Military Occupations and International Relations in Modern Times: Case Studies from Romanian and World History
This conference will be organized in the framework of the research project entitled Romanian Lands and International Crises: The Dynamics of the Military Occupations (1769-1918)/ Spațiul românesc și crizele internaționale: Dinamica
Military occupations have usually been regarded as consequences of war. However, there is a great variety of military occupations and there is a lack of consensus among scholars on defining them. Distinguishing clear features of such civilian-military interactions is not always an easy task. The 1907 Hague Regulations still offer a down-to-earth description of what military occupations are: ‘territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army’ (article 42). Most of the military occupations fall into two major categories: firstly, wartime and post-war military occupations and secondly, peacetime occupations.
The case of all military occupations of Moldavia and Wallachia (independent Romania after 1878) makes no exception from this minimalist conceptualisation. The two principalities have been occupied seven times by Russian, Austrian or Ottoman forces simultaneously, separately or in combined actions (1769-1774; 1787-1792; 1806-1812; 1821; 1828-1834; 1848-1851; 1853-1857). A large proportion of Romania’s territory has been occupied by a German led coalition from 1916 to 1918. The justifications given by each of the international actors involved were mixed and depended on a variety of factors. All these military occupations were related to the rivalry among great powers.
This workshop invites contributions unveiling the complexity of the topic and looks towards a more comparative understanding of it. It aims at bridging the gaps between various scholarly traditions on military history and suggesting new readings on subjects relevant to the topic of this conference.
Papers can focus on the following subjects, but they are not limited to:
– conceptualizing war and military power from Enlightenment to the end of the First World
War;
– military history and the history of international relations;
– East-Central Europe in the narratives of peace and war in modern times;
– empires and modernity in peripheral societies during conflict;
– intermediary bodies and subsystems of international relations;
– political and social relations between occupiers and occupants;
– perceptions of occupations in press and periodical publications;
– comparative approaches on different military occupations in Ottoman and post-ottoman context;