| dc.description.abstract | A cluster of small independent states emerged in the Balkans between c. 1830 and 1912, as the Ottomans’ pluripolitical imperial system gradually collapsed. Global histories of law and statecraft have shown that such transitions from the world of empires to the world of nations were not historical ruptures. Yet, the literature has not dealt with the question of how legal jockeying within empires conjured new states. The dissertation responds to this question by positioning the Balkans as a critical testing ground for modern international ordering and post-imperial sovereignty. Rather than being spurred by nationalism, Balkan states took shape through Ottoman imperial reforms, international governance, and ordinary people’s entanglements with the law. The thesis offers three main interventions. First, modern Balkan polities, and their attendant nationalisms, emanated from a polycentric, empire-wide search for uniform legal power. Second, Balkan statehood materialized at the intersection of “civilizing” discourses, legislation drives, and the agency of a wide array of historical actors. Third, in the late Ottoman Balkans, national, supranational, and imperial patterns of rule collided to generate key dilemmas of world ordering that continue to shape international politics. These include the vague boundaries between national authority and international oversight and the precarious standing of peripheral successor states vis-à-vis former imperial metropoles. | |
