Heroes, Traitors, and Survivors in the Imperial Borderlands: Military Mobilizations in Southeastern Europe, 1908 to 1923 (Routledge Studies in Modern European History)

Heroes, Traitors, and Survivors redefines Southeastern Europe’s role in modern military history.Long dismissed as a “powder keg” of violence, the region emerges here as a crucial laboratory of military innovation, governance, and state formation in the early twentieth century.Spanning the Ottoman Empire, Habsburg Monarchy, Montenegro, Serbia, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the book traces how mobilization operated as a negotiated process between state elites, military mediators, and local communities rather than as a purely coercive act. Using a transimperial and multiscalar approach, this book examines how small states mobilized vast armies with unprecedented speed, thereby often outpacing larger empires and balancing between acceptance, endurance, and refusal while employing pragmatic tools such as land reform, tax relief, and social welfare to secure participation.By repositioning Southeastern Europe as a laboratory of military mobilizations, Heroes, Traitors, and S