A new vision of the Balkans
The Balkans has a long-troubled history, uniting people, places, states and governments. Yet the study of the history of the region has been long confined to a national lens with little consideration for the impact on other neighbouring states.
The Entangled Balkans received €1.56m from the European Research Council (ERC) to explore the history of the region and project co-ordinator Professor Roumen Daskalov hopes the FP7 project will help place a new outlook on the area’s history and promote good neighbour relations.
What is the background to the Entangled Balkans project and your motivation for applying for EU funding?
Modern Balkan history has traditionally been studied in the national paradigm as separate national histories taking place within bounded state territories. Some attention has been paid to economic, political and cultural ‘relations’, ‘influences’ and ‘imports’ from abroad, especially from Western Europe, which has long served as a model for aspiration and imitation. This is less common when compared to the Ottoman legacy, while interactions (apart from diplomatic and military ones) and mutual influences between the Balkans states are downplayed, if not entirely ignored. When imports (of material items, ideas and institutions, etc.) mostly from the West are studied, this is done in the traditional manner of one-directional movement accompanied by a critique of the distorted manner of their adaptation and appropriation. The few good exceptions do not alter the general picture.
This project goes against the grain of the current national paradigm in practicing history of the Balkans. We approach the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared, connected and entangled histories, transfers and crossings both from within and without the Balkans. Given the internal complexity of the Balkans and their long-standing relations with the West and Russia, this approach is particularly suitable and promising for breaking new ground. By applying this style systematically to various articulations to the region, we attempt to refocus the historical lenses and not only explore a variety of older themes and topics in a novel way but bring entirely new problems to the forefront and even constitute new objects of research.
What are the key objectives of the Entangled Balkans project?
The objective of this project is to explore the various ways in which the histories of the Balkan peoples were shared, connected and entangled, and in some respects, became structurally inter-dependent in the course of the 19th and 20th Centuries. The project also explores transfers and crossings within the region and from the West and Russia.
What we have is a provisional and open-ended research programme guided by a general ‘paradigm’, frame of reference and key concepts. It is intended as a long-term and wide-format venture that can accommodate numerous and variegated interests and inquiries providing them with a degree of methodological and conceptual coherence. The larger ambition behind is to alter and reconfigure the traditional historiographical landscape of the region with its self-contained national entities and to obtain different vistas from the new vantage points.
Besides the cognitive achievement and the advance in knowledge, the project may well have wider social and political relevance and implications. The ‘entangled history’ or ‘histoire croisée’ approach does not aim to harmonise the past and smooth out past conflict. The contacts, movement, exchanges, transfers, etc. were more often asymmetrical and violent than harmonious and peaceful. Still, there is some positive and integrative value in showing how ‘entangled’ the histories of the present-day Balkan nations and states were and still are. As long as one does not take a partial and partisan national(ist) view, this may enhance the feeling of ‘commonality’ and add to the goodwill of living in a shared space.
How important is the ERC funding to your FP7 project?
The generous funding from the ERC has been absolutely vital. The funding has enabled me, as team leader, to obtain a long leave of absence from teaching to organise and engage a dedicated team of researchers, to travel around the region in search of archival materials and secondary literature and to pay for the English editing and other parts of the work. A project of that scope and duration simply cannot be carried out without adequate funding. National funding would have been insufficient even in a Western European country and much more so in my native Bulgaria.
What are your aspirations for the future development of the project, particularly regarding Horizon 2020?
We must first complete the project, which has expanded to include additional work with more outcomes. Next, we will work for the promotion and implementation of the concept and the outcomes – in scholarly research, in university teaching and we will attempt to gain the interest of public stakeholders in the sphere of education and propagate the basic ideas in secondary school textbooks. This will be done by applying for a one-year proof of concept grant. Only then will I think about other opportunities within Horizon 2020 though this will be another project, not a repetition of the current one.
To what extent do you believe Horizon 2020 adequately addresses culture, humanities and society with research funding opportunities?
I think Horizon 2020 offers unique research opportunities in the humanities and social sciences. What I particularly like about the programme is the chances it gives for an individual to conceptualise the research and for work in small teams, in contrast to larger collaborative schemes, which are more difficult to manage and to carry to a successful end. I also think that it stimulates research not only by funding it, but also by the prestige that goes together with research on the European scale and in European-wide competition.
Supranational funding has been very important to Bulgaria due to the often non-competitive and sometimes dubious way national resources are distributed. The Bulgarian government also dedicates very little money to research. European funding guarantees an objective and unbiased assessment of projects and a competitive distribution of money.
Professor Roumen Daskalov
