Blood Ties : Religion, Violence, and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878-1908

Ipek Yosmaoglu

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9780801452260
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The region that is today the Republic of Macedonia was long the heart of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. It was home to a complex mix of peoples and faiths who had for hundreds of years lived together in relative peace. To be sure, these people were no strangers to coercive violence and various forms of depredations visited upon them by bandits and state agents. In the final decades of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, however, the region was periodically racked by bitter conflict that was qualitatively different from previous outbreaks of violence. In Blood Ties, ?pek K. Yosmao?lu explains the origins of this shift from sporadic to systemic and pervasive violence through a social history of the "Macedonian Question."

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, and the Great Powers on the Road to Mürzsteg
• 2. Education and the Creation of National Space
• 3. Territoriality and Its Discontents
• 4. Fear of Small Margins
• 5. A Leap of Faith: Disputes over Sacred Space
• 6. Logic and Legitimacy in Violence
• Conclusion
• Bibliography