"The Balkans, hostage to old historical narratives", German historian: Kosovo an example of rapid transformation

Today's tensions in the Balkan region stem from 19th-century processes – particularly the collapse of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, says renowned German historian Konrad Kleving. He emphasizes that violent state formation, population movements and interventions by great powers back then created an instability that is often misunderstood by the West even today.

In an interview with The Geopost, the German historian says that the Balkans continue to remain hostage to the Ottoman and Habsburg legacy. While adding that Kosovo represents an example of rapid transformation, he underlines that mass emigration presents a challenge in its own right.

Full interview:

The Geopost: From your perspective, which factors had the strongest influence on the formation of identity in the Balkans during the 19th century?

Cleving: Yes, that is certainly a long question and difficult to answer briefly. Basically, the 19th century was marked by a long and gradual and not always consistent development of individual statehoods in the Balkans and a kind of weakening of ties with the existing empires. And the two existing empires were the Ottoman Empire in the south and the Habsburg Empire in the north. And in fact, Russia, as you said, came as a third party in Southeastern Europe, at least on its periphery, in the late 18th century. So Russia was really very present. And the other great European powers which were the Habsburg Empire, as mentioned before, Russia, Prussia, then Germany after that, and Italy, which came later, and Great Britain and France, had a big influence on the way things were handled.

And it's often misunderstood in the West, where we researched the Balkans, how much instability, in fact, was created during this 19th century. So the lives of people here, mainly in the Ottoman or post-Ottoman part of the peninsula, the Balkan Peninsula, had to really struggle and deal with a number of extraordinary upheavals and changes, which could sometimes be deadly for parts of the population. For example, the first state to be fully established after 10 years of war or uprisings, as you like, was Greece, which was established in 1830 and the relatively small but still significant Muslim community there of about 10%, was simply wiped out by those events and that also had to do with the separation from the Ottoman Empire, which was a revolutionary act in many ways. So land was recontested, for example, from many Muslim landowners, not only, but many Muslims after they were driven off their lands or killed, to other people from other parts of the population who took possession of those lands. And we often misunderstood in the West how important this must have been for people, as those who were either threatened or were benefiting from evolution, because everything was changing and could represent a risk to your life, to the life of your family and so on.

And this didn't happen because the Balkans were close to violence or dependent on violence in any aspect, but the Ottoman Empire was weakening, which is also an undeniable fact, and bringing in actors such as mainly those new nation states and other major European powers that came to fill the void. So it was a very long and turbulent century and Russia was supporting all the individual state-building processes except the Albanian one as the last one. And others were also supporters of many of these nation-building processes, other powers. So it's really a wide spectrum of the most interesting aspects.

The Geopost: How do contemporary political narratives in Southeast Europe still reflect historical legacies from the Habsburg Empire?

Cleving: I would perhaps extend the question to the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire. To start with the question about the Habsburg aspects, I think the northern part of the peninsula has more self-confidence in being on the right side of Europe in a way, having some kind of tradition, of a state, of a rule of law inherited from the individual society and something to build on, whether it is pride or whether it is on the ground and the effectiveness of the institutions. On the other hand, there is also, whether against the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire, this legacy of seeing your society in relation to its history and your society as coming from an act of liberation from foreign domination. And that is partly understandable and right in a way, so that in the whole process that I tried to describe in my first answer, more people got a say than those who had a say before.

So, the population participation really increased and it was a kind of democratization and liberation if you want to call it that. But the downside of the legacy and the way that this legacy is handled is that liberation is always put on an individual national basis. and everyone else is seen, not just the old empires but also the new neighbors as enemies, which again you can find some reason for that in history, everyone is everyone's neighbor, but there is a certain amount of distrust that comes from this legacy and from the liberation narrative that again reinforces the difficulties in developing trust in your own society or in the regional communities that may exist.

The Geopost: How do you see the political, historical and social dynamics in the Balkans, especially in our region, in Kosovo?

Cleving: Nowadays, mainly, Kosovo is a great example of a society that has gone through great stress and is now coping and making rapid changes. So, if you compare the situation in Kosovo with the situation 30 years ago, it is simply incredible how much has changed. People can now go abroad, recently with visa liberalization, and the education system is completely different from 30 years ago or 60 years ago or even 90 years ago when the majority of the population was illiterate in Kosovo. It is a small piece of a super Volcano in a way, where you can see how much can be achieved and how much burden you have to deal with. And as in all Volcanoes, one of the fundamental changes for the worse, I think, is the demographic situation.

There are so many people leaving the country and all the surrounding countries. In the rest of Europe, we have the same development in demography, but we have previously changed to some difficulties in immigration society and since the Balkans have only recently started and only the first steps to becoming countries of immigrants and instead are still countries of emigration, I see or understand that many problems are bigger than in other parts of Europe.

The Geopost: Is there any historical moment in Southeast Europe, especially in the Balkans, that you think deserves more academic attention than scholars currently know?

Cleving: Well, I would say a structure and an event. And the structure is the similarities and the effects of the close neighborhoods that you have in the Balkans. Each of the countries is very small and they all arose from more or less similar bases, regardless of where those similarities are and of course the differences. And that requires in historiography and in historical science or academic historiographical research, which also requires opportunities to study the languages ​​of the neighbors, which is difficult to provide in small countries where people might have the advantage of learning English or German or French or whatever. But I think that despite some of the hopes that I have placed in artificial intelligence in terms of linguistic access, I think it would still be very important, let's say, to take the example of Kosovo, to have historians who know how to distinguish and read Serbian topics, and in Serbia, Albanian topics, for example.

But it's very hard to find them because schools, for understandable reasons, don't take the needs of the humanities as their main aspect, and neither do students in schools. So, obviously you have to do this at the university level, and this really needs to be done, I think. So that's the structural element. And a political element that comes to mind, not only because it's going to be the 105th anniversary next year, in 2028, is actually the Berlin Congress where a lot of those aspects that I mentioned in my first answer or to you and trying to answer your first question, the foreign influences, but also the attempt of the Balkan peoples to decide their own destiny, as well as a lot of misunderstandings in our later times about what happened at this Congress and what that meant. Was it pre-colonial, post-colonial, was it denigrating for individual countries or was it giving hope to the whole region? All of this could be explored better than it has been so far.

The Geopost: And from the new era, from 1999 to this day, how do you see Germany's role in the Balkans, especially in relation to Kosovo?

Cleving: Well, again, as a historian, I would start a little earlier, namely in the 1990s. Balkan policy as a whole, and Kosovo was a very prominent part of Balkan policy, was a strong factor in redefining what Germany could and should do with incorporation and in some cases even in collision, some collision with its European partners or perhaps the US, as an independent actor, a relatively independent actor that still wanted to maintain diversity, but had to accept that it was and is the largest European country and economy, so it had some responsibility to act and it did act after the experience of how things went wrong in Bosnia. German policies towards Kosovo, not immediately after the war in Bosnia, but then developed relatively quickly in a new positioning where the key word was not the second Bosnia and therefore, we have to be prepared to intervene with partners. And that's what happened in 1999 and Germany became one of the main actors of course not only on the ground with the Prizren area after the war which was more or less under German military administration for a while, but also in the diplomatic and economic field and cooperation. Germany had accepted thousands and even 200 thousand, I think, refugees from Kosovo before the war and some of them returned after the Bosnian war to Kosovo, which was not a good idea at that moment. But anyway, Germany and Kosovo and the German-speaking world, if you can say that, are now very connected to Kosovo or vice versa, because so many Kosovars live there. And that creates a whole new environment, really, and it should be used more effectively. I think the diaspora should be more involved in this picture than it is today.

/The Geopost