BALKANS

also called Balkan Peninsula the easternmost of Europe's three great southern peninsulas and, collectively, the countries located there. The term Balkan came into use only in the mid-19th century and initially referred to the land lying south of the Stara Planina, a mountain range in Bulgaria that the Turks referred to as the Balkan Mountains. After the earlier term Turkey-in-Europe was rendered obsolete by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, Balkans became a synonym for the European parts of the Ottoman Empire, and it also came to include some areas formerly under Austrian Habsburg or Russian control. Geographers, ethnographers, and historians have laboured fruitlessly for a century and a half to establish unambiguous natural boundaries to the Balkan region. Their task has been made more difficult by the historical freight that the word has acquired, namely, a reputation for political division, backwardness, and marginality with respect to European civilization. In contemporary usage the term Balkans signifies the territory of the states of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia, and Yugoslavia (Montenegro and Serbia)though there is considerable doubt as to whether Slovenia and Romanian Transylvania are Balkan in any meaningful sense. The term also includes the European portion of Turkey, although Turkey is not a Balkan state. also called Balkan Peninsula, the easternmost of Europe's three great southern peninsulas and, collectively, the countries located there. For the purposes of this article, it comprises the states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova. These states, containing more than 60 million people, occupy an area of 257,400 square miles (666,700 square kilometres). The region is bordered by Italy on the northwest, Austria and Hungary on the north, Ukraine on the north and northeast, and Greece and Turkey on the south. It is washed by the Adriatic Sea in the west, the Ionian Sea in the southwest, and the Black Sea in the east. In the north, clear geographic delimitation of the Balkans becomes difficult, because the Pannonian Basin of the Great Alfold (Great Hungarian Plain) extends from central Europe into parts of Croatia, Serbia, and Romania. To the south, Greece is primarily a Mediterranean country and therefore is not discussed in this articlealthough its northern regions of Epirus and Macedonia can be considered parts of the Balkans. The word Balkan is Turkish and means Mountain, and the peninsula is certainly dominated by this type of landform, especially in the west. The peculiar nature identified with Balkanizationthat is, fragmentation of ethnic groupsderives in part from the compartmentalization brought about by this mountainous relief. But size is also important in giving the region its character, for its area is large enough to demonstrate continental climatic characteristics and to have provided important bases of occupation for the Oriental Byzantine and Turkish civilizations. Subjection to Eastern imperial forces isolated most Balkan societies from Western developments for almost two millennia and created feudal characteristics that persisted until World War I. After this war the viability of the relatively new Balkan states was threatened by political instability, ethnic division, worldwide economic depression, and the rise of the fascist states of Germany and Italy. After World War II, communism brought great stability, but at the cost of political freedom, social and economic problems connected with rapid industrialization, and varying degrees of dominance by yet another outside power, the Soviet Union. For the geography and history of a state that is often included in the Balkan region, see Greece and Greece, history of. Relief The western region In the extreme northwest of the Balkan Peninsula are the highest peaks of the Julian Alps, part of the main European Alpine system. These rise to 9,396 feet (2,864 metres) in Mount Triglav, one of the highest peaks in the Balkans. In the Ljubljana basin of this region lies the capital of the Slovene people, who have long considered themselves closer in culture to their Alpine neighbours in Italy and Austria than to their fellow Slavs to the south. South of the Julian Alps lie the Dinaric Alps, which extend for 350 miles (560 kilometres) to Lake Scutari. The only physical gap through the Dinaric Alps is cut by the Neretva River. Long serving as a barrier to contact between the Adriatic coast and the interior of the peninsula, these mountains present an imposing sight when approached by sea, for they rise abruptly from the water with very little flat land along the coast. The western section of the Dinaric Alps comprises the Karst zone, which is world-famous for extensive landforms associated with the dissolving of the underlying limestone. Composed of a series of flat ridges, called planina, that vary in elevation from 4,000 to 6,500 feet, the landscape appears barren because rainwater quickly seeps underground and is not available to support soil or vegetation. Instead, the water dissolves the karst to create small, round depressions called dolines or larger depressions called uvalas on the surface, while underground it excavates large caverns and forms a subterranean drainage system. Longitudinal troughs, called poljes, are broad, flat, enclosed basins created by tectonic forces and modified by solution. They are often floored with a red soil called terra rossa, which consists of insoluble material washed from the limestone and deposited by underground streams as they emerge to traverse the basins before going below ground again. Although two Slavic groups, the Croats and Montenegrins, are associated with the Dinaric Alps, only the latter have their core area there; the historic Montenegrin capital of Cetinje is located in a polje in the extreme south of the region. The Adriatic coastal zone, consisting of the Istrian Peninsula, the Croatian region of Dalmatia, and the Montenegrin coast, is an extension of the parallel linear ridges and valleys of the Dinaric Alps. Here the mountains have been submerged by geologically recent changes in sea level to form a series of long, narrow islands running parallel to the shore. Over the centuries, terraces have been built on the slopes in many areas along the coast and have been planted with corn (maize), olives, and grapes; in recent years, with the employment of farmers in tourism and other activities, many of these terraces have been left fallow. South of Lake Scutari the mountains curve away from the coast and become more rugged. Unlike the mostly continuous Dinaric Alps, these ranges are broken by several river valleys crossing from east to westa drainage pattern that has dissected the ranges into numerous blocks. In general the highest blocks are in the North Albanian Alps, or Prokletije, where Mount Jezerce rises to 8,838 feet. Perhaps the most inaccessible mountains in Europe, these are the home of the Geg tribes of northern Albania, who for centuries were famous for their isolation, attachment to patriarchal clans, and practice of blood feuds, or vendettas. In southern Albania are a number of parallel ranges that lie at elevations between 6,000 and 7,000 feet. These are the homeland of the Tosk people, whose active political role in recent Albanian history can be partly explained by the greater accessibility granted their region by the consistent northwest-southeast orientation of the topography. The western lowlands of Albania make up the only sizable coastal plain along the southeastern edge of the Adriatic Sea. They range in width from 515 miles in the north to 2530 miles in the south. Historically, this plain exhibited what the French historian Fernand Braudel called the major problem of the Mediterranean fringean environment dominated by flooding, swamps, and malaria. The cycle began in ancient times. First came deforestation of the hills for lumber and fuel, followed by erosion of the bare slopes and blocking of streams with sediment as their gradients decreased upon reaching the plain. Finally, the streams overflowed and flooded the plain, creating swamps and breeding malarial mosquitoes. This process continued under the long Turkish occupation, during which a feudal landholding system led to further deterioration. Only under the communists was the plain drained and then irrigated. (The same process took place in the Kor Plain, a major basin in the interior.) The inner margin of the lowlands is lined by hills, where environmental and health conditions are better and where the Albanian capital of Tiran is located at a midpoint between the Geg and Tosk groups. The central core On the inner margins of the Dinaric Alps, the limestone topography gives way first to mountains of different structure that are more resistant to erosion, then to hills, and finally to the Pannonian Basin. Four core areas of settlement for Slavic groups are found in this central area. The first is in the hill country flanking the upper Sava River where Zagreb, the capital of the Croatians, is located. To the south, lying in forested mountains and drained by the Bosna, Vrbas, and Una rivers, are the core areas of the Bosnians, who have had capitals at Jajce, Sarajevo, and Mostar. Farther to the southeast, in the rough country of the upper Ibar River, lies the original core area of the Serbs. This homeland was located near the great north-south transportation route formed by the Morava and Vardar river valleys and on the east-west passage between the Kosovo and Metohija basins and the Adriatic Sea via the Drin River. Turkish expansion in the 14th century resulted in a Serb migration to the north, where a new Serbian capital was eventually established on the Danube River at Belgrade. Meanwhile, Albanians crossed the mountains into the depopulated Kosovo area, which the Serbs still regard as their ancestral homeland. Still farther south in this complex mountain-and-basin area is the core area of the Macedonians, whose capital, Skopje, was leveled by a severe earthquake in 1963. The Balkan portion of the Pannonian Basin, centred on the Danube and Tisa (Tisza) rivers, is the breadbasket of Serbia and Croatia. Loess areas, made up of wind deposits laid down some 10,000 years ago at the close of the Ice Age in the northern Vojvodina area of Serbia, support crops of wheat, corn, and sugar beetsall of which require the fertile soils generated on this parent material. The sandy areas northeast of Belgrade are utilized for rye, potatoes, and fruit trees. In the eastern Slavonian area of Croatia and in northwestern Serbia, meadows and pasture yield to low terraces, marshes, and inundated plains. Additional reading The land Major though somewhat dated works on the geography of eastern Europe are Norman J.G. Pounds, Eastern Europe (1969); and George W. Hoffman (ed.), Eastern Europe: Essays in Geographical Problems (1971). Dean S. Rugg, Eastern Europe (1985), is a more current single-volume work. Thorough, almost encyclopaedic coverage is provided in the companion volumes by David Turnock, Eastern Europe: An Economic and Political Geography (1989), The Human Geography of Eastern Europe (1989), The Making of Eastern Europe: From the Earliest Times to 1815 (1988), and Eastern Europe: An Historical Geography, 18151945 (1989). Frank W. Carter (ed.), An Historical Geography of the Balkans (1977), contains scholarly discussions. Josef Breu (ed.), Atlas der Donaulnder (197089), with text in German, English, French, and Russian, is the most detailed and inclusive atlas of the Balkan area. United States, Central Intelligence Agency, Atlas of Eastern Europe (1990), and The Former Yugoslavia: A Map Folio (1992), are also useful graphic sources, though brief. The economy Ivn Berend and Gyrgy Rnki, Economic Development in East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1974; originally published in Hungarian, 1969), is one of the best summaries of the subject. Andrew H. Dawson (ed.), Planning in Eastern Europe (1987), includes four chapters on communist planning in the Balkan countries. Irwin T. Sanders (ed.), Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe (1958), is an important work on the change from peasant agriculture to collectivization in the region. Doreen Warriner, Economics of Peasant Farming, 2nd ed. (1964), is a basic study of peasant agriculture using eastern Europe as a laboratory. The people An essay by W. Gordon East, The Concept and Political Status of the Shatter Zone, chapter 1 in Norman J.G. Pounds (ed.), Geographical Essays on Eastern Europe (1961, reissued 1972), pp. 127, is the primary source on the Shatter Belt concept. R.A. French and F.E. Ian Hamilton (eds.), The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy (1979), is the primary work on the socialist city in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, including the Balkans. Leszek A. Kosinski, Changes in the Ethnic Structure of East-Central Europe, 19301960, Geographical Review, 59(3):388402 (July 1969), is the best summary of ethnic changes in the region before and after World War II. On the position of Muslims in the region, see Alexandre Popovic, L'Islam balkanique: les musulmans du sud-est europen dans la priode post-ottomane (1986). Dean S. Rugg