Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I
- PART II
- 7 The state and economic development in Central and Eastern Europe
- 8 Concepts of economic integration in Austria during the twentieth century
- 9 The economy and the rise and fall of a small multinational state: Czechoslovakia, 1918–1992
- 10 Economic retardation, peasant farming and the nation-state in the Balkans: Serbia, 1815–1912 and 1991–1999
- 11 National and non-national dimensions of economic development in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia
- PART III
- PART IV
- PART V
- Index
10 - Economic retardation, peasant farming and the nation-state in the Balkans: Serbia, 1815–1912 and 1991–1999
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I
- PART II
- 7 The state and economic development in Central and Eastern Europe
- 8 Concepts of economic integration in Austria during the twentieth century
- 9 The economy and the rise and fall of a small multinational state: Czechoslovakia, 1918–1992
- 10 Economic retardation, peasant farming and the nation-state in the Balkans: Serbia, 1815–1912 and 1991–1999
- 11 National and non-national dimensions of economic development in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia
- PART III
- PART IV
- PART V
- Index
Summary
Government is concerned with the exercise, projection and defence of its power. In the Balkans, the checks and balances which subordinate state power to the rule of law in a modern democracy were honoured more in rhetoric than in practice. Ruling elites in the Balkans tried to minimise the risks arising from the plurality of political challenges by linking personal power to dependence on government. Therefore governments tried to foster cohesion within the political class around their own objectives.
The problems of governing a nation-state differed fundamentally from those which confronted government in a multinational empire or federation. By a nation-state (within the South-East European context) I would understand a state built upon the assent of a numerically predominant people sharing a common language and religion. In such a state, the political interests of minorities have been subordinated, if necessary by force, to those of the dominant nation. In the historical context of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Balkan nation-states include Serbia (1804–1918), Montenegro (1858–1914), Greece (since 1825), Bulgaria (since 1878), Albania (since 1912) and Serbia, as the Federal Republic (FR) of Yugoslavia, since 1991.
There have been three counterpart multinational entities in the Balkans: the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, and Yugoslavia (in its first and second creations). None of these states could achieve stability by the same means as the nation-states, because as mass consciousness of national identity grew, the suppression of pluralism, though often tried, proved impossible to sustain.
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- Nation, State and the Economy in History , pp. 197 - 218Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003