The Lords of War: violence,governance and nation-building in north-western Greece

ABSTRACT

The article explores the intersection between paramilitary mobilization and nation-building in the area of Thesprotia in north-western Greece. It does so by examining the activities of the right-wing paramilitaries of EDES (Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos Sindesmos – National Republican Greek League) between the Axis occupation and the early Cold War period. Studies of nation-building in twentieth-century Europe have adopted a state-centric approach. More recent scholarship has questioned this approach and presented a more nuanced picture of the nation-making process. A significant strand of this scholarship discusses the role of non-state armed actors – bandits, paramilitaries and criminal gangs – in this process. The present article contributes to this literature by focusing on an aspect of paramilitarism that has largely been overlooked in the existing scholarship: governance. The article discusses patterns of paramilitary governance and explores the impact of wartime rule in local institutions and civilian security, as well as the political legacies of paramilitarism.