Introduction / William Mulligan, Andreas Rose, Dominik Geppert -- Part I. The belligerents -- Italy, Libya and the Balkans / Francesco Caccomo -- The Italian soldiers' experience in Libya, 1911-12 / Vanda Wilcox -- Ottoman diplomacy, the Balkan Wars, and the great powers / Gul Tokay -- Mass violence against civilians during the Balkan Wars / Ugur Ungor Umit -- War, civic mobilization and the shaping of the Ottoman home-front during the Balkan Wars (1912-13) / Eyal Ginio -- Civil and military relations in Serbia during 1903-1914 / John Paul Newman -- The great expectations: political visions, military preparation, and national upsurge in Bulgaria at the onset of the Balkan Wars / Nikolai Vukov -- Part II. The European military between real and imagined wars -- The Russian threat calculation, 1910-1914 / Bruce Menning -- The French military mind and the wars before the war / Adrian Wettstein -- The perception of the "wars before the wars" in Austria-Hungary / Gunther Kronenbitter -- Between Manchuria and the Marne. the German army and its perception of the military conflicts of 1911-1914 / Markus Poehlmann -- Part III. The wars and great power politics -- Austria-Hungarian foreign policy and the Balkan Wars / Alma Hannig -- German foreign policy and the Balkan Wars, 1912-4 / Patrick Bormann -- Entente diplomacy v. détente, 1911-1914 / T.G. Otte -- Anglo-French relations and the wars before the war / Friedrich Kiessling -- Part IV. The wars in the European public sphere -- The Habsburg Empire's German speaking public sphere and the First Balkan War / Tamara Scheer -- From "illusion" and "angellism" to détente: British radicals and the Balkan Wars / Andreas Rose -- Uncivilised wars in civilised Europe? The perception of the Balkan Wars 1912/13 in English, German, and Irish newspapers and journals / Florian Keisinger -- Socialism and the challenge of the Balkan Wars 1912/13 / Wolfgang Kruse.