The Balkans: A Short HistoryThroughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zone of endless military, cultural and economic mixing and clashing between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Subject to violent shifts of borders, rulers and belief systems at the hands of the world's great empires--from the Byzantine to the Habsburg and Ottoman--the Balkans are often called Europe's tinderbox and a seething cauldron of ethnic and religious resentments. Much has been made of the Balkans' deeply rooted enmities. The recent destruction of the former Yugoslavia was widely ascribed to millennial hatreds frozen by the Cold War and unleashed with the fall of communism. In this brilliant account, acclaimed historian Mark Mazower argues that such a view is a dangerously unbalanced fantasy. A landmark reassessment, The Balkans rescues the region's history from the various ideological camps that have held it hostage for their own ends, not least the need to justify nonintervention. The heart of the book deals with events from the emergence of the nation-state onward. With searing eloquence, Mazower demonstrates that of all the gifts bequeathed to the region by modernity, the most dubious has been the ideological weapon of romantic nationalism that has been used again and again by the power hungry as an acid to dissolve the bonds of centuries of peaceful coexistence. The Balkans is a magnificent depiction of a vitally important region, its history and its prospects. |
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agrarian Albanian Anatolia army Asia Athens Austria Balkan Christians Balkan Peninsula became Belgrade Black Sea Bosnia British Bucharest Bulgarian Byzantine capital Catholic Chris Church cities civil Clogg Communist communities Constantinople Crete Croatia culture Danube Danubian Danubian Principalities diplomat East Eastern economic eighteenth century elite emergence empire's ethnic European forced German Greece Greek Habsburg History independence inhabitants interwar Islam Istanbul Jannina Jews killed Kosovo land language London Macedonia Mediterranean ment military minorities modern Montenegro mountain Muslims nation-states nationalist nineteenth century Orthodox Ottoman empire Ottoman official Ottoman rule Oxford parties Pasha Patriarch peasantry peasants Peloponnese percent Phanariots political population Porte provinces reforms region religion religious revolt Romania Russian Salonika Serbia Serbs seventeenth Skopje Slavic society South Slavs southeastern Europe Stoianovich struggle Sultan territory tian tion towns travelers Turkey Turkish Turks twentieth century uprising urban Venetian Vienna village violence Wallachia Western wrote York Yugoslav Yugoslavia