Balkan history has been a laboratory for cottage industries of scholarly work on geopolitics, empire, ethnic conflict, and civil war. Dr. Horncastle’s book stands apart from this division of labor. His argument is a vibrant interjection into a rather stale collection of approaches that focus on specific elements of Balkan politics and war. The book deftly weaves together geopolitics, power-laden attempts at nation-building, and cultural considerations into a study of war that construes its subject as not simply determined by one level of analysis, but instead as a complex outcome of processes that crosscut them. It’s an important book for scholars of international relations and new military history alike, specifically because it is so well suited to starting a conversation across the divide that now marks them.

Jack MacLennan, Park University

The Greek Civil War never fails to surprise, and neither does the research on the subject. This 1940s war that, up to the late 1980s, hardly caught the eyes of researchers now enjoys thorough and deep academic research, covering many of the gaps and changes in our knowledge of one of the most vicious and bloody civil wars waged in the 20th Century. James Horncastle’s The Macedonian Slavs in the Greek Civil War, 1944–1949 does exactly this. His book changes our perceptions about the role of the Slavo-Macedonians in the Greek Civil War. This is a solid, balanced, and widely documented work that uses new sources, archives, and repositories only recently subject to public inspection. For the foreseeable future, Horncastle’s findings and analyses will remain the standard version on a subject that has been highly controversial, heavily disputed, and detrimentally impactful to Balkan realities.

Amikam Nachmani, Bar-Ilan University

This book is a must read for all interested in the transitions on the Balkans between the Second World War and the Cold War in general, and the Macedonian question in particular. Dr. James Horncastle’s study provides a superb analysis of the overlapping conflicts that are related to the Macedonian Question and does not only highlight the problems related to an ethnic minority and its national identity in a contested region, but also how such a minority became involved, recruited and exploited by regional and international policy makers. As the Macedonian Question was not only omnipresent in the Greek Civil War, but also linked to this war’s history and its embedment within the transnational context of the Cold War, this extraordinary book is not only recommended for those interested in the history of the Balkans, but also for everyone, who wants to read more about the global perspective of the Cold War.

Frank Jacob, Nord Universitet