The Transformation of South-East Europe and its Ottoman Heritage from 1870 to the Twenty-first Century

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Europe was filled not only with hope of reunification and a new beginning, but also with conflicts of a kind that ran counter to the visions of peace and democracy. The break-up of Yugoslavia, war, ethnic cleansing and national chauvinism nourished the idea that unending hatred and ancient ethnic antagonisms were driving forces in the development of South-East Europe. This gave rise to an image, both in the media and in political rhetoric, of the entire region as a special category of countries still stuck in a malignant, unchanging culture: a perception that led to the postulation that the area must be regarded as Europe’s backwater and its past as an obstacle to modernization processes. It is a perspective that has also affected the outlook on surrounding countries such as Greece, Romania and Turkey. Therefore, this track of The Many Roads in Modernity applies a broad understanding of South-East Europe in its investigations of authoritarianism, weak democracies and the amalgamation of ethno-religious belonging and nationalism in local and regional politics.

The national narratives of the nineteenth century still linger on in views of the past and the visions of progress in South-East Europe, despite the major changes of the twentieth century, so scholars in this track also seek to explore regional and transnational perspectives in the past and present. What is modern and who is not modern has long been a battleground for numerous agents; there are many other roads to modernity. Furthermore, the region’s past has been dominated by three great empires: the Russian, the Habsburg and especially the Ottoman. These domains have continued to live on well into our time in ideas of the significant Other that were developed in the nineteenth century to establish coherent identities in the burgeoning national movements and states. Thus, discussion of the significance of the Ottoman experience for an understanding of the political and cultural development of the region is a point of departure for scholars working in this track. They aim to use the relationship between the modern history of South-East Europe and the long imperial past of the region as an alternative to prevailing models which are based on simple dichotomies: Europe versus the Balkans and the West versus Islam. Through this, a more nuanced understanding of the many roads to modernity in Europe may be reached.

The focus is on changes of identity, self-representation and affiliation in the light of the huge pressure triggered by the interaction between international politics, on the one hand, and local and regional practice from the latter part of the nineteenth century to the present day, on the other. These processes are studied at different levels from the state to local communities, along with transformations in art, literature and religious practice.

“The Transformation of South-East Europe and its Ottoman Heritage” is divided into the following chronological units

The Decline of Empires and the Developments of Nation States in Post-Ottoman Times 1870–1950 focuses on the significance of the Ottoman heritage to attempts by elites and minorities to modernize institutions, social practice and culture in the late Ottoman state and the subsequent nation states until the war, occupations and civil unrest of the 1940s radically changed conditions for the development of politics, culture and ways of life.

Authoritarian Regimes and Modernization Projects 1950–1989 focuses on the challenges from “the long Second World War”. The tensions in the collective memory of the years of war and occupation between, on the one hand, official modernistic history writing and, on the other, collective and individual memories of an Ottoman past is investigated by several studies in this track. There is also a strong focus on authoritarian governance and the interplay with foreign powers, especially on the new role of countries in the region as front states in the Cold War and the direct Soviet dominance of internal affairs in some of them.

The Return of the Local and Globalization since 1989 focuses on the use of history and idealist notions of ethnic and religious particularism in attempts to develop alternative visions of the future. Such juxtapositions apply especially to an adaptation of nationalism that includes both the romantic idea of a nexus between people and territory, and contemporary global conditions. This becomes very apparent in conflicting ideas about the Ottoman past, which can be linked to conceptualizations of a distinctive local character and yet express tribute to ideal multicultural empires.