Reinstating the Ottomans Alternative Balkan Modernities, 1800-1912 [Paperback]

This book focuses on the western Balkans in the period 1820-1912, in particular on the peoples and social groups that the later national history would claim to have been Albanians, providing a revisionist exploration of national identity prior to the establishment of the nation-state.The Search for a Narrative of Transition Retrieving Historical Process: Transitions to a Modern Story Repositioning Agency and the Forces of Change The Compromised Empire: Ethnicity and Faith under State Powers Governing Exchange: Boundaries and the Struggle to Define/Confine Learning the Wrong Lesson: Local Challenges to Educational Reform

Reinstating the Ottomans will - and it should, I believe - provoke strong reactions, but this is only a strength of the book because its well-founded conclusions and meticulously established observations - if not new facts - is a much needed challenge to any student not only of the western Balkans but of the Ottoman Empire as a whole as well as of south-eastern Europe. His historical scholarly methodology reflects a strict observance of the rigorous basic rules of the modern historical science, namely that the historian should show how things actually happened. This is what Blumi does. The same basic rules also require that the historian should refrain from judging the past. This is the tendency Blumi takes to task when questioning the categories used by the national historiography. Blumi fruitfully applies insights from social science and literary studies among others in his analysis of the sources. This approach enables him to identify - and give a voice to - those who were governed. - Mogens Pelt, Associate Professor in International History at Saxo Institute, History Section, University of Copenhagen

This book beautifully traces the coincidences and personalities during the crucial second half of the nineteenth century when the new states emerged, and shows how the Ottoman state responded and how states, borders, and l3&