„Balkan balkanskim narodima“: evolucionizam, rasizam i kolonijalizam u srpskim naučnim i političkim diskursima pre Drugog svetskog rata
“The Balkans to the Balkan Peoples“: Evolutionism, Racism and Colonialism in Serbian Scholarly and Political Discourses before World War II

Author(s): Ana Petrov
Subject(s): Politics and society, Nationalism Studies, 19th Century, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Politics and Identity
Published by: KPZ Beton
Keywords: scientific imperialism; Serbs; Albanians; colonization of Kosovo; social type;
Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on the ways the scientific imperialism was manifested in Serbian ‘scholarly’ discourses from the end of the nineteenth century until the World War II. The leading ethnographers, geographers, cultural historians and writers promulgated the idea that the Serbs represented one ‘race’ marked by similar physical and psychological features and customs. Joined together by the same ‘blood’, territory and history, the Serbs were presented as the dominant ‘race’ in the Balkans, thus being ‘superior’ in comparison to the other peoples, especially the Albanians. The discourse was theoretically promoted in the scholarly works at the end of the nineteenth century and just before the World War II proposals for colonization of Kosovo and extermination of the Albanians were made (in Vaso Čubrilović’s writing Isterivanje Arnauta and in the claim, supported by Ivo Andrić, that ‘the Balkans should be given to the Balkan people’). I here argue that the concept of ‘social type’ helped the leading intellectuals in the promotion of the idea that the division of the Balkans should be made according to current scientific paradigms about the supremacy of the Serbs.

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