Archaïsme et modernité des formes de violence politique dans les Balkans au tournant du XXe siècle

Abstract

Political violence is a kind of language, whose “vocabulary” changes, according to time and place. In the Ottoman period, it usually follows the dividing lines between the millet(s). This we observe, for example, in the case of
the murder of the French and German consuls in Thessalonica in 1876; or at the abundant lists of murders, provided to the foreign consuls observing the
Macedonian question. This political violence can be qualified as “traditional”.
Murders of monarchs or ministers tend to become more numerous at the end
of the XIXth century, probably due to the impact of mass médias, and the
Balkans, as well as the rest of Europe, have their share of this kind of violence. At the beginning of the XXth century however, the revolutionary organizations in Macedonia experiment new forms of political violence, which we can
call “modem”, and which were imitated afterwards. Such innovations are the
kidnapping of Miss Stone in 1901 or the Thessalonica attempts of 1903, which
were magnified by worldwide mass médias. Simultaneously “archaic” violence
characterizes the Ilinden uprising.