Negotiating Balkan Alterity. Representation and Knowledge of Southeast Europe in the Work of the Balkan Committee1

The Balkan Committee was founded in London in 1902 in response to growing British concerns about unrest in the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Its key objective was to monitor local events and inform the British public about regional developments. The Committee claimed to be a hub of valid, reliable, and expertly processed knowledge about the region. In this paper I attempt to reconstruct how the members of the Balkan Committee interpreted political developments in Southeast Europe and how they circulated knowledge through various British social organisations. I show that the knowledge disseminated by the Balkan Committee was a resource that fuelled and mobilised British public opinion and political and economic interest in the region. At the same time, the efforts of the Committee members resonated with their historical and social anxieties: the better they understood the Balkans, the better the chances of avoiding a European conflagration in particular, and the easier they would be able to facilitate the progress of the local population in general. I argue that the Balkan Committee framed the information and facts at their disposal in accordance with British travel writing traditions, which fundamentally influenced the way they represented the Balkans

"Ez már nem felszabadító háború" - brit reflexiók az első Balkán-háborúban elkövetett etnikai atrocitásokra

The aim of this paper is to analyze a certain ascpect of the first Balkan War (1912- 13) through contemporary British sources. Therefore, I primarily lean on the records of both houses of the British Parliament, and also consular reports due to collections of published primary sources. I also analyzed the contemporary British domestic and colonial press. To sum up the course of events I compared the consular reports, parliament speeches, articles to the Carnegie-report of 1914. This war in the Balkans ended the Ottoman presence in Europe. The outbreak of the war on the 8th October 1912 gained keen enquiry in the British political society and in the wider public as well. My aim is analyze the British reactions in this conflict, including the muslim public opinion all around in the British Empire. At least, I attempted to sum up the main consequences of the first Balkan War