Abstract

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.

“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).