Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Balkan Wars between the Lines: Violence and Civilians in Macedonia, 1912-1918(2012) Papaioannou, Stefan Sotiris; Lampe, John R; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation challenges the widely held view that there is something morbidly distinctive about violence in the Balkans. It subjects this notion to scrutiny by examining how inhabitants of the embattled region of Macedonia endured a particularly violent set of events: the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and the First World War. Making use of a variety of sources including archives located in the three countries that today share the region of Macedonia, the study reveals that members of this majority-Orthodox Christian civilian population were not inclined to perpetrate wartime violence against one another. Though they often identified with rival national camps, inhabitants of Macedonia were typically willing neither to kill their neighbors nor to die over those differences. They preferred to pursue priorities they considered more important, including economic advancement, education, and security of their properties, all of which were likely to be undermined by internecine violence. National armies from Balkan countries then adjacent to geographic Macedonia (Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia) and their associated paramilitary forces were instead the perpetrators of violence against civilians. In these violent activities they were joined by armies from Western and Central Europe during the First World War. Contrary to existing military and diplomatic histories that emphasize continuities between the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and the First World War, this primarily social history reveals that the nature of abuses committed against civilians changed rapidly during this six-year period. During the Balkan Wars and the opening campaigns of the First World War, armed forces often used tactics of terror against civilians perceived to be unfriendly, including spontaneous decisions to burn houses, murder, and rape. As the First World War settled into a long war of attrition, armed forces introduced concentration camps and other kinds of bureaucratically organized violence against civilians that came increasingly to mark broader European violence of the twentieth century. In all of these activities, the study reveals, Balkan armies and paramilitary forces were little different in their behavior from armed forces of the era throughout the Western world.Item Contesting the Greatness of Alexander the Great: The Representation of Alexander in the Histories of Polybius and Livy(2011) Overtoom, Nikolaus Leo; Eckstein, Arthur M; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)By investigating the works of Polybius and Livy, we can discuss an important aspect of the impact of Alexander upon the reputation and image of Rome. Because of the subject of their histories and the political atmosphere in which they were writing - these authors, despite their generally positive opinions of Alexander, ultimately created scenarios where they portrayed the Romans as superior to the Macedonian king. This study has five primary goals: to produce a commentary on the various Alexander passages found in Polybius' and Livy's histories; to establish the generally positive opinion of Alexander held by these two writers; to illustrate that a noticeable theme of their works is the ongoing comparison between Alexander and Rome; to demonstrate Polybius' and Livy's belief in Roman superiority, even over Alexander; and finally to create an understanding of how this motif influences their greater narratives and alters our appreciation of their works.Item Bulgaria's Macedonia: Nation-Building and State Building, Centralization and Autonomy in Pirin Macedonia, 1903-1952(2006-11-25) Frusetta, James; Lampe, John R; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores the intersection between rival forms of consciousness in Pirin Macedonia: national and local, from the anti-Ottoman Ilinden Uprising in Macedonia in 1903 to the end of the Communist "Macedonianization" campaign in 1952. Bulgarian, Macedonian and English-language historiographies have each portrayed this period as one in which a centralized state extended its power into the region and codified a Bulgarian national consciousness among its inhabitants. This dissertation finds that a rival, local consciousness existed through this period as well. The inability of the Bulgarian state in 1878 to secure the annexation of all geographic Macedonia, however, had led in the late nineteenth century to the emergence of a local paramilitary organization, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO). VMRO is generally portrayed as a nationalist organization. But in leading Macedonians within a struggle against first the Ottoman Empire, then against Greece, Serbia (later, Yugoslavia) and even factions within Bulgaria, it provided an alternative experience of mobilization. The Organization took on functions of the state, able to do this as the Bulgarian state was weakened by internal crises and external enemies. This period thus saw a lengthy struggle between VMRO and the central state to consolidate control over Pirin, a conflict that continued between local elites and the state even after the paramilitary organization was driven underground in 1934. The "Macedonian Question" has been portrayed as a wedge issue by which external actors -- particularly the Communist International, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany -- could seek to divide Southeastern Europe. This dissertation goes farther in arguing that Macedonia was a divisive issue within national politics as well. Even in the post-1934 Zveno and royal dictatorships, then the Communist-dominated regime after 1944, Pirin remained a divisive issue and one in which a weak central state was forced to find compromise with local interests. The "Macedonianization" campaign that followed the Second World War was the vehicle by which Pirin was subordinated to the Bulgarian state. As such, the campaign appears less as a Soviet-directed campaign for the benefit of Yugoslavia, and more as a means by which Sofia was able to establish control over the district.Item Salvation Abroad: Macedonian Migration to North America and the Making of Modern Macedonia, 1870-1970(2005-04-18) Michaelidis, Gregory; Gerstle, Gary; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores the establishment of Macedonian diaspora communities in North America, and the concurrent development of Macedonian national identity, between 1870 and 1970. Taking a transnational approach to cultural history, it ultimately finds a reciprocal relationship between Macedonian migration and identity by focusing on key nationalist leaders and organizations, as well as the crucial points of transformation in the evolution of Macedonian national identity. By blurring the boundary between Canada and the United States - as did many migrants from Macedonia who saw the two countries as "Upper" and "Lower" America - this study emphasizes migration rather than settlement in order to unveil nationalism's religious, cultural and political components. The dissertation, therefore, is grounded not in the cement of a single national narrative, but in the cultural products that result from passages - physical, spiritual, and social - among nations. As the nineteenth century ended, a climate of deprivation and violence compelled tens of thousands of men from the Macedonian region to depart their troubled corner of the Balkans and find economic salvation abroad. Like their fellow villagers, most of the migrants considered themselves to be geographically Macedonian but culturally Bulgarian. Almost none identified with a nationality in the modern sense. This study argues, however, that more than simply fulfilling an economic mission abroad, the migrant men, and later their families, capitalized on the freedoms North America offered to forge a broader "salvation" that fundamentally changed their national and ethnic worldview. Put another way, migration catalyzed a process in which the migrants became, simply, "Macedonians." Far from leaving behind the political and cultural battles of their homeland, the migrant communities formed political, cultural, and religious organizations that sought to influence the policies of both their host and home countries. But defining the new Macedonian nation proved a contentious issue. As the migrant communities cleaved into left- and right-leaning factions during the middle and latter years of the twentieth century, the nature of Macedonian identity, which, I argue, was intimately connected to notions of Macedonian cultural history, became a fiercely contested subject, and remains so today.