National Histories, Natural States

Recent conflicts in Southeast Europe have drawn attention to the close relationship between place and national identity. Robert Shannan Peckham explores the conscious linkage between identity and homeland as this was articulated in 19th and early 20th-century Greece, a period formative of the present Balkan crisis. The particularities of place, Peckham argues, were construed both as underpinning a territorial expansion and as a resistance to the homogenizing drive of a state-sponsored nationalism. This book makes an innovative theoretical contribution to the ongoing debate on nationalism and nationhood.