Bosnia Remade Ethnic Cleansing and its Reversal

by Toal, Gerard; Dahlman, Carl T.

• ISBN13: 9780199730360
• ISBN10: 0199730369
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-02-16
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Bosnia Remade is an authoritative account of ethnic cleansing and its partial undoing in the Bosnian wars from 1990 to the present. The two authors, both political geographers, combine a bird's-eye view of the entire war from onset to aftermath with a micro-level account of three towns thatunderwent ethnic cleansing and - later - the return of refugees. Through the lens of critical geopolitics, which highlights the power of both geopolitical discourse and spatial strategies, O Tuathail and Dahlman focus on the two attempts to remake the ethnic structure of Bosnia since 1991. The firstattempt was by ascendant ethnonationalist forces that tried to eradicate the mixed ethnic structures of Bosnia's towns, villages and communities. While these forces destroyed tens of thousands of homes and lives, they failed to destroy Bosnia-Herzegovina as a polity. The second attempt followed thewar. The international community, in league with Bosnian officials, tried to undo the demographic consequences of ethnic cleansing. This latter effort has moved in fits and starts, but as the authors show, it has re-made Bosnia, producing a country that has moved beyond the stark segregationistgeography created by ethnic cleansing. By showing how ethnic cleansing can be reversed, O Tuathail and Dahlman offer more than just a comprehensive narrative of Europe's worst political crisis in the past two decades. They also offer lessons for addressing an enduring global problem.

Author Biography

Gerard Toal (Gearóid Ó Tuathail) is Professor and Director of Government and International Affairs at Virginia Tech's National Capital Region campus.

Carl T. Dahlman is Associate Professor of Geography at Miami University.

Table of Contents

Figures	p. xvii
Tables	p. xix
Abbreviations	p. xxi
Introduction: Ethnic Cleansing and Return as Geopolitics	p. 3
Yugoslavia's Violent Dissolution	p. 20
A Distinctive Geopolitical Space	p. 46
Polarization and Poison	p. 83
Ethnic Cleansing	p. 112
Persistent Ambivalence	p. 142
Early Battles over Returns	p. 167
Building Capacity	p. 194
Rule of Law	p. 228
Localized Geopolitical Struggles	p. 256
Did Ethnic Cleansing Succeed?	p. 293
List of Interviews	p. 321
Appendix	p. 327
Notes	p. 337
References	p. 411
Author Index	p. 441
Subject Index	p. 446
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