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For the round table, 11-12 December 2008:

Two Hundred Years on the Road: The Term "Balkan Peninsula" (1808-2008)

Department for History of Byzantium and the Balkans at Faculty of History,
University of Sofia "St. Kliment Ohridski"

Paper proposal:

Slobodan Dan Paich

Director and Principal Researcher
Artship Foundation, San Francisco, USA

Domain, Land, Memory –
 
Similarities, Differences and Consequences of the Institutions of Pagan Pax Romana,  Christian Byzantium Geo-Politics  and Muslim Ottoman Administration for Southeastern Europe

Abstract

Starting with a brief revue of models of territorial identity in Southern Europe, we reflect on the position of religious and ethnic diversity in the Ottoman Empire and the existence of regional religious authorities in the eastern Balkan regions since Byzantine Christianization. We contrast these institutions to centralized Roman Catholic influences in western Balkan regions.

The paper continues with some open questions and explores certain meta-issues of Pan-European and Southeastern European histories, particularly the function of buried, suppressed and partial memories. To approach these issues, the paper turns to examples of the Bogumil presence in the Balkans. We briefly explore possible Bogumil relationships to the Paulicans of Persian and Mesopotamian regions in the east, and to the Albigensian and Catare heresies in the west. To deepen understanding of some issues of the Byzantine and post- Byzantine Balkans, we also look at the Bogumil’s suppression and uneasy relationship to Byzantine and Roman Christianity and some causes of probable merging with Islam.

The paper than explores issues for the Balkan Peninsula raised by the Imperial Rome’s methods of divide and rule (divide et impera) as a dynamic of Pax Romana and later emergence of Byzantium as a distinct political, geographical and religious entity, separate from and antagonistic toward the aging Roman hegemony.

In closing, the paper will reflect and ask open questions about the chain of divisive polices affecting the region through history, and tentatively we hypothesize on a possible role of this understanding for stability, prosperity and coalition-building for the regions of Southeastern Europe.

Slobodan Dan Paich, Artship Foundation, 88 Perry Street, #734
San Francisco, CA 94107, USA • +1 (415) 278 5793 • sdpaich@artship.org • www.artship.org