This lecture will examine the intersection of violence and nation building in civil war Greece. Studies of nation-building in twentieth-century Europe typically adopt a state-centric approach. Tsoutsoumpis will question this framework, providing a more nuanced picture of nation-making by shifting attention from the role of the state and its agencies to non-state armed actors – bandits, paramilitaries and criminal gangs. This approach provides a more accurate conceptualization of the reality of state formation, with its pervasive accommodations between, and interweaving of, state and non-state violence. The workshop will facilitate a more refined understanding of the role of non-state armed groups in creating a nation-state.

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Respondent: Molly Greene, Department of History

Image: 'Vote for the King, He is the only they are afraid of' Pro-monarchist poster in civil war Greece.