Our author here is Marie-Janine Calic, a German historian, and this is another book that came out just this year. I'm not sure it has been translated into English yet; I read the German version.

It's short, and it's subtitled From the Beginnings to the Present. Together, these attributes immediately capture the book's main strength: It aims to be a succinct, pithy overview, and it fulfils that brief splendidly.

With the weakening of the Ottoman empire, from about the beginning of the 19th century, the Balkan region gradually came to be presented, by various (not disinterested) European powers, as the proverbial "powder keg". As Winston Churchill famously put it: "The Balkans produce more history than they can consume."

"Balkanization" became an infamous concept as a result of the regular splintering of the region, and various other kinds of stereotypical, cliche-ridden language abounded (indeed they were still rearing their head even 10 years ago). The region was often seen as synonymous with backwardness, irrationality, and ethnic violence. For that reason, many of its inhabitants don't like the term Balkans, preferring to see themselves as part of Southeast or Central Europe.

Still, as Calic's title choice indicates, there's a resonance to "the Balkans" that you don't get with those more generic descriptors.

My reason for reading A History of the Balkans was that I needed a bird's-eye refresher on the region of Europe that we'll be travelling through very shortly.


Once we've left Trieste, our whole route is on the map at the front of the book

I won't make any attempt to summarize the chapters, as that would make for a really long post. But here are some snippets that particularly caught my attention on the way through:

1. Divisions, divisions, again and again...

This, to me, was the theme that recurred most often.

The division of the Roman empire saw Croatia and Bosnia going west, and Serbia and Montenegro east. The two halves had very different progressions. Then the great schism between the western (Roman Catholic) and eastern (Orthodox) churches put Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Dalmatia on the western side, and Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia with the easterners (with no clear preponderance in Bosnia and Albania, and sometimes a mixture).

After that, the overlay of Ottoman rule, for different periods and in different forms, also drew lines. By the end of the 15th century, the peninsula had mostly been divided up between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires (with just a tiny bit still ruled by the Venetians). With the renewed campaigns of the Sultan in the first few decades of the 16th century, however, large parts of Hungary, Slavonia, and Croatia fell to the Ottomans, and only a remnant territory in the northwest, "Royal Hungary, with its capital Pressburg (Bratislava)", remained with the Habsburgs. That was the high-water mark for the Sultan, though. By the end of the 17th century, the Habsburgs had retaken Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slavonia.

In the middle of all this, another rift had arisen. In 1517, just when the Caliphate was enhancing the Sultan's prestige and spiritual clout, Martin Luther and his reformation were putting the Christian church under pressure. By the end of the 16th century, the Magyars and Saxons in Hungary and Transylvania were already overwhelmingly "reformed", while the Catholic counter-reformation was successful mainly in Croatia, Dalmatia, and Inner Austria (Hungary remained riven).


Ljubljana National Museum of Contemporary History, March 2023. Slovenia is the only bit of the former Yugoslavia that we've made it into yet

As nationalism became an ever-more potent force, further new lines were drawn, with certain states gaining (different degrees of) autonomy earlier than others. And World War II carved another set of boundaries. Hitler attacked Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941: "Southeastern Europe now consisted of a hodgepodge of annexed territories (Slovenia), occupied countries (Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece), vassals (Croatia and Slovakia), and states allied with Hitler and Mussolini (Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary)."

The Cold War saw yet further divisions. Greece and Turkey belonged to NATO. Romania and Bulgaria were part of the Warsaw Pact. But Yugoslavia went its own Non-Aligned way, and Albania pulled out of the Warsaw Pact, and looked for a while to China for support and inspiration.



2. It's complicated

"Through migration and acculturation, the ethnocultural map changed again and again; languages, cultures, and names of peoples changed or were transferred. None of the peoples existing today can therefore look back on a linear ethnogenesis or even a timeless existence. Last but not least the foreign rule of different empires has also played a formative role." Nationalist pronouncements don't tend to take this complexity into account...

Instead, there's an irresistible tendency to draw on simple versions and supposed golden ages: "Myths and legends provide an almost inexhaustible reservoir of identity- and meaning-creating narratives that continue to have an impact today. Anyone who can rely on a powerful and culturally superior past has a projection surface on which national identity, territorial claims and political self-image can be depicted."



3. Things you don't really expect

In the 7th-9th centuries, the Bulgarian empire was one of the three most powerful on the European continent (the others were the Byzantine and Frankish empires). When Simeon I died (in 927), his territory covered most of the Balkan peninsula. Then there were the inevitable succession conflicts and splits... But 1186 saw the founding of the second Bulgarian empire, making this polity again the strongest power in the Balkans.

The Magyars, meanwhile, arrived at the end of the 9th century, the last of the "great migrations" that were taking place during this period: "In the West, they were identified with the Turkic Onogur people, from which the names Hungaria and Hungary were derived. In fact, the arrivals belonged to the Finno-Ugric language group." Classic case of wrong naming that sticks...

And Dubrovnik... Aka the city-state Ragusa, which managed to retain a position of independence for many centuries... What a feat...



4. Ancient issues that won't go away

The Western Bulgarian empire of Tsar Samuil, for example... Never heard of this entity? Me neither. Which is unsurprising: "Because of a lack of sources, little is known about it, so that historians today argue whether this state structure should be considered Bulgarian, West Bulgarian, or even Macedonian -- a controversy that recently even poisoned bilateral relations between Bulgaria and North Macedonia, and led to the postponement of the EU's accession negotiations with Skopje." (Some progress is recorded here, clarifying that Samuil has been officially declared "the ruler of a large medieval state, which the majority of modern historical scholarship considers to be the Bulgarian kingdom with its center in the territory of today’s Republic of North Macedonia"... There's more detail and discussion here.)

In the 1913 Treaty of London, marking the end of the First Balkan War, the Ottoman empire lost almost all its European territory. The Albanians declared independence, but were knocked back by the bigger players on the geopolitical scene. Albania became a sovereign principality, but under the control of the great powers and their representative, German Prince Wilhelm zu Wied (a manoeuvre that succeeded in keeping Serbia, a Russian ally, from having sea access). "About half of the Albanian settlement area fell to Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. This was a bitter disappointment for the founders of the Albanian state. To this day, the 'Albanian question' still hangs in the air." The question in question is that there are loads of Albanians who are not in Albania... (There's more on all that here.)


Italian troops occupied Ljubljana in 1941

5. Gains and losses

There was much mobility in this region, even in the Middle Ages, with traders, craftspeople, monks, pilgrims, and beggars covering sizeable distances on foot. Travel was tiring and dangerous, but there were no political barriers: "For example, around 1050, it was possible to move from Anatolia across the Byzantine empire to Alexandria or Marseille without any bureaucratic obstacles. This is one of the reasons why the Balkan countries were firmly integrated into the Christian Western culture in the Middle Ages."



6. The long history of ethnic cleansing...

Populations fled the arrival of the Ottomans. But with the Habsburg come-back in the Great Turkish War of 1682-99, it was the turn of the Muslim population to flee.

During the First Balkan War of 1912, Calic tells us, the various armies employed a tactic that had actually been used throughout the 19th century: "Undesirable population groups were put to flight in order to justify territorial claims, establish clear power relations, and eliminate resistant groups."

And this unsavoury practice continued: "From the beginning of the 19th century to the end of the First World War, around five and a half million Muslims were expelled from the Balkans in the course of the 'de-Ottomanization' programme alone." World War II, of course, provided an ideal opportunity for those pursuing a Greater This or Greater That to tack onto the coat-tails of the Nazis, and do their own bit of ethnic cleansing. And after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, no-one could remain unfamiliar with this term. Just as an example, when Bosnia-Herzegovina's independence was internationally recognized on 6 April 1992, Bosnian Serb forces, supported by the Yugoslav People's Army, conquered around 70 per cent of Bosnian territory within a matter of weeks. They laid siege to Sarajevo and other towns and villages, and in the space of a few months, more than 2 million people (half the population) were driven from their homes in a gigantic purge of ethnic cleansing.



7. The utter untrustworthiness of the Great Powers

You can't rely on them. Not any of them... They are only EVER out for themselves, and any other story they happen to tell is window-dressing pure and simple.



8. Still struggling

Even now, this is not a region with great economic power. Per-capita income is on average only a third of the EU's, says Calic, and unemployment is high. Most tellingly, perhaps, more than 10 per cent of the population have left the region since 1990.

A fascinating introduction, then, to what I'm sure will be a fascinating journey.