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The Irish Question and the Balkan Crisis

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The Balkan Wars from Contemporary Perception to Historic Memory

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Abstract

Irish nationalists considered the First Balkan War as a model for the desired outcome of the Irish question. Against the backdrop of the debate on Home Rule for Ireland from 1910 and the set-up of paramilitary organizations by both Catholics and Protestants, Irish media showed a growing disposition towards a military settlement of the “Western question.” The perception of the Balkan Wars in the Irish press can be seen as a prelude to the Irish revolutionary years 1916 to 1923; it shows that the often-stated dichotomy between a small group of radical Irish separatists on one side, and the vast majority of moderate nationalists aiming for a constitutional solution of the Irish problem on the other, was already blurred years before the 1916 Easter Rising.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    André Gerolymatos, The Balkan Wars (New York: Basic, 2002); Richard C. Hall, The Balkan Wars 1912–1913: Prelude to the First World War (London: Routledge, 2000).

  2. 2.

    Wolfgang Höpken, “Gewalt auf dem Balkan—Erklärungsversuche zwischen ‘Struktur’ und ‘Kultur,’” in Wolfgang Höpken and Michael Riekenberg, eds., Politische und Ethnische Gewalt in Südosteuropa und Lateinamerika (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), 53–95, here 54–55.

  3. 3.

    Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (Washington, DC: The Endowment, 1914), 13–14.

  4. 4.

    The Times (London), 9 December 1912 (the newspaper analysis in this article is based on the comments section).

  5. 5.

    Wolfgang Höpken, “Blockierte Zivilisierung? Staatenbildung, Modernisierung und ethnische Gewalt auf dem Balkan (19./20. Jahrhundert),” Leviathan: Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft, vol. 25, no. 4 (1997), 518–38.

  6. 6.

    The Times (London), 17 October 1912.

  7. 7.

    For the perception of the wars in the Balkans from 1876 until 1913 in German, English, and Irish newspapers and journals, see Florian Keisinger, Unzivilisierte Kriege im zivilisierten Europa. Die Balkankriege und die öffentliche Meinung in Deutschland, England und Irland, 1876–1913 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008).

  8. 8.

    Matthew Smith Anderson, The Eastern Question, 1774–1923 (London: Macmillan, 1968).

  9. 9.

    Misha Glenny, The Balkans 1804–1999: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers (London: Penguin, 1999), 135–248.

  10. 10.

    Clarion, 22 May 1897.

  11. 11.

    The Times (London), 8 October 1908.

  12. 12.

    Vemund Aarbakke, Ethnic Rivalry and the Quest for Macedonia, 1870–1913 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2003), 97.

  13. 13.

    The Times (London), 18 August 1903.

  14. 14.

    Freeman’s Journal, 7 October 1912.

  15. 15.

    Freeman’s Journal, 22 November 1912.

  16. 16.

    Felix L. Larkin, “The Dog in the Night-Time: The Freeman’s Journal, the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Empire, 1875–1919,” in Simon Potter, ed., Newspapers and Empire in Ireland and Britain: Reporting the Empire, 1857–1921 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), 109–23.

  17. 17.

    Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, With the Turks in Thrace (New York: G. H. Doran, 1913), 100.

  18. 18.

    Philip Gibbs and Bernhard Grant, Adventures of War with Cross and Crescent (London: Small, Maynard and Company, 1913), 167.

  19. 19.

    ‘A Special Correspondent’ [Cyril Campbell], The Balkan War Drama (London: Andrew Melrose, 1913), 7.

  20. 20.

    Freeman’s Journal, 9 November 1912.

  21. 21.

    Irish Independent, 28 October 1912.

  22. 22.

    Irish Times, 8 July 1913.

  23. 23.

    Manchester Guardian, 25 October 1912.

  24. 24.

    The Times (London), 3 July 1913.

  25. 25.

    Daily Chronicle, 28 November 1912.

  26. 26.

    Peter Hart, The I.R.A. at War 1916–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 9.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 223. Hart describes the 1911–26 developments in Ireland as “unique in modern British history, being the only example of the mass displacement of a native ethnic group within the British Isle since the seventeenth century.”

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 227.

  29. 29.

    Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History 1800–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 106–41; Alan O’Day, Irish Home Rule 1867–1921 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 240–65.

  30. 30.

    For the unionist side, see Timothy Bowman, “The Ulster Volunteer Force and the Formation of the 36th (Ulster) Division,” Irish Historical Studies, vol. 32, no. 128 (2001), 498–518. For the nationalist side, see Michael Laffan, “Violence and Terror in Twentieth-Century Ireland: IRB and IRA,” in Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld, eds., Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 1982), 155–74.

  31. 31.

    Hart, The I.R.A. at War, 240.

  32. 32.

    Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–2.

  33. 33.

    Manus I. Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 354–63.

  34. 34.

    Tom Garvin, The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1981), 13.

  35. 35.

    Mark Tierney, Modern Ireland since 1850 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1978), 10.

  36. 36.

    Perry Curtis, Jr., “Moral and Physical Force: The Language of Violence in Irish Nationalism,” Journal of British Studies, vol. 27, no. 2 (1988), 150–89, here 154–55.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., 188.

  38. 38.

    Nation, 22 July 1876.

  39. 39.

    “[O]ver a hundred towns and villages have been laid in ashes, horrible tortures have been inflicted on the prisoners, and the women of Bulgaria, famous throughout the East for their purity and their virtues, have been subjected to those nameless wrongs which humanity blushes to name.” Freeman’s Journal, 11 July 1876.

  40. 40.

    Freeman’s Journal, 7 October 1912.

  41. 41.

    The Nation, 28 April 1913.

  42. 42.

    Irish Freedom, no. 26, December 1912.

  43. 43.

    Ibid.

  44. 44.

    Donal Lowry, “Nationalist and Unionist Response to the British Empire in the Age of the South African War, 1899–1902,” in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jefferey, eds., A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 379–80.

  45. 45.

    Hall, Balkan Wars, 15.

  46. 46.

    Freeman’s Journal, 19 November 1912.

  47. 47.

    Ibid.

  48. 48.

    Freeman’s Journal, 6 November 1912.

  49. 49.

    Ibid.

  50. 50.

    Irish Times, 7 September 1877.

  51. 51.

    Irish Times, 27 September 1877.

  52. 52.

    Irish Times, 24 April 1913.

  53. 53.

    Irish Times, 25 April 1913.

  54. 54.

    Ibid.

  55. 55.

    Irish Times, 11 October 1912.

  56. 56.

    Irish Times, 4 November 1912.

  57. 57.

    Irish Times, 30 October 1912.

  58. 58.

    Keisinger, Unzivilisierte Kriege im zivilisierten Europa, 77–107.

  59. 59.

    Irish Times, 8 July 1913.

  60. 60.

    Irish Times, 3 October 1913. “The stage appears to be neatly set for a third Balkan War.”

  61. 61.

    Irish Freedom, no. 26, December 1912.

  62. 62.

    Irish Independent, 2 November 1912.

  63. 63.

    Freeman’s Journal, 10 July 1913.

  64. 64.

    Irish Independent, 12 July 1913.

  65. 65.

    Freeman’s Journal, 9 October 1912.

  66. 66.

    Ibid.

  67. 67.

    Freeman’s Journal, 12 October 1912.

  68. 68.

    Irish Freedom, no. 26, December 1912.

  69. 69.

    Ibid.

  70. 70.

    Freeman’s Journal, 9 October 1912.

  71. 71.

    Ibid.

  72. 72.

    Irishmen, no. 2, February 1913.

  73. 73.

    Irish Freedom, no. 26, December 1912.

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  1. Private Enterprise (Airbus Group), Berlin, Germany

    Florian Keisinger

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  1. Florian Keisinger
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  1. Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, Germany

    Katrin Boeckh

  2. Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, Germany

    Sabine Rutar

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Keisinger, F. (2016). The Irish Question and the Balkan Crisis. In: Boeckh, K., Rutar, S. (eds) The Balkan Wars from Contemporary Perception to Historic Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44642-4_7

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