Contesting Kosovo: British political advocacy and the Serb-Albanian border, 1912-1921

From 1912 to 1921, international conflict and imperial collapse spurred the territorial reconstruction of Southeastern Europe. In Britain, officials and interested observers evaluated Balkan nationalisms and negotiated the delimitation of state boundaries. This dissertation explores discourse surrounding Kosovo, a region which became the focus of opposing Serbian and Albanian irredentism. It does so though the lens of two British political advocacy groups, one which advocated for the inclusion of Kosovo into Albania and one which promoted the Serbian claim. These groups attempted to attract British policymaking support for their espoused nations by publishing literature, organising public meetings, writing to the Foreign Office, and presenting their arguments in the House of Commons. By examining these understudied records, the dissertation makes two central contributions. Firstly, it develops understanding of British-Balkan engagement in the early twentieth century, challenging the assumption in existing historiography that British imaginings of the Balkans were either a product of ‘Balkanist’ prejudice or domestic political insecurities. Secondly, by analysing the degree to which advocacy impacted British diplomacy, it illuminates the extent of British support for the Serbian claim to Kosovo at the start of the twentieth century. Addressing the interplay between political calculation, imperial concerns, and socio-cultural constructions, this dissertation foregrounds the discourses that drive one nation’s acceptance or rejection of another nation’s territorial ambitions.