Introduction: Aftershocks: Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War

This special issue deals with the phenomenon of the emergence of radical violence in what might be called ‘shatter zones’ of empires after the end of the First World War. It argues that the emergence of violence was due to the absence of functioning state control and facilitated by the effects of experiencing mass violence during the First World War. In the multi-ethnic regions of the former empires, the rising wave of nationalism directed this violent potential against ethnic and religious minorities. The collapse of multi-ethnic empires towards the end of the First World War ushered in a new wave of conflicts. During the period 1917–23, the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires was often accompanied by violent attempts to forge new nation-states or to consolidate revolutionary gains through force. Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly civilians, were caught up in this wave of violence. Typically, the violence was concentrated in ethnically or religiously diverse regions or areas, mostly former imperial borderlands, as these culturally heterogeneous ‘shatter zones’ of multi-ethnic empires often posed a threat, either real or perceived, to the project of realigning territories as parts of an integral nation-state.1 This special issue will analyse this wave of violence in its broader European context. Julia Eichenberg, Centre for War Studies, Department of History, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland; [email protected]. John Paul Newman, School of History and Archives, Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield Campus, Dublin 4, Ireland; [email protected]. The ideas underpinning this special issue originated in the context of the project ‘Paramilitary Violence after the First World War, 1917–23’, based in Dublin and funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) and the European Research Council (ERC). 1 The analysis of borderlands as ‘shatter zones’ was introduced into recent historical discussion by the interdisciplinary and international research project, ‘Borderlands: Ethnicity, Identity, and Violence in the Shatter-Zone of Empires since 1848’ (2003–7), at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, co-ordinated by Omer Bartov. The term has also been used in reference to the Contemporary European History, 19, 3 (2010), pp. 183–194 C © Cambridge University Press 2010 doi:10.1017/S0960777310000111 184 Contemporary European History We consider transnational patterns of violence and similarities or dissimilarities with respect to victims and perpetrators, as well as the intensity and manifestations of violence. Along with this comparative approach, the issue explores this history diachronically, by suggesting that 1918 did not mark the cessation of violence in the areas under examination, but rather assigned a new phase of an ongoing conflict. Frequently, these post-war clashes drew on men, experience and weaponry of the First World War. Many combatants who engaged in these conflicts perceived their struggle as a continuation of the war or of the issues that it had raised but not settled. In order to locate the causes and the nature of this transformation (or continuity) from wartime to post-war violence, the articles contained in this issue discuss the role of veterans of the First World War in ethnically or culturally motivated violence in the period 1917–23. By concentrating on men who had been involved both in officially sanctioned ‘legitimate’ combat during the war and in violence which could be described as paramilitary or ‘parastatal’ thereafter, the articles contribute to our understanding of the differences and similarities between the two. Because of the imperial history of the men and the areas in question, ‘para-state’ is suggested here as a useful definition of extra-military forces which considered themselves to be ‘proto-national’ armies fighting to establish their own nation-state.2 The special issue focuses on violence exercised by unofficial or quasi-official formations that utilised military force usually monopolised by the state. The power vacuum left by the demise of multinational empires acted as a catalyst for violence. This dissolution both encouraged its emergence and allowed it to assume a new tenor. It encouraged violence because it motivated paramilitary and para-state groups to enforce a new order to replace the old, and also because the lack of imperial monopoly enabled new and less restrained forms of violence. Typically, this violence was ethnically motivated, as different ethnic or religious groups who had previously lived together would turn on each other in a struggle to create an integral and homogeneous nation-state. Having established this distinction, the editors propose that while ‘legitimate’ warfare was in some ways more efficient and on a larger scale, paramilitary and parastate violence was more intense, characterised by a blurring of distinctions between ‘legitimate’ and ‘non-legitimate’ targets, and carried out by men who were typically more ideologically motivated than soldiers of a regular army. This violence was eventually and in most cases reined in by regular military or state authorities, but it is a subsequent hypothesis of the editors that in this process of ‘taming’ irregular soldiers, post-imperial nation-states also internalised their violent or extreme ideology, and that this ideology was frequently manifested in native fascist or radical right movements in the inter-war period. post-1918 period by Donald Bloxham; see Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide (Oxford University Press, 2009), 81 ff. 2 Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, ‘Introduction’, in Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, 1917–1923 (forthcoming).