The Forging of National States on the Anvil of War
The Forging of National States on the Anvil of War

Summary/Abstract: The progress of Western countries and the colonization of oil-rich Muslim countries clustered within the Ottoman Empire, which was located in the controlled agony of the new geo-strategic and technological processes, produced a turbulent beginning of the 20th century. The establishment of nation states has jeopardized the survival of monarchies such as Austro-Hungary, Russia, and others. The battle for the new, above all, European order signified the World War, in political science but also in historiography, and it established the principle that the term “world” war refers to the conflicts waged in Europe. The First World War was the site scene of the disappearance of the great empires and also the definite disappearance of the juncture of state and religion, as well as suppression of religion and other monarchist structures into new paradigms such as the nation-state, democracy and secularization. On the contrary, it opened the opportunity for the development of totalitarian regimes - socialism and Nazism - created precisely in Europe. Muslim-majority countries were colonized and brought to a vassal state, and their rich natural resources were enslaved. The principle of the nation state was imposed upon them by imperial methods and brutal clashes with opponents, aiming to eliminate in the long term any significant force since the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire and the attempts to destroy Turkey completely. Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Balkans emerge as a collateral damage that lasts even in the 21st century.

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