ABSTRACT
The inscription into history-writing of national forms of identification encourages the simultaneous writing out of the relational nature of identities, and the specific political contexts in which the 'national' is invoked. History may provide the conditions for the formation of identities, personal and group, but it also provides the evidence for the fragmenting nature of those identities. Woodrow Wilson's principle of national self-determination transformed the late nineteenth-century association of states with ethnicity or 'national' identity from an assumption to an indispensable ingredient of social contract. Thus, national self-determination promised the resolution of the problem of identity and representation inherent in modern notions of democracy and citizenship. From May 1945 until October 1954, the political competition between the nominally 'allied' Yugoslav and British-American forces for Trieste and its surrounding regions focused on the ethnic definition of territory and boundaries. When the term 'Balkan' was juxtaposed with 'Slav' it could indicate an uncivilised inability to unite or represent a coherent identity.
