The Vlachs: The History of a Balkan People (review)

136 Reviews impact on economies has been addressed by William Hardy McNeill in his cogent Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), which prompts the following conjecture: However induced, the NA's tactics and operations resulted in massive dislocations which in turn brought about a demographic shift. But these dislocations also brought the inhabitants of the mountainous areas into contact with a different world. The opening up of roads by army bulldozers supported this demographic shift. While the DA's soldiery fought a war with courage but primitive support, the NA (147,000 strong at its peak), under the intensive and demanding training and tutelage of British and Americans, produced a sophisticated support workforce in electronics, automotive and weapons engineering, aviation, management of stock, etc., which, unlike the "optative economics" many of the planners flirted with, may have ushered Greece into the modern age by providing an infrastructure in support of its production and consumption sectors—a real potential for the future. Furthermore , for the first time in its history the Greek army brought back to its villages of origin a well dressed and fed image as well as new habits of cleanliness and behavior at a time when the DA's remnants and exiles languished in a world of misery, underground, and total exclusion, with καθοδήγηση (guidance—with indoctrination) as the only intellectual food. So, did the Civil War, and the concomitant forced acceleration of modern military capabilities by impatient allies, shake Greece loose from its medieval slumber and into modernity? If Laiou's important work is extended to study the demographic and economic impact of the massive dislocations, as she correctly suggests that it should be, then data corroborating the thesis relating to the war's longterm benefits should also be studied. The future of Greece does not hang on the whys of the DA's and the KKE's dismal failures and unpolitical decisionmaking but rather on the impact of the reaction to these which produced a sharp discontinuity in the nation's structure. We await the Thucydides of "The Revolutions that Failed." Michael S. Macrakis Belmont, Massachusetts T.J. Winnifrith, The Vlachs: The History of a Balkan People. London: Duckworth. 1987. Pp. ii + 180. 12 maps, index. Winnifrith's study of the Vlachs aims to review the Vlach historical record, which he considers to be "partial in one sense of the word," as well as the historiography of the Vlachs, which is "partial in the other sense." He is convinced that "the failure of previous authors to give a clear objective account of the Vlachs shows that there is a need for a new study of them, but also that such a study is extremely difficult" (19). Reviews 137 The history of the Vlachs has been a political issue hotly debated by the Romanians and Greeks, who have the most at stake. Greek historians claim the Vlachs as descendants of the Roman soldiers garrisoned in the Pindus Mountains. This long presence in Greece validates their classification as Greeks. Such logic may be dubious, but it should be noted that all Vlachs in Greece, and many beyond its borders, are fluent speakers of Greek. The first grammar of Vlach—a language that has bequeathed no literature, partly because it lacked a writing system—was completed in 1797 by a priest from Moschopolis. This book was published in Vienna and used Greek characters. Subsequently, as armatoli in the period leading up to the Greek War of Independence , the Vlachs were confused with the klephts and viewed as Greek freedom fighters. The early prime minister, Kolettis, was of Vlach descent, as were many of the Metsovon evergétes, such as the Averoff family, who contributed heavily to the foundation of Greek universities in the nineteenth century. The full name of the Polytechnic in Athens is, in fact, the Εθνικόν Μετσόβιον Πολυτεχνείον. Little wonder, then, that the Vlachs should be considered thoroughly Greek in spirit and character. Romanian historians and philologists, on the other hand, are eager to show that the Vlachs were fellow Dacian Roman descendants who occupied the Romanian homeland along with them through late antiquity and did not branch off...