure and National Movements among the Yugoslav
Peoples on the Eve of the First World War’, Slavic Review 36(4): 628–43.
Hanioglou, Surku M. (1995) The Young Turks in Opposition. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Harvey, David (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Harvey, David (1995) ‘Globalization in Question’, Rethinking Marxism 8(4): 1–17.
Hayden, Robert M. (1992) ‘Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav
Republics’, Slavic Review 51(4): 654–73.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. (1996) ‘Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today’, in Gopal Bala-
krishnan (ed.) Mapping the Nation, pp. 255–66. London: Verso.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1993) ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs 72(3): 22–49.
Jelavich, Charles (1990) South Slav Nationalisms – Textbooks and Yugoslav Union Before
1914. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Judt, Tony (1996) A Grand Illusion? An Essay on Europe. New York: Hill & Wang.
Kaplan, Robert D. (1992) Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History. New York: St
Martin’s Press.
Karakasidou, Anastasia (1994) ‘Sacred Scholars, Profane Advocates: Intellectuals Molding
National Consciousness in Greece’, Identities 1(1): 35–61.
Karakasidou, Anastasia (1997) Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood. Passages to Nationhood in
Greek Macedonia 1870–1990. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kedourie, Elie (1985) Nationalism. London: Hutchinson.
Kennan, George (1993) ‘Introduction’, in The Other Balkan Wars, pp. 3–16. Washing-
ton, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Kitsikis, Dimitris (1978) Comparative History of Greece and Turkey in the Twentieth
Century. Athens: Estia (in Greek).
Kofos, Evangelos (1984) ‘Attempts at Mending the Greek-Bulgarian Ecclesiastical Schism
(1875–1902)’, Balkan Studies 25(2): 347–75.
Kofos, Evangelos (1986) ‘Patriarch Joachim II (1878–1884) and the Irredentist Policy of
the Greek State’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 4(2): 107–20.
Kohn, Hans (1961) The Idea of Nationalism. New York: Macmillan.
Kohn, Hans (1962) The Age of Nationalism: The First Era of Global History. New York:
Harper and Brothers.
Krejci, Jaroslav and Velimski, Viteslav (1981) Ethnic and Political Nations in Europe. New
York: St Martin’s Press.
Kushner, David (1977) The Rise of Turkish Nationalism 1876–1908. London: Cass.
Landau, Jacob (1981) Pan-Turkism in Turkey: A Study in Irredentism. London: Hurst.
06 Roudometof (jr/d) 30/3/99 11:18 am Page 246
Lewis, Bernard (1979) The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London: Oxford University Press.
Lipset, Seymour M. (1963) The First New Nation. New York: Basic Books.
Malcolm, Noel (1994) Bosnia: A Short History. New York: New York University Press.
McDonald, Terence, ed. (1996) The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
McNeill, William H. (1963) The Rise of the West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Meininger, Thomas (1974) ‘The Formation of a Nationalist Bulgarian Intelligentsia’,
PhD doctoral dissertation, Department of History, University of Wisconsin.
Meyer, John W. and Hannan, Michael T., eds (1979) National Development and the World
System: Educational, Economic, and Political Change, 1950–1970. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Mojzes, Paul (1994) Yugoslav Inferno: Ethnoreligious Warfare in the Balkans. New York:
Continuum.
Navari, Cornelia (1975) ‘The Origins of the Nation-State’, in Leonard Tivey (ed.) The
Nation-State, pp. 13–38. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Plamenatz, John (1976) ‘Two Types of Nationalism’, in Eugene Kamenka (ed.) National-
ism: the Nature and Evolution of an Idea, pp. 23–36. London: Edward Arnold.
Prodromou, Elizabeth H. (1996) ‘Paradigms, Power, and Identity: Rediscovering
Orthodoxy and Regionalizing Europe’, European Journal of Political Research 30
(September): 125–54.
Ramet, Pedro (1992) Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia 1962–1991. Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press.
Rezun, Miron (1995) Europe and War in the Balkans: Toward a New Yugoslav Identity.
Westport, CT: Praeger.
Robertson, Roland (1992) Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage.
Robertson, Roland and Khondker, Habib H. (1998) ‘Discourses of Globalization:
Preliminary Considerations’, International Sociology 13(1): 25–40.
Rothschild, John (1981) Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Roudometof, Victor (1994) ‘Globalization or Modernity?’, Comparative Civilizations
Review 31: 18–45.
Roudometof, Victor (1996a) ‘Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Balkans: Greece
and the Macedonian Question’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14(2): 253–301.
Roudometof, Victor (1996b) ‘The Consolidation of National Minorities in Southeastern
Europe’, Journal of Political and Military Sociology 24 (Winter): 187–209.
Roudometof, Victor (1998a) ‘From Rum Millet to Greek Nation: Enlightenment, Secu-
larization, and National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453–1821’, Journal of
Modern Greek Studies 16(2): 11–48.
Roudometof, Victor (1998b) ‘Invented Traditions, Symbolic Boundaries, and National
Identity in Southeastern Europe: Greece and Serbia in Comparative-Historical
Perspective, 1830–1880’, East European Quarterly 32(4): 429–71.
Rusinow, Dennison (1977) The Yugoslav Experiment 1948–1974. London: Hurst.
Rusinow, Dennison (1982) ‘Yugoslavia’s Muslim Nation’, Field Staff International Report
8: 1–8.
Salecl, Renata (1994) ‘The Crisis of Identity and the Struggle for New Hegemony in the
Former Yugoslavia’, in Ernesto Laclau (ed.) The Making of Political Identities, pp.
205–32. London: Verso.
Shashko, Philip (1974) ‘Yugoslavism and the Bulgarians in the Nineteenth Century’,
Southeastern Europe I(2): 136–56.
06 Roudometof (jr/d) 30/3/99 11:18 am Page 247
Shoup, Paul (1968) Communism and the Yugoslav National Question. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Skendi, Stavro (1980) Balkan Cultural Studies. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs.
Skopetea, Elli (1992) The Twilight of the East: Images from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Athens: Gnosi (in Greek).
Smith, Anthony D. (1986) The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Smith, Anthony D. (1991) National Identity. Rhino: University of Nevada Press.
Somers, Margaret (1995) ‘Narrating and Naturalizing Civil Society and Citizenship
Theory: The Place of Political Culture and the Public Sphere’, Sociological Theory
13(3): 229–74.
Stokes, Gale (1976) ‘The Absence of Nationalism in Serbian Politics before 1840’,
Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 4(1): 77–90.
Stokes, Gale (1987) ‘The Social Origins of East European Politics’, East European Politics
and Societies 1(1): 30–74.
Svolopoulos, Constantin (1980) ‘L’initiation de Mourad V à la franc-maçonnerie par Cl.
Skalieri: Aux origines du mouvement libéral en Turquie’, Balkan Studies 21(2): 441–57.
Therborn, Goran (1995) ‘Routes to/through Modernity’ in Mike Featherstone, Scott
Lash, and Roland Robertson (eds) Global Modernities, pp. 124–39. London: Sage.
Todorov, Vardan N. (1995) Greek Federalism During the Nineteenth Century (Ideas and
Projects). Boulder, CO: Columbia University Press.
Todorova, Maria (1994) ‘The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention’, Slavic Review 53(2):
453–82.
Verdery, Katherine (1993) ‘Nationalism and National Sentiment in Post-socialist
Romania’, Slavic Review 52(2): 179–203.
Veremis, Thanos (1989) ‘From the National State to the Stateless Nation 1821–1910’,
European History Quarterly 19(2): 135–48.
Vermulen, Hans (1984) ‘Greek Cultural Dominance among the Orthodox Population of
Macedonia During the Last Period of Ottoman Rule’, in Anton Blok and Henk
Driessen (eds) Cultural Dominance in the Mediterranean Area, pp. 225–55. Nijmegen:
Katholieke Universiteit.
Vouri, Sofia (1992) Education and Nationalism in the Balkans: The Case of Northwestern
Macedonia (1870–1904). Athens: Paraskinio (in Greek).
Wallerstein, Immanuel (1974) The Modern World System, Vol. I. New York: Academic
Press.
Wallerstein, Immanuel (1991) Unthinking Social Science. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Waters, Malcolm (1995) Globalization. London: Routledge.
Wolf, Eric (1982) Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press.
Zlatar, Zdenko (1997) ‘The Building of Yugoslavia: The Yugoslav Idea and the First
Common State of the South Slavs’, Nationalities Papers 25(3): 387–406.