CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Delis, Panagiotis |
|---|---|
| Title | Prisoners of War in Greek Society During the Balkan Wars of 1912-13: Communal Violence and the Blurry Lines between Civilians and Combatants |
| Summary | In this thesis, I focus on important social issues that occurred during the Balkan Wars such as: inner-communal violence, the experience of mass mobilization, the blurred lines between perpetrators and victims and combat brutalization. By examining the categories of combatants, civilians and POWs I establish a link with the historical background of this period. As I found in my research, the stereotypes that were attributed by Europeans to the Balkan people such as backward, uncivilized and barbarian were present during the Wars and played a pivotal role. My goal is not to re-interpret them in a traditional orientalist manner, but rather, to examine how Balkan states utilized this kind of discourse in order to mobilize their respective societies. When the war started, all these definitions were used by the Balkan states against each other. For the Greek soldier during the First Balkan War the Ottomans represented their medieval, backward oppressor. But as events unfolded and the Greeks found themselves at war with their former allies in the Second Balkan War, Bulgarians were now their barbarian, backward and uncivilized enemy. In this second conflagration in which the distinction between combatants and noncombatants was blurry, drawing apparent distinctions between victims and perpetrators became impossible, and the nature of violence between Greeks and Bulgarians reflected this ambiguity. For that reason, I tried to show the agency of the local people and how they actively and passively participated in these larger struggles. As I argue, violence had multiple forms ranging from personal vendettas to violent redistributions of wealth along social and class lines that were prompted by the circulation of atrocity stories. Therefore, my suggestion is that instead of seeing the Balkan Wars as two different clashes with distinctive characteristics, we should rather approach them as one larger conflict based on a much longer history of civil strife not accounted for in traditional approaches to these wars privilege diplomatic and political history. |
| Supervisor | Esmer, Tolga U; Petrovic, Vladimir |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/delis_panagiotis.pdf |
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