Lakes and Empires in Macedonian History: Contesting the Waters tells the story of Psarades, a lakeside village in Macedonian Greece on the shores of the Prespa lake. This village, which is in many ways a completely typical Greek settlement and yet remains unconventional in its way of life, embodies the many contradictions of modern history and in exploring its roots James Pettifer and Miranda Vickers skilfully uncover the wider social, cultural and political history of this lake region.

Drawing from oral testimonies and attentive to the construction of national histories, this book considers how the development of international borders, movement of people and role of national identities within imperial borderlands shaped Macedonia today. What is more, by centering the lakes and making use of an innovative environmental historical methodology, Pettifer and Vickers offer the first environmental history of this multi-ethnic borderland region shared by Greece, North Macedonia and Albania. The result is a nuanced and sophisticated transnational account of Macedonia from prehistory to the 21st century which will be essential reading for all Balkan scholars.

Rare … The great strength of Lakes and Empires in Macedonian History is its regional focus, allowing for an in-depths analysis of multilayered historical interactions that only become visible when one zooms in to the grass-root level. * Slavic Review *
[An] ambitious project… interesting not only in terms of informativeness but also in methodology… the concentrated result of the long-term work of two first-class Balkan history specialists. * Slavic World Journal (Bloomsbury Translation) *
This is historical writing at its best. Rich in detail -- from Macedonian lions and gladiators in ancient times to women gathering cow dung for fertilizer in the late 20th century -- this volume uses the Prespa lake region, wedged between Albanian, Greece, and North Macedonia, as a prism through which to understand the politics affecting the Balkans as a whole. Reflecting nearly three decades of research, this is an amazing book written by two veteran Balkanists at the height of their powers. * Sabrina P. Ramet, Professor Emerita, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway *
This short and immensely readable book is simply a terrific case study by two established Balkan experts, James Pettifer and Miranda Vickers… For students of the Balkans, or anywhere, the authors’ approach is compelling: take a tiny place, an intersection point of sorts, and tell its story. * Canadian Slavonic Papers *

James Pettifer is Professor of Balkan History at the University of Oxford, UK. He is the author of numerous studies of modern Balkan history, including The Making of the Greece Crisis (2015), The Kosovo Liberation Army (2012) and The New Macedonian Question (2001). Alongside his academic work he has reported for the Times and the Wall Street Journal on Balkan issues.

Miranda Vickers is an independent scholar based in the UK. She is the author of The Albanians: A Modern History (2011), The Albanian Question: Reshaping the Balkans (with James Pettifer, 2009) and Albania: From Anarchy to Balkan Identity (also with James Pettifer, 2000).