One hundred years ago, in October 1912, the outbreak of what was later known as the First Balkan War terminated the Ottoman presence of 500 years on the European continent. A new order was implemented that propagated European nation-states, which aimed at expansion externally and ethnic homogenisation internally. Only the nation-state seemed to be a fully accepted member of the European family of states. Yugoslavia, the multi-ethnic exception to the rule, actually joined the choir, as she attempted to become home of a new, supra-ethnic nation to be invented.

More often than not it was wars that served as a means for ethnic transformation. Three decades were especially violent. During the years between 1912 and 1923, between 1940 and 1950, and between 1990 and 1999, much of the ethnic fabric of the Balkans was destroyed, with effects that still haunt the present South-Eastern European states. The integrity of countries such as Bosnia, Macedonia or the Kosovo is still threatened by ethnic tensions and separatism, which delays their integration into the European Union.

Even though the 20th century was immensely violent on the Balkans, most historians of the Modern Balkans restrained from painting the region as a blood-soaked trouble spot, as Europe's powder keg. Instead, historians tried to analyse the processes of escalating violence, thereby focussing on perpetrator groups, and also establishing links between violence on the Balkans and policies in the Western world. In this perspective, ethno-national violence was to a large extent a product of the activities of nationalistic groups in the Balkan countries, who aimed to transform their countries following the idealised model of Western nation-states. The focus on ethnic cleansing and war tends to cloud the fact that policies of ethnic homogenisation took also place in various forms in peaceful times.

The Department of East European History at the University of Vienna and the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester are jointly organising a conference which, on occasion of the anniversary of the outbreak of the first Balkan war, aims to explore the policies of ethnic homogenisation on the Balkans during the past 100 years in a comparative perspective.

Ethnic homogenisation is going to be analysed on three levels. A first panel discusses cases of wartime ethnic cleansing (1). Based on that, the second and the third panel aim at ethnic homogenisation in the immediate post-war years (2) and in peaceful times (3). Thus, the conference will not only examine the links between war and ethnic cleansing, but also investigate how issues such as state building, international treaties and social engineering impacted on national processes of ethnic homogenisation in a European framework. One leading question aims at the aftermath of expulsions. To what extent was it possible to undo ethnic cleansings; under which circumstances was a new beginning in the coexistence of ethnic groups possible? For example, the aftermath of the Dayton agreement seems to be a case in which the attempts for reintegration rather caused new tensions instead of providing a viable ground for reconciliation, even though it might be too early for an historical assessment. But the Balkan wars of 1912/13 and their immediate aftermaths might also demonstrate the difficulties faced by regions dealing with violent homogenisation. Could expellees and war refugees return to their villages? If yes, what if the expelled owners found their houses burnt and their livestock sold? Were once ethnically mixed villages rebuilt in a more segregated way? And if not, where should the resettlement take place? Questions such as these are understudied and will help to shed light on the numerous ways forcibly removed people in South-Eastern Europe had to go, especially after the decades of violence mentioned before. Thus, the second panel will also address the geographies and the political economies of refuge and return, including case studies from within as well as from outside Yugoslavia.

Whilst the question of return was, to a certain extent, an individual decision, most of the expellees found their fates decided by governments on national or international levels. First of all, this applied to the international large-scale resettlement agreements such us the treaties of Neuilly-sur-Seine (1919), of Lausanne (1923), of Craiova (1940), of Zagreb (1941) and of Potsdam (1945). In most cases, several European great powers were involved in the deliberations; sometimes, they were even the driving force behind it. The"unmixing of people" was presented to be the key for political stability. In this respect, democratic, fascist and communist politicians were surprisingly united in modern European history.

Again, the political reality and the transnational entanglement of the resettlements following the treaties are understudied. The questions to be addressed at the conference concern to what extent the arrival of the"settlers" went hand in hand with attempts to redefine the nation. Social engineering and nation-building became intertwined processes, grounded in a widespread ethnic perception of the nation as an organic body. Thus, governments used the settlers both as an instrument for their ethno-political purposes, and for the marginalisation of ethnic minorities in the contested borderlands. The conference will enquire about those resettled involuntarily as well as about settlers driven by nationalism who often called themselves colonisers and who saw themselves as ethnic pioneers securing the borderlands for the nation.

The conference will bring together colleagues working on Eastern- and South-Eastern Europe, with the aim to discuss ethnic homogenisation in a transnational perspective and to link"Western" and regional causes of transformation. The boundaries between war, post-war and peace will be questioned as much as between the great political systems, under which the ethnic heterogeneity of South-Eastern Europe increasingly came under duress. A cornerstone of the conference will be the young scientist forum, to which young researchers from South-Eastern Europe are invited. The discussion of their projects and the mutual exchange will hopefully lead to the establishment of an academic network across boundaries.

This seminar is supported by the Robert Bosch Foundation.

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Thursday, November 08, 2012

Opening Remarks (13:30-14:00)

Philipp THER (University of Vienna), Alexander KORB (University of Leicester/Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena): Homogenization Politics and its Limits

Panel I Ethnicised Warfare (14:00-17:30)

Chair: Cathie Carmichael (University of East Anglia)

Tamara SCHEER (University of Vienna): Why can the Conflicts in the Balkans (1912-1918) be called an Ethnicized Warfare?

John Paul NEWMAN (NUI Maynooth): Nationalizing Wars and Paramilitarism in the Balkans 1914-1939

Alexander KORB (University of Leicester/Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena): Peculiarities of the Southeastern European Warzone During WWII and Beyond (1941-1948)

Coffee break (15:30-16:00)

Tomislav DULIC (University of Uppsala): Ethnicized Warfare in the Hercegovina, 1991-1995

Comment: Philipp THER (University of Vienna)

Discussion (16:30-17:30)

Coffee break (17:30-18:00)

Key Note Lecture (18:00) Theodora DRAGOSTINOVA (Ohio State University): Politics and Limits of Nationalization: A View From Below

Friday, November 09, 2012

Panel II Unmixing Peoples: National Policies and International Context (9:30-12:00)

Chair: Carolin LEUTLOFF GRANDITS (HU Berlin/University of Graz)

Hakem RUSTOM (University of Michigan): Balkan Wars, Anatolian Echoes: The Lausanne Treaty and the Armenian Population

Viorel ACHIM (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History in Bucharest/Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena): International Aspects of Romanian Population Policies, 1940-1944

Cathie CARMICHAEL (University of East Anglia): The International Community, Local Actors and Ethnic Homogenization in the Western Balkans in the 1990s

Coffee break (10:30-11:00)

Comment: Constantin IORDACHI (CEU/Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena)

Discussion (11:10-12:00)

Panel III/1 Postwar Ethnic Engineering (13:30-16:00)

Chair: Adamantios Skordos

Interwar Yugoslavia and Turkey (13:30-14:15)

Thomas SCHAD (FU Berlin): Demographic Engineering in Interwar Yugoslavia and Turkey

Ulf BRUNNBAUER (University of Regensburg): Excluding 'Alien Elements', including 'our Emigrants': Migration Policies and National Homogenization in Interwar Yugoslavia

Coffee break (14:15-14:30)

Macedonia, 1912-1940 (14:30-16:00)

Elisabeth KONTOGIORGI (Academy of Athens): The Policies of Ethnic Homogenization and Settlement of Greek Orthodox Refugees in Northern Greece, 1912-1940

Nada BOSKOVSKA (University of Zurich): Ethnic Homogenization of Macedonia in the 1920s

Comment: Ugur Ümit ÜNGÖR (Utrecht University)

Discussion (15:20-16:00)

Coffee break (16:00-16:30)

Young Scholars Forum: Roundtable and Project presentation (16:30-19:00)

Chair: Alexander KORB

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Panel III/2 Postwar Ethnic Engineering (9:30-10:15)

Chair: Ulf BRUNNBAUER

Fascism, National Communism and Beyond, 1945-50

Vladan JOVANOVIC (Institute for Modern History of Serbia, Belgrade): Comparative Perspectives on Muslim Emigration from Monarchist and Socialist Yugoslavia (1938/1953)

Michael PORTMANN (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna): Flight, Internment, and Colonization: Migrations and Migration Policy in the Yugoslav Vojvodina 1944-1950

Coffee break (10:15-10:30)

Homogenization from Below? The 1990s (10:30-11:00)

Carolin Leutloff GRANDITS (HU Berlin/University of Graz): Post-Dayton Ethnic Engineering

Comment: Josip GLAURDIC (Cambridge)

Discussion (11:00-11:30 )

Coffee break (11:30-12:00)

Final Discussion (12:00-13:00)

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Kontakt:

Mag. Sarah Lemmen

Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte der Universität Wien

sarah.lemmen@univie.ac.at