John Paul Newman (Maynooth University, Ireland) will give a talk on his recent research:

Ramparts of the Nation? National armies and State-and Nation-Building in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro after 1878

19 March 2026, 16:30 h.

My presentation is part of a larger project looking at the role of national armies in state- and nation-building in Southeastern and East-Central Europe in three critical post-conflict and post-imperial periods, namely, Southeastern Europe after the Russo-Turkish war (from 1978), Central Europe after the First World War (from 1918), and Finland and the Baltic states after the Russian civil war (from 1921). My paper will focus on the national armies in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro after 1878, and it will interrogate the space between intention and historical reality. In these states, the intention of political and military elites vis-à-vis the creation and development of national armies was clear: to create institutions not just of national defence but also as vehicles of institutional consolidation and of nation-building – primarily through the creation of a professional officer corps and through universal conscription. So much for the intention, what was the reality? Did the officer corps of these states fully integrate, or did they unbalance civil-military relations in favour of the latter? And did universal conscription really serve as a ‘school of the nation, or was it in practice resented and resisted by significant parts of the population? What, in short, was the real role played by national armies in shaping states and societies in Southeastern Europe leading up to the First World War?