Et in Macedonia Ego: The Global Arms Trade and Violence as Catalysts for Independence Movements and Nation Building in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878-1913

Abstract The international arms trade at the end of the 19th Century benefited from several technological advances that fomented an arms race among the Great Powers. A surge in the effectiveness of insurgencies and nationalist movements across the globe, due to increased access to contemporary small arms and ammunition, saw agitation for autonomy and national recognition become real concerns for peoples subjected to imperial rule. Ottoman Macedonia stood at the epicenter of some of the most devastating historic, religious, ethnic, political, and national contests that were both raised and came to their bloody conclusions during the final tumultuous decades of the Ottoman presence in Europe. The most effective catalyst for change proved to be the deployment of armed insurgent fighters that delegitimized Ottoman rule, established parallel state structures, and encouraged the people living in Ottoman Macedonia to not only participate in the toppling of Ottoman power in Europe, but to identify themselves with a particular religious or national group in a way that they had never before. As such, the international arms race and military surplus market created the conditions under which the slow-moving tools of nation building in Ottoman Macedonia, such as churches and schools, were subsumed and accelerated by the accessibility of small arms and the use of violence as a tool for winning freedom and sovereignty in the process of national creation.