Authors

Discussion

War is physically disruptive, but it is also mentally disruptive: it forces the rearrangement of mental geographies and creates soldiers and aid workers out of civilians. In this process of rearrangement and creation, British Balkanism changed, and was operationalised, on a grand scale.

Recent critiques of the understanding of Balkanism in British history have highlighted the limitations of previous work’s reliance on literature and travel writing as the basis for understanding generally held attitudes and beliefs (Perkins, 2014). Moreover, the Great War in particular has been highlighted as a period in which British narratives about the Balkans (through interactions with Serbia) became much more complex than traditional conceptions of the British view suggested (Hammond, 2004). In spite of these critiques, the general conception of Balkanism in Britain remains that advanced in Maria Todorova’s (1997) initial elucidation of the concept: that Britons viewed the Balkans as barbarous, backwards, and violent. Although undoubtedly a significant strand of British Balkanism the reality is more complex

To understand the true nature of British Balkanism, therefore, we must examine new areas in which it was operationalised. Specifically, I propose to examine the attempts (institutional, informal, and auto-didactic) by Britons to educate others, and themselves, about the region, with the understanding that such pedagogical attempts require the construction of novel power relationships between experts and students (be the relationships formal or informal), and the dissemination of narratives about the region along these lines of power.

To this end, this paper presents archival research into the language learning practices of doctors and nurses attempting to learn (so-called) “Serbo-Croatian” during the First World War. This is achieved by the examination of the archival material held by institutions established to provide this education (through the hiring of teachers from the region), as well as the memoirs, diaries and other documents produced by the doctors and nurses who engaged in more informal practices of language education (learning from locals, or from one another whilst in the Balkans).

By analysing Britons’ actions in these pedagogical environments, their experiences and practices of learning, and their motivations for educating themselves (curiosity, necessity, extractive potential etc…) during wartime, this research will reveal the Balkanism of individuals and institutions and, in turn, elucidate the nature of British Balkanism in general. Moreover, it will illuminate the power of such narratives to resist wartime political pressures and will ask important questions about the role of institutions in upholding or subverting these narratives through pedagogical practices.