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Abstract: This paper aims to retrace the editorial history of a grammar for the wallachian/aroumanian langage, initially published in Vienna in 1813 and then in Bucharest in 1863. Firstly, it is about studying the sociopolitical and sociocultural context in which emerged the will to promote the wallachian/aroumanian langage, notably in regards to the cultural hegemony of Greek, inside christian communities in the Balkans, as well as among members of the Ottoman Rum millet, settled in Central Europe. Secondly, this paper invites us to seize how the linguistic question had been used by the christian balkan kingdoms, in their struggle to demarcate spheres of influence in Ottoman Macedonia during their conflictual territorial claims.

The Eastern Question in its Balkan dimension, involved in various manners the Great Powers throughout the 19th century. Competing each other in order to promote their own political and economic interests, cultural influence represented a parallel expression and stake of these antagonisms. As far as the French policy was concerned, Third Republic’s governments, sustained the establishment of schools run by secular institutions or religious congregations and the organisation of French scientific and humanitarian missions. Through the exploration of Quai d’Orsay’s diplomatic archives and consular correspondence, this paper aims at studying which were the initiatives and institutions at the aftermath of the Great War, that made part of this network, serving as an ambassador of cultural diplomacy.

Between the Boxer rebellion in 1900, the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 and the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, a series of events, shaped or reshaped the media framework for the perception of what it was viewed as the ‘oriental’ otherness, associated to barbarity, cruelty, fatalism, and standing as a symbol of inevitable enemy of Western European societies. This process going hand in hand with the spread at the public space, of discourses upon decadence or degeneracy of these societies and racialist/racist theories, generated fears towards the ‘Orient’. Haunted by loosing their political, cultural or economic supremacy, at the benefit of states, such as the Ottoman or Chinese empires, various fractions of French or British public opinion, fuelled the newspapers with turkophobic or sinophobic discourses. As similar phenomena reappear in the public space nowadays, concerning the role of China within the international economic or political relations, perceived as worrying and threatening, or the reluctances regarding Turkey’s membership to the EU, this paper aims at locating the expression of such ‘fears’ at the turning of the 20th century, within the newspapers, political essays or travel literature, mainly in France and Great Britain. Inspired by the concept of ‘politics or culture of fear’ elaborated by Ruth Wodak, it is about to study how these discursive strategies related to fears for the ‘Orient’, are developed and put in stage in Western Europe’s media space at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Keywords: Orientalism, ‘yellow peril’, turkophobia, islamophobia, Press Résumé Entre la révolte des Boxers en 1900, la guerre russo-japonaise en 1904-1905 et les conflits balkaniques de 1912-1913, une série de tournants événementiels dessinent ou redessinent le cadre médiatique de la perception de ce qui a été représenté comme l’altérité « orientale », associée à la barbarie, la cruauté, le fatalisme, et érigée en ennemie inéluctable des sociétés européennes de l’Europe occidentale. Ce processus allant de pair avec la diffusion dans l’espace public d’une part, de discours sur la décadence et la dégénérescence de ces sociétés, et de l’autre, de théories racialistes-racistes, donna lieu à l’éclosion de peurs à l’égard de cet « Orient ». Hantées par la crainte de voir la suprématie politique, culturelle ou économique de leurs pays remise en question par des États tels que l’Empire ottoman ou chinois, des fractions importantes de l’opinion publique en France ou en Grande-Bretagne, ont alimenté dans la presse des discours sinophobes ou turcophobes. De même qu’il est intéressant de remarquer la résurgence de nos jours, sous une forme similaire de tels discours et de telles représentations à propos du rôle de la Chine dans la politique et l’économie mondiales, considéré comme inquiétant et menaçant, ou l’expression de réticences à l’égard de l’adhésion de la Turquie à l’UE, cet article vise à repérer dans la presse, les essais politiques ou les mémoires de voyage, principalement en France et en Grande-Bretagne, les traces de ces « peurs » au tournant du XXe siècle. Dans le sillage de la notion de « politics or culture of fear » élaborée par Ruth Wodak, il s’agit d’étudier à travers la méthode des Critical Discourse Studies, les stratégies discursives des acteurs et la mise en scène des peurs liées à l’Orient dans l’espace médiatique de l’Europe occidentale, à la fin du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle. Mots-clés : orientalisme, « péril jaune », turcophobie, islamophobie, Presse

Throughout the 19th century, pacifist solutions to the disputes between communities or States in the Balkans, had been coined along with nationalist, militarist and expansionist answers. Formulated and elaborated by a series of individual and institutional actors, these solutions were mainly built upon a federalisation project for the Balkan space. The idea for the creation of a Federal Republic, goes back to the end of the 18th century and it reappeared at various times, during the crisis that punctuated the Eastern question, till the attempt for the constitution of a Balkan confederation by French socialist Paul Argyriadis, as well as other European federalists/pacifists at the end of the 19th century. At the eve of the 1912‑1913 conflicts which caused an upheaval to the European ottoman possessions, or in front of the bellicist threats as a result of the outbreak of the Great War, new initiatives aiming at the organisation of a Balkan federation, had been undertaken by socialist parties or movements in the region; they were led by personalities such as Abraham Benaroya, Dragiša Lapčević, Christian Rakovski and Yanko Sakazov.

Dimosthenis Kurtovic sets the plot of his novel in a fictive city during a Balkan literary contest. This contest allows the juxtaposition of three distinguished approaches of a supposedly real historical event occurring during the second phase of the Balkan Wars. Each novel develops its own version of what happened, based on various hypothetical sources, such as memoirs, correspondence or family memories. The novel’s structure coincides with what Hayden White calls the competitive narratives regarding contentious historical events. The debates focusing on the historicity of the intrigue and the analysis of plot’s elements in terms of historical accuracy, depicts the complicated relations woven between a novel which treats historical events or periods and the historical reality, particularly when these events are issues of controversy among different scholarship viewpoints. Besides or maybe thanks to these theoretical reflections between the writing of history and the writing of fiction, this novel and his author question as well the dominant nationalist paradigm of exclusivist and nationally-oriented lecture of historical events. In doing so, he revisits the Balkan Wars, opening them to a more pluralist lecture, allowing for a multiple perception of what happened as transmitted by different documents and various testimonies.

In the second half of the 17th century, two travellers, one French, Jacob Spon and one Ottoman, Evliyâ Çelebi, are visiting the city of Athens. This article aims at depicting, throughout the study of both travellers’ memoirs, their perception of the city, regarding its history, its urban topography (places mentioned, monuments commented) and its socio-political organisation (institutions, relationships between the different communities, customs and habits). The purpose of such an analysis is to realise how the juxtaposition of these impressions and expressions reveals us a differentiated representation of urban and human otherness. Moreover, these narratives, for lack of official documents, provide us with precious information in order to piece together the city’s urban and social landscape during its ottoman period. Their complementary character, as due to their different cultural backgrounds, each traveller does not necessarily retain or relate the same information upon the city’s sensorial and institutional realities, demonstrates the interest of this comparative approach.

French newspapers comment the Macedonian question at the dawn of the Balkan Wars.The aim of this paper is to study how the French newspapers dealt with the Macedonian question at the beginning of the Balkan Wars. A first group (socialists, trade-unionists, anarchists, anticlerical), backs up a peaceful settlement of the dispute and is in favor of the maintenance of the status quo or the creation of a Balkan federation. It is also denouncing the expansionist character of allies’ projects. A second group (right nationalists, antirepublicans) adopts the official rhetoric of the Balkan kingdoms, justifying their mobilization in the name of the defense of Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire, notably in the region of Macedonia. The majority of these articles are instilled with the hate of the Turk and the Muslim, and they are inspired by their authors’ will to take revenge against Germany, whose military industry had equipped the ottoman army whereas the allies’ war machines had been fabricated in France.Finally, a last category (catholics, bonapartists) considers that French economical and cultural interests would be jeopardized in the case of a victory of the Orthodox Balkan kingdoms

The author of this novel puts in plot the history of various families, at the moment of the fall from one hand, of an entire world, this of ottoman empire’s millets, based on the principle of individual identification following their religious beliefs and during the establishment on the other hand, of a new political organization, this of State-Nations, obsessed by the idea of individual definition on the basis of national criteria. The predominant narrative paradigm is this of the Roum millet transition towards the Greeks' nation. It is about a polyphonic novel, regarding to the expression of traumatic experiences issued by the ethnic and cultural cleansing policies, conducted by the different actors implicated in the events which stirred up trouble in the ottoman empire at the end of 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. In this sense, the writing of this novel opposes itself to the exclusivist approaches of the historical event, largely spread across the national mythologies in Balkan countries, which are aiming at magnifying the sufferings of one’s own compatriots or kin faith worshippers, while at the same time they erase or they minimize the tragic destinies of the Others.

On June 1911, the journalist and employer in the Public Debt Administration, Zeki Bey, is assassinated. The trial, following this murder is largely covered by an ottoman newspaper, Mecheroutiette, published in Paris, in both French and Turkish. His chief director, the general Cherif Pacha, is one of the most prominent figures of the political opposition to the Young Turks’ regime and leader of the Ottoman Radical Party. This criminal affair arouses lively debates among Ottoman citizens and divides the public opinion. On the one hand, there are claims of a premeditated crime planned by the party in power in order to eliminate any embarrassing voice.According to this version, the victim had at his disposal documents compromising the government’s financial practices. On the other hand, the defense lawyers deny any conspiracy plot or political motivations behind this case. The analysis of this affair informs us about political situation in the early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire and reveals us the tensions undermining its social stability. In this study the Macedonian city of Serres in appears as a training ground for the fedaïs, or hired killers at the service of the Union and Progress Committee.

Abstract: this article aims at drawing a genealogy of how the traumatic memory of Greek-orthodox refugees from Ottoman Anatolia, has been handled within public and historiographic discussions inside the Greek society after the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. Such a memory, reflects both the physical violence suffered on behalf of the Young-Turks and Kemalists during 1914-1922, and the politics of discrimination and social exclusion after their arrival in Greece. This memory conveyed for a long time within the family and community environment, since the 1980s, it invests also the public space. In such a context, the “success story” of an harmonious integration is challenged. Moreover, the vectors of this memory are fighting for a public acknowledgement of the genocidal character of mass deportation and extermination policies taking place in Anatolia between 1914 and 1922. Two laws were voted on 1994 and on 1998 by the Greek Parliament in this perspective. The debates opposing defenders and critics, are crystallizing tensions within Greek society concerning the perception of this past, and they are leading to memory battles as well as memory of the past being instrumentalised.

Abstract: this paper proposes an overview of the formation of a Greek-Armenian community in Greece after 1923. On the one hand, the context of Armenian refugees’ settlement, their distribution within the Greek territory as well as the demographic dynamics of this population throughout the 20th century are studied. On the other hand, the social organisation and the cultural life of this community are also portrayed.

Abstract: in this interview, Mimi Denissi, theatre and movie actress, writer and stage director, relates her opinion about the Lausanne Treaty heritage within Greek society. She is also reconsidering the public echo and reception of her theatre plays Smyrna my beloved and From Smyrna to Salonica.