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As turbulent events - including war, civil war, armed intervention, humanitarian crises and civil unrest - unfold around the globe, the actions of various types of paramilitary organization have attracted considerable attention in academic circles, as well as among the public. Bringing together a wide range of respected authors from a variety of academic backgrounds, this volume builds on a rapidly developing literature on paramilitarism, with a focus on the Balkans, East-Central Europe, and the Caucasus. Chapters cover historical examples and various aspects of paramilitarism, including relationships with the state, legal contexts, conduct towards civilian populations, governance, recruitment, links to organized crime or terrorism, violence, and memory and legacy. Overall, this book aims to reassess the existing body of knowledge, and to offer a new theoretical conceptualization of paramilitarism spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is the outcome of a research project initiated by the editors and supported by the Balkan History Association.
List of contents
Synopsis - Dmitar Tasic/Aleksandar R. Miletic: Enduring Legacy and Complex Realities of Paramilitarism. An Introduction - Tasos Kostopoulos: "To Undertake Police Duties in a Foreign Land": Greek Macedonian Komitadjis Between Irredentism and Ottoman Paramilitarism (1904-1908) - Christopher Kinley: "To Defend the Integrity of our Territory": Paramilitarism and Anti-Diplomacy in the Greek-Albanian Borderlands, 1913-1914 - Tetsuya Sahara: Resilience and Rupture of Paramilitarism in the Balkans and Caucasus - Jovo Miladinovic: Protecting the Empire in the Borderlands: The Case of the Mitrovica Battalions (1917-1918) - Balázs Kántás: Exploding Patriotism? Quasi-State Paramilitary Formations and the Wave of Terrorism in Hungary in the First Years of the Horthy-Era, 1922-1924 - Aleksandra Pomiecko: Soldiers Remobilized in the East European Borderlands: The Green Partisans, 1918-1925 - Ivana Kolárová/OndrejKolár: Paramilitarism in Silesia 1918-1947 - Stevan Bozanich: Paramilitarism as a Way of Knowing: Second World War Yugoslav Chetniks as Case Study - Shukuko Koyama: Quasi-State Paramilitarism in Georgia in the Early 1990's - Maria Vivod: Bitter Herbs on Bitter Wounds: The Use of Felons in State Security and Paramilitarism - Aleksandar R. Miletic/Dmitar Tasic: Between Military and Paramilitary: Serbian Auxiliary Forces in Kosovo, 1998-1999 - Contributors - Index.
