BALKANS, HISTORY OF

history of the area from prehistoric and ancient times to the present. At no point in history has it been easy to define the Balkans in any other than geographic terms. At times the peninsula has been divided on north-south lines, at others the divisions have been east-west; what constitutes the Balkans has varied with time, as have the forces operating within the area. There are, however, some features of Balkan history that have remained consistent. These include the fluidity of ethnic groups, the inability of the peoples of the region to agree and cooperate among themselves, a tendency on the part of political authority to devolve to local levels as soon as central power is weakened, the influence of foreign powers, and the difficulty of introducing into the area concepts that have evolved in a different political and social context. Additional reading The best single-volume English-language history of the area is Edgar Hsch, The Balkans: A Short History from Greek Times to the Present Day (1972; originally published in German, 1968); a longer version in German is also available, Geschichte der Balkanlnder, rev. ed. (1988). Prehistory and antiquity of the western Balkans are covered in John Wilkes, The Illyrians (1992). Georges Castellan, History of the Balkans: From Mohammed the Conqueror to Stalin (1992; originally published in French, 1991), is also useful. John R. Lampe and Marvin R. Jackson, Balkan Economic History, 15501950: From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations (1982), provides a detailed treatment replete with many tables. Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans, 2 vol. (1983), an excellent introductory history, concentrates on the 18th20th centuries and political evolution. Byzantium and the early Slav states are described in Dimitri Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 5001453 (1971, reissued 1982), a standard treatment of Balkan history from the arrival of the Slavs to the fall of Constantinople, including chapters on religion and on art; Francis Dvornik, The Slavs in European History and Civilization (1962, reissued 1992); A.P. Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom: An Introduction to the Medieval History of the Slavs (1970); and John V.A. Fine, Jr., The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century (1983, reissued 1991), and The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest (1987, reissued 1994).Works on the Ottoman period include Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert (eds.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire: 13001914 (1994); Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe Under Ottoman Rule, 13541804 (1977); L.S. Stavrianos, The Balkans Since 1453 (1958, reissued 1965); Charles Jelavich and Barbara Jelavich (eds.), The Balkans in Transition: Essays on the Development of Balkan Life and Politics Since the Eighteenth Century (1963, reprinted 1974), one of the few English sources dealing with the social structure of the Balkans in the Ottoman period; and Bruce McGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe: Taxation, Trade, and the Struggle for Land, 16001800 (1981).The formation of the modern states is chronicled in Charles Jelavich and Barbara Jelavich, The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 18041920 (1977, reissued 1986). The period between the two world wars is treated by Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars, 19181941, 3rd ed. rev. (1967); and Antony Polonsky, The Little Dictators: The History of Eastern Europe Since 1918 (1975). Robert Lee Wolff, The Balkans in Our Time, rev. ed. (1974), remains one of the best and most detailed treatments of the Balkans in the critical period from the end of World War II to the consolidation of communist power. Christopher Cviic, Remaking the Balkans (1991), is the first attempt to assess the impact of the fall of communism on the area. Richard J. Crampton John B. Allcock Formation of nation-states While the 18th century in the Balkans was dominated by the steady decline of Ottoman power, the dominant feature of the 19th century was the creation of alleged nation-states on what had been Ottoman territory. Because the emergence of national consciousness and the creation of nation-states were conditioned by local factors, each nation evolved in an individual way. Nevertheless, some general characteristics are discernible. The first is that external factors were the ultimate determinants. No Balkan people, no matter how strong their sense of national purpose, could achieve independent statehood, or even a separate administrative identity, without support from outside. Ultimately this was to mean military intervention: that of Russia for the Serbs and Bulgarians and that of Britain, France, and Russia for the Greeks. The Romanians benefited from the wars of Italian and German unification, and Albanian independence would have been impossible had the Balkan states not smashed Ottoman power in Europe in the First Balkan War (191213). External intervention came about after indigenous nationalist movements had evolved and eventually fomented unrest or even rebellion. These movements were financed to a large extent by internal wealth, butwith the exception of the peripheral areas of the Greek, Romanian, and Dalmatian landssuch wealth could not be generated until the region had returned to a level of stability that allowed agriculture, trade, and manufacturing to flourish. This was not achieved until the 1830s, after the empire had been rocked by the Napoleonic and Russian invasions, the Romanian revolt of 1821, the Greek war of independence, and the suppression of the Janissaries in 1826. Even the Serbs under Karageorge and Milo Obrenovic had only a limited form of autonomy until the 1830s. With the return of relative calm, trade in cloth, animals, copperware, and other goods increased rapidly. Guilds accumulated excess funds and used them to enhance local villages or towns, many of which saw new churches, clock towers, or covered markets in the 1830s and thereafter. The guilds and individual merchants also endowed schools or financed individual scholars to study in Russia, central Europe, or the great educational establishments that appeared in Constantinople. Sometimes wealth was generated by national communities outside what became the national territory of a particular people; for example, the pig merchants of Serbia were not as wealthy as the richest of their Serb trading partners in the Habsburg lands, while the most successful Bulgarian merchants of Constantinople or the Romanian principalities lived in greater opulence than did those in the cloth towns along the foothills of the Balkan Mountains. Creating a national identity In the Balkans the formation of the state was subsequent to and consequent upon the emergence of a national movement. In the early years of the 19th century, even among the semi-liberated Serbs and Romanians, there was little sense of national identity outside a very small circle of the native intelligentsia. The creation and dissemination of a sense of national identity was usually the work of national apostles who pointed back to more glorious years. In Bulgaria, for example, the monk Paisiy of Khilendar chronicled the glories of the medieval tsars and saints. In the same way, Serbs were reminded of the achievements of Stefan Duan, and Albanians looked back to the exploits of Skanderbeg. But the echoes of history would not have resonated had a sense of national identity, however weak and apolitical, not somehow been preserved during the long centuries of Ottoman domination. One medium for the preservation of national identity had been folklore and folksong. It was these, and especially the epic narrative poetry of Serbia, which had kept alive the memory of Duan, Skanderbeg, and others. Some told of the exploits of the armed bandits who appeared in most Balkan landsthe klephts, haiduks, and armataloi; these were usually no more than brigands, but, because they discomforted the authorities, they, like Robin Hood in England, were given the characteristics of folk heroes. A sense of national identity also owed its survival to the fact that Ottoman power was concentrated in the towns. The villages were still largely Christian, and here Christian customs survived largely unaffected by the new dominant religion. Also, the Ottomans frequently left the administration of villages in village hands; this was especially the case in communities entrusted with special functions, such as guarding a pass, supplying water to an imperial palace, or even providing birds for the sultan's falconry. In these self-governing villages, the habits of and the taste for self-administration were acquired, and here, too, a native leadership cadre was born. Religion played an integral part in preserving national identity. Even in the first, violent years of their conquest, the Ottomans seldom touched monasteries, where relics, icons, books, and other cultural treasures were zealously guarded. In the churches the survival of ancient liturgies provided continuity with the non-Muslim past, while even the millet system performed the invaluable function of preserving administration in the native language. Serbian, and even more so Bulgarian, national awareness first became noticeable among the mass of the peasant population in the 18th century when the Greek patriarchate forced Greek bishops and even priests on Serbian and Bulgarian communities. Religion could differentiate a Roman Catholic from an Orthodox just as effectively as an Orthodox from a Muslim. In Transylvania before 1848, for example, there was growing dissatisfaction among Orthodox Romanians, who were excluded by the Austrian rulers from the three recognized nationsSaxons, Szeklers, and Magyarsand from the four officially sanctioned religionsCatholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Uniate. The cry of the first small groups of national apostles was taken up by new disciples, and they in turn spread the ideas of national identity, particularly through education and the literacy that it bred. Education took place not only in schools but also, in many areas (particularly Serbia and Bulgaria), in reading-roomsthough this English translation does not convey the full meaning of the chitalishte, an institution that not only provided books and newspapers but also organized education for adults and staged plays, debates, and discussions. Nor was it by any means always the case that the new schools were culturally exclusive; in Bulgaria, at least in the early years of the national revival, many subjects were still taught in Greek. This was itself a reflection of another problem in the early years of national reawakening, when unified national alphabets or literary languages had not been agreed upon. Indeed, the Albanians had neither until the first decade of the 20th century. The economy Upon coming to power after World War II, the communist regimes of the Balkans all faced the problem of industrializing what were essentially peasant societies. For centuries the oppression of the Ottoman Empire had restricted economic development in the peninsula, so that peasants living in primitive villages constituted 70 to 80 percent of the population. The primary problem was too many people on the land and not enough industry in the towns and cities to relieve the pressure. In Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania, the historic Balkan pattern of external influence was continued by the new regimes, which adopted industrialization programs based on Soviet models of political and economic control. In these countries, communists gained the support of peasant populations by granting them landand then took it away through collectivization. Large, state-run farms, which were instituted in all Balkan countries except Yugoslavia, were necessary in order to release labour, generate food surpluses, and direct capital to the cities for industrial programs. (Collectivization also enabled the authorities to control isolated and parochial rural areas.) The big disadvantage of collective farming was the lack of individual initiative, and this eventually proved to be a serious weakness. Nevertheless, in all the Balkan countries between 1945 and 1990, communist regimes were able to increase the ratio of industrial-to-agricultural production and employment. Agriculture Considerable modernization has taken place in the structure of agriculture in the Balkan countries. Until the revolutions of 1989, collective and state farms dominated in Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania, while farms in Yugoslavia remained private except for certain state farms. The size of collectives varied by country: in the 1980s, average acreages were 3,100 in Albania, 5,600 in Romania, and larger yet in Bulgaria and Moldova. The private farms of Yugoslavia were mostly under 50 acres. One of the major contrasts in the landscape of the collectivized countries was the presence of large new fields and farm buildings (especially barns) on the outskirts of villages that otherwise had been little altered since World War II. In all the Balkan countries mechanization and use of fertilizers increasedalthough obviously the number of tractors in Yugoslavia, with its small private farms, was greatest. Finally, drainage and irrigation of land were important in all the countries, drainage being more extensive in the wetter northern areas such as the Vojvodina and irrigation predominant in the drier southern and eastern regions of Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania. Albania especially did outstanding work in transforming the old flooded, swampy, and malarial environment of its western plain into an important cultivated area. Through all these changes, the land-use patterns of the Balkans remained surprisingly stable. Although fewer people worked the land, they did not put the land to different uses, mainly because the correlation between agriculture and such physical conditions as terrain, climate, soil, and hydrography remained the same. From 1951 to 1978, cultivation continued to occupy about one-third of the total land area, with the biggest increase taking place in Albania. Meadows and pastures remained at about one-fifth of the total area; in Albania they decreased on account of the increase in cultivation, while in Bulgaria they increased as both cultivated and forested land decreased. Overall, woodland and forest remained constant at one-third. The location and types of cultivated crops vary within the Balkan Peninsula. Cultivated land is dominant in the breadbasket areas, which, in order of decreasing size, are the Walachian Plain and Moldavian Plateau in Romania, northern Moldova, the Vojvodina of Serbia, the Danubian Plain and Maritsa River valley in Bulgaria, and the coastal plain of Albania. The primary crops in these major areas are the food grains wheat and corn, with some industrial crops such as sugar beets, tobacco, and cotton. (The last two are especially important in Bulgaria and Albania, although tobacco is also grown in Macedonia.) The vine and fruit trees are also found in these major cultivated areas, especially on hills where air drainage helps to avoid frosts. The western coastal margin of the Balkan Peninsula is a mixed zone of grain crops, vegetables, fruit and olive trees, and the vine. Meadows and pastures are extensive in mountains and valleys throughout the peninsula. The people Ethnic distribution in the Balkans, c. 1990. The term Shatter Belt has been applied to eastern Europe because of the newly created nations that shattered the map of this area in the 19th century and after World War I. The term thus reflects a theme basic to the areathe influence of powerful foreign states on the nations of eastern Europe. But the term Shatter Belt also refers to the fragmentation of eastern European states by their own numerous ethnic groups, and the Balkan Peninsula, with a population of more than 60 million, has one of the highest degrees of ethnic fragmentation in the world. The origin of this fragmentation is found in the history of settlement by various peoples who immigrated and intermingled over some 3,000 years. Many of these people, like the Slavs, came from the north via the easy access provided by the Pannonian Basin. Others, like the Bulgars, entered from the east, particularly up the route provided by the Danube River. Still others, especially the Byzantines and Turks, moved from the south up the valleys of the Maritsa, Vardar, and Morava rivers. (Little entry could be gained from the west, because the Dinaric Alps and other mountain chains formed considerable barriersalthough some people, such as the Greeks, Romans, and Venetians, did establish early footholds on the coast and islands of Dalmatia.) Despite these routes, the rugged, mountainous character of the Balkan Peninsula allowed many people to isolate themselves from other cultures and to preserve their unique traditions and customs for long periods of time. Peoples of antiquity The earliest people recorded in the Balkans belonged to three tribal groupsthe Illyrians, Thracians, and Dacians. The Illyrians lived in the west of the peninsula, extending through the Dinaric range and adjacent mountains. They are believed to have originated in the eastern Alps and to have moved south in the western Balkans, establishing contact with Greek commercial colonies on the Adriatic coast as early as the 7th century BC. Archaeologists in Albania have found hill forts and cemeteries in which Illyrian weapons of bronze and iron are mixed with Greek coins and other metal implements. Some Illyrian tribes were assimilated by later Slavic migrations, but others moved south into present-day Albania, where they managed to keep their identity, including language, separate. Indeed, these Illyrians are thought to be the ancestors of the Albanians, an argument supported by the latter people's unique language. Less is known of the Thracians and Dacians. The Thracians settled in the Rhodope and other mountains of what is now southern Bulgaria, where they apparently had a state as early as the 5th century BC. They probably mixed with Bulgar tribes that migrated into the peninsula after the fall of Rome. The Dacians, thought to be ancestral to the Romanians, occupied territory north of the Danube River. During the reign of the Macedonians Philip II and Alexander III the Great during the 4th century BC, much of the Balkan Peninsula came under Greek influence. The Macedonians inhabited the fertile plains of the lower Vardar and Struma rivers. Because of their accessibility from Greece via these valleys, Macedonian tribes had more contact with the Greeks than with the Thracians and Illyrians, especially during Hellenistic times. After the Roman conquest the entire peninsula was divided into the provinces of Illyricum, Thrace, Macedonia, Moesia, and Dacia. Except for Dacia, the Balkans were governed by strategic fortresses connected by a road system. These fortresses became the basis of modern cities, such as Belgrade (Singidunum), Ni (Naissus), and Sofia (Serdica). Adriatic coastal cities such as Dyrrachium (now known as Durrs) and Salona (near Split, Croatia) became important bridgeheads to the interior. The Balkan peoples benefited from Roman rule in improved mining, vine cultivation, lumbering, and textile manufacturing. However, the Illyrians in turn helped the Romans, for, as Romanized people, they served in the legions and in a few cases rose from the ranks to serve as Roman emperors. One Illyrian emperor was Diocletian, whose palace at Split forms one of the most famous Roman relics in the Balkan Peninsula. Rome made less of an effort to control Dacia, because the imperial frontier was the Danube River; but even here, in the short time that Dacia was a province (AD 107275), the legacy of a Romance language was left to present-day Romania.