Balkan Historiographical Wars

The purpose of this project is to analyze the historiographical “wars” that have influenced the history writing in the Balkans/Southeastern Europe from the emergence of the national historical narratives in the region to the present day. Such controversies typically concern ethnic origins and the “national” makeup of medieval states; ownership of segments of history and historical heritage; disputes over territories and ethnicity in the modern era; fascism and the Holocaust. Our research work pursues several tasks: to identify the issues that generated heated debates between historians of two, three, or more nations; to analyze the structure and dynamics of these controversies; to reveal their motives, assumptions, and implications; to embed the contested issues in their socio- and cultural-political context and institutional setting; to compare diachronically the treatment of similar contested issues; to relate the debates to the construction of the master historical narratives of the respective countries and see how these have been intertwined. The ultimate goal is to neutralize, relativize, and transcend the “wars of historiographies”.