Τα Βαλκάνια

by Mark Mazower, Κώστας Κουρεμένος (Translator)

Στην εξαιρετικά πρωτότυπη αυτή ιστορία του ο Μαρκ Μαζάουερ διαλύει τα τρέχοντα κλισέ της Δύσης για τα Βαλκάνια και, αντί να αναπαράγει τα στερεότυπά της, περιγράφει με ζωηρότητα πώς τα βουνά, οι αυτοκρατορίες και οι θρησκείες διαμόρφωσαν τη ζωή των κατοίκων της περιοχής. Γέφυρα ανάμεσα στην Ευρώπη και στην Ασία, τα Βαλκάνια εκτέθηκαν στις διαρκείς επιδρομές νομαδικών λαών μέσα στους αιώνες. Οι οροσειρές έκαναν την καλλιέργεια της γης δύσκολη και τον πολιτικό έλεγχο σχεδόν αδύνατο, ενώ έδωσαν τη δυνατότητα σε μικρές κοινότητες να ζουν η μία πλάι στην άλλη ως τα τέλη του εικοστού αιώνα. Αυτοκρατορίες βασισμένες στη θρησκεία και όχι στην εθνοτική ταυτότητα διαμόρφωσαν ήθη και πεποιθήσεις μ’ έναν τρόπο που δεν εξαφανίστηκε εντελώς με τον ερχομό του σύγχρονου κόσμου.

Η αφήγηση του Μαζάουερ απλώνεται πολύ, τόσο χρονικά -από τους Ρωμαίους ως τις μέρες μας, με ενδιάμεσους σταθμούς το βυζαντινό και το οθωμανικό παρελθόν- όσο και στο χώρο, αντιμετωπίζοντας τα πρώην οθωμανικά εδάφη στην Ευρώπη ως μέρος μιας περίπλοκης μεν αλλά κοινής ιστορικής κληρονομιάς.

O Μαζάουερ, από τους εξέχοντες Βρετανούς ιστορικούς της νεότερης Ευρώπης, έγραψε ένα εξαιρετικά πλούσιο και μεστό βιβλίο, το οποίο όχι μόνο προσφέρει ένα απολύτως απαραίτητο ιστορικό και πολιτιστικό υπόβαθρο για την κατανόηση της σημερινής βαλκανικής πολιτικής πραγματικότητας, αλλά παρέχει επιπλέον στον αναγνώστη μια νέα εικόνα των σχέσεων αυτής της περιοχής με την Ευρώπη συνολικά.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, European History, War, Greece, World History

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Mark Mazower is a historian and writer, specializing in modern Greece, twentieth-century Europe, and international history. His books include Salonica City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize; Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, winner of the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History; and Governing the World: The History of an Idea. He is currently the Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University, and his articles and reviews on history and current affairs appear regularly in the Financial Times, the Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, and New Republic.

Reviews

[Jibran · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are so familiar with nation-states; every country is supposed to have a native population that belongs to a single race or ethnicity, speaks a single language, follows a single religion (or professes nominal ties to it), and expresses itself through a culture produced by the synthesis of the above.

Western political discourse viewed the creation and consolidation of nation-states as the only logical grouping of people in modern times, one that all the societies in the world should aspire to, in order to make the necessary transition from the age of empires and kingdoms. Mark Mazower argues that this Western-Europe-centric political idea, although it eventually benefited Western Europe, has been a major source of death and destruction in the countries of the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

He expands on this thesis by taking stock of the politics and cultures of Balkan countries under the Ottoman-Turkish rule. His argument is two-fold: One, to show that the Ottoman-held Balkans were thriving societies, culturally, socially and economically, as opposed to miserable and backward ‘lost lands’ of Europe under the brutal rule of the barbarian Turks - a view famous with Western intelligentsia well into the second half of the 20th century.

Two, the roots of the political and social upheavals which have marked the Balkans in the 20th century (the latest being Serb-led genocide of Bosniaks and Croats in the 1990s) lay not in their "cultural barbarity" and intolerance borrowed from their Ottoman ex-masters, but rather spring from European ideology of race-based nationalism, whose ultimate aim was to create centralised, homogenous nation-states.

One marked difference between the Balkan peasant societies and their North European counterparts was that there was near absence of feudal holdings in the former. The land belonged to the Sultan, people tilled it and shared the produce in the shape of taxes with the imperial government. In North Europe, however, feudals literally owned peasants like land and chattel. Through this the writer concludes that peasants in Ottoman Europe had had far greater social and economic freedoms than their brethren in rest of the Europe. This fact allowed greater movement of people to areas with good agriculture and business, and with time, every Balkan country became ethnically and religiously diverse.

There was only one major tag that defined the subjects of the Ottoman empire: religion. Muslims, by virtue of being rulers, were first class citizens. Christian and Jews were 'protected religions' (Dhimmis) as per official view of Islam. This sanction allowed Christians to retain and preserve their religion, sects, languages, and by extension, their cultures. So neither the imperial religion nor the language was forced on the masses. So much so that at one point Christians serving in the imperial court in Constantinople were so numerous that Greek and Slavic languages were given preference over Turkish in official proceedings. In part due to geography, in part economy, and in part for the policies of the imperial state, the Balkans became racially, linguistically and religiously diverse.

The weakening hold of the Ottomans on their Balkan colonies coincided with the rising powers of Britain and France. As Balkan countries gained independence - starting with Greece - the new breed of linguistic/ethnic nationalists were posed with a question. How to create homogenous ethno-lingual nation-states on Western Europe model in a landscape so diverse and mixed? New nation-states that had sprung up through a long and painful political process still had significant minorities (Albanians and Turks in Greece, Albanians in Serbia, Bulgarians in Romania, Greek, Turks, Jews in Macedonia, Greeks in Turkish mainland). They didn’t know what to do with minorities except force mass population exchanges and in some cases go for ethnic cleansing. This, the writer asserts, is the direct consequence of remodeling the Balkans to conform to Western European ideals in a very short period.

After a brief flirtation with Western-imported free market democracy, the fissures and fractures induced by nationalistic ideas were swept under the carpet during the Communist period. Old animosities did not die away but were harshly controlled as Communism viewed itself as beyond race and religion. They resurfaced as soon as Communism crumbled. The experiment of Yugoslavia is an example to come to terms with the simmering question of nationalism; genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo was another sorry chapter of the same phenomenon.

Ironically, just as it appears that the Balkans have solved their nationalist and ethnic conflicts, the rest of Europe has moved on. The creation of multicultural societies in major Western countries is the exact opposite of what the Balkans have been fighting for all along, until a couple of decades ago. Diversity in Europe today mirrors the mixed societies of Ottoman-held Balkans; that is, London, Paris and Frankfurt today are as diverse as Istanbul, Athens and Belgrade were during the Ottoman times.

History repeats itself?

In conclusion, with all things considered, the book categorically rejects the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the cultures of the Slavs which, ‘cut off’ from the ‘civlised European motherland’, have been tainted and brutalised during five centuries of Muslim rule - a view which has been the mainstay of Western academia until recently.

[Micah Cummins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This served as my introduction to the history of the Balkans. While quite short, I found Mazower’s writing to be quite engrossing and informative, I’ll be moving on to more detailed books now that I have read this, and feel I have more solid footing. I would recommend this to anyone else curious to know more about the Balkans and the region’s history.

[Lubinka Dimitrova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid, clearly written and concise introduction to the region. The chapters, while assembling information on the history and region chronologically, also provide thematic studies on religious life, national identity, crime, politics and the effects of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans.

The author debunks the myth that ethnic and religious differences alone are to blame for the current chaos in the region by pointing out that for hundreds of years, the many religions and ethnic groups of the region lived side by side in relative harmony. The now fragmented Balkans were once part of the Roman and Ottoman empires, and until relatively recent times, enjoyed a semblance of stability. It wasn't until the last century when nationalistic and ethnic ambitions surfaced (with the encouragement of the Great Powers) that things turned ugly.

All in all, an excellent read.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Mazower creates a fascinating analysis of the Balkan Peninsula and its history, it appears the region like many globally was late to the party --in this instance the idea of the nation-state and a corresponding economic system which would allow it to blossom. Quicker than you can lament good intentions, but there, just ahead--are insurrections and ethnic cleansing and stolid move from agrarian to urban while it is the civilians who catch it in the neck. I have been going to the region for almost 20 years and I love it. Mazower provides a sound point of departure for all those intrigued by this peculiar corner of the world.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mazower's Short History is a brisk autopsy of a region that Europeans have alternately romanticized, demonized, and ignored, depending on which war was spilling across its borders that decade. Think of it as a guidebook to centuries of bad press, religious collisions, and nation-states assembled with the finesse of mismatched IKEA furniture.

It begins with geography and names: the Balkans aren't just mountains and borders, they're also a linguistic insult disguised as a label, coined by outsiders to suggest "savage Europe".

From there Mazower dissects the Ottoman centuries, pointing out that this supposedly barbaric rule was often more tolerant and functional than its Christian detractors cared to admit. Coexistence under the sultans gave way to nationalism, which arrived like a new technology everyone wanted but nobody knew how to operate without breaking it.

Next come the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when "national awakening" looked more like nationalist brawling, with independence movements springing up like weeds, usually sponsored by whichever Great Power wanted a proxy fight that year.

The Balkan Wars proved that even after beating the Ottomans, Balkan states were most interested in fighting each other, a tradition they kept with enthusiasm. By 1914, the region had gifted Europe the assassination of an archduke and the ensuing bloodbath, ensuring the Balkans' reputation as history's favorite fuse.

The interwar years didn't improve matters: dictatorships, failed democracies, and writers who turned the region into shorthand for intrigue, violence, and moral decay. Then came the Nazis, then communism, with Tito and Ceausescu offering different brands of repression and theater. Under the Cold War lens, the Balkans were either quaint tourist spots or dangerous backwaters, depending on your travel agent.

Finally, the collapse of Yugoslavia dragged the region back into the headlines, feeding old clichés of "ancient hatreds" and confirming for many in the West that the Balkans were doomed to recycle violence.

Mazower's epilogue argues that this fatalistic view is lazy: for centuries, Balkan life was no more brutal than anywhere else, and the caricature of perpetual barbarism says more about Western prejudice than about Balkan reality.

Sir Thomas Roe in 1625 fled Constantinople because "the sickness rageth as if it would dispeople the citty," with "neare 200,000" dead. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in 1717 marveled that Edirne had "365 shops furnish'd with all sorts of rich Goods expos'd to sale," and confessed to a friend, "You never saw Camels in your Life and perhaps the Description of them will appear new to you." In 1684 Johann Christoph Wagner praised the camel as "the best creation of God."

By 1812 Henry Holland was landing in Préveza and announcing, "Entering these regions, the scene is suddenly shifted, and you have before your eyes a new species of beings, with all those gaudy appendages of oriental character and scenery." A French traveler to Greece in 1836, no longer delighted, decided, "The Greeks once free merely horrify. Their life is a sequence of thefts and assaults, fires and assassinations."

A Prussian diplomat in 1833 sighed that "the interior of the Balcan has been little explored." A British visitor to Wallachia noticed "the trifling population of Wallachia (about a million), which is not the tenth part of what the soil could nourish." Another traveler found Romanian peasant huts to be "the ne plus ultra of disgusting dirtiness and wretchedness." In 1854 a traveler wrote, "my expectations were raised by hearing that we were about to cross a Balkan; but I discovered ere long that this high-sounding title denotes only a ridge."

Arthur Evans in 1875, standing on the river Sava, realized "in what a new world we were." In 1877 E. A. Freeman observed that "all the Orthodox subjects of the Turk were in most European eyes looked on alike as Greeks." A French writer in 1864 recalled being asked, "who the Christian populations of Turkey belong to—Russia, Austria, France?"

Leon Trotsky, on the eve of the First Balkan War, exclaimed, "The East! The East!—what a mixture of faces, costumes, ethnic types and cultural levels!" and soon after reported, "meat is rotting, human flesh as well as the flesh of oxen; villages have become pillars of fire."

Harry de Windt in 1907 explained his title Savage Europe by writing, "the term accurately describes the wild and lawless countries between the Adriatic and Black Seas." Agatha Christie in 1925 invented Boris Anchoukoff, from "one of the Balkan states… Principal rivers, unknown. Principal mountains, also unknown, but fairly numerous. Capital, Ekarest. Population, chiefly brigands." Rebecca West confessed at the start of her own journey, "Violence was, indeed, all I knew of the Balkans."

Jacques Tourneur's film Cat People in 1942 turned the region into the cradle of an "ancient sin." Edith Durham, weary of hypocrisy, wrote, "When a Moslem kills a Moslem, it does not count." Two British students of Macedonia in 1921 observed, "the primitiveness of the native peasantry is their most marked feature."

By the mid twentieth century Tito's Yugoslavia was "idolized by American policymakers and by the New Left in Europe," while Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania was recognized "for its pronounced anti-Sovietism in foreign policy" and at the same time "its extreme repression of its own population."

By then mass tourism "brought millions to the region's beaches and ski slopes, and turned peasant culture into after-dinner entertainment," and the worst problems most travelers expected were "poor roads and unfamiliar toilets."

"In 1989 the downfall of Communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe" was followed by "fighting in Slovenia and Croatia," then "war in Bosnia" and "war in Kosovo between NATO states and Serbia." Mazower writes that "since the collapse of communism, it has become easier to see southeastern Europe again as a single entity, but its well-established derogatory connotations have also reemerged." He adds that "the fighting precipitated by the breakup of Yugoslavia has probably left these more entrenched in the popular imagination than ever," and that "it is now not only Tito and communism that are blamed for mass violence, but ethnic diversity itself and long-standing historical cleavages between religions and cultures." In his words, "it is hard to find people with anything good to say about the region, harder still to discuss it beyond good or evil."

The book is the story of a region used as Europe's scapegoat, punching bag, and occasional inspiration, where empires, religions, and nations all took their turn, leaving behind a history that is tangled, bloody, inventive, and far less exotic than outsiders prefer to believe. It's a compact, razor-edged reminder that calling somewhere "the Balkans" often says more about the speaker than about the place itself.

Honestly, I think it's one of those rare history books that does exactly what it promises: it's short, sharp, and more interested in dismantling nonsense than in building yet another grand theory.

Mazower clearly enjoys puncturing myths, and he does it with enough clarity and bite that you never feel like you're trudging through an academic swamp. I was surprised, shocked, how very little ink us dedicated to the wars. The World Wars are given a few pages, and the 90s are referred to rather than treated.

At the same time, its brevity is both its strength and its weakness. He can't possibly cover every complexity, but he makes you realize how much of what people say about the Balkans is recycled caricature. I like that it doesn't coddle the reader; it assumes you can keep up, and if you can't, that's your problem.

For me, it's less a history of the Balkans than a history of how Europe has misunderstood them, and that makes it oddly refreshing.

[Kostas Hitchens Pap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Εάν ο Έλληνας διάβαζε ιστορία από σοβαρούς ανθρώπους και κυρίως ξένους ίσως θα είχαμε μια πιο υγιή κοινωνία με λιγότερους 'Μακεδονομάχους" στα συλλαλητήρια

[Hana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winston Churchill described the Balkans as a region that produces more history than it can consume. Mark Mazower packs centuries of Balkan history into this slim but illuminating volume; it's so concentrated it felt rather like one of those high-protein energy bars with 2,000 calories and two inches of munching. At a mere 153 pages it is (to quote Publishers Weekly) "a highly suggestive analysis of an inexhaustible subject." Mazower’s insights are so intriguing that I longed for another hundred or two hundred more pages and a more expansive argument.

Mazower sees nationalism as the prime (but not sole) destabilizing element. Just as Europe gave the Balkans the categories with which its people defined themselves, so it gave them the ideological weapon of self-destruction--modern romantic nationalism.

But he demonstrates that many other factors hastened the demise of the Ottoman Empire and forced rapid transitions that fragmented Balkan Europe, among them: Russian and Austro-Hungarian ambitions, new trade patterns and land ownership rules, and an increasingly money-based economy that made it harder for farmers to get by.

The first half of the book is the strongest, introducing the land, its peoples, the Ottoman Empire and the early changes that heralded modernity.

A Hard Land

Harkening back to Fernand Braudel, Mazower introduces us to the land and the mountains that dominate (and give their name) to the Balkans. The mountains shaped the often difficult lives of its people. Unlike the mountain chains guarding the necks of the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, the Balkan ranges offered no barrier against invasion. But they hindered easy commerce and deprived much of the peninsula of the moisture found in Europe's continental climatic zone.

Balkan rivers “descend too rapidly to be navigable, or else meander idly away from the coastline”. The mountains precluded construction of the kind of canals that helped commerce to flourish in 18th century England. Rail networks came late to the Balkans and were less extensive than in other parts of Europe. In short, the land held its people back.

The Ottoman Empire—Rome and Byzantium’s Inheritor

Mazower is particularly helpful showing the strengths of the Ottoman system and the degree to which continuity and cultural diversity were maintained in the transition from Byzantine rule. Members of the Bosnian and Byzantine nobility served the Sultan loyally. The characterization of the Ottoman system as Turkish was incorrect. “As late as the 19th century it was noted that 'no Mussulman ever called himself a Turk' (The term was used to refer to Anatolian peasants.)” So prominent was the presence of converts at the Porte that for a time Slavic rivaled Turkish as a court language.

“Asked what religion they were, the cautious peasants of Western Macedonia would cross themselves and say, 'We are Muslims, but of the Virgin Mary'.” In this shared world, "devotional practice cut across theological divides not only in the realm of the supernatural but also in the daily mundane life of the Ottoman world."

Piracy and brigandage were ongoing issues, but the Ottoman state could cope with this. It was used to negotiating with, and often bringing into service, those rebels too powerful or elusive to punish and kill.

It all worked fairly well in an old world, but change was coming—inexorably.

How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm After They've Seen Paree?

The lyrics to this hugely popular 1918 song were true for not just for American soldiers, but for the millions in Europe increasingly exposed to the lures of city life.

Urbanization was changing people’s lives, their very desires. Mazower cites the contempt with which an urban girl views the peasant hill-dwellers and notes the longing for new fashions, lipsticks, and chic clothes. And to buy those fashions, almost entirely imported to Ottoman Europe from Western Europe, one needed money.

In the Turkish Empire--as in Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia--the coming of a money economy disrupted older patterns of social relations and helped pave the way for political changes as well. Nationalism as a mass movement involved the peasants, yet for them what counted were their rights to land, livelihood and fair taxes, while most of the nationalist political struggles were city-bred.

The Eastern Question

Section Three covers the 'long 19th century' from the French Revolution to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. Mazower's highly compressed style works less effectively here--thirty pages are just too few to tell this highly complex tale. Zigzagging constantly between emerging countries and time periods the narrative gets pretty confusing. The overly abbreviated timeline is unhelpful.

The book is weakest in the fourth section—just where the analysis needed to delve most deeply. Again, the problem is over compression. Building the Nation-State takes us at breakneck speed through the end of World War I, the Greco-Turkish War, the population transfers, World War II and the Nazi occupation, Bolshevism, the rise and fall of the Communist states, and the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia. All in 28 pages!

The human side of things gets stripped out, replaced by numbers; even the ‘Great Men’ make mere cameo appearances. Kemal Atatürk and Elefthérios Venizélos make it on stage for a two paragraph discussion of the Greek-Turkish population exchange. After stressing the interwoven nature of the old Ottoman Empire, it’s a little sad that Mazower describes this breakup so clinically, simply noting that the two leaders viewed the exchange as vital to create ethnically homogeneous nation states.

As a thought-provoking series of essays, The Balkans: A Short History is terrific and leaves me wanting to learn more; readers unfamiliar with European and Ottoman history may find it a bit confusing.

[Murtaza · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really gifted example of how to do "A Short History" of any part of the world effectively. While running less than 200 pages, Mazower manages to give a satisfactory snapshot of the emergence of the modern Balkans and the background of its peoples.

Much of the book is actually about the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the Balkans during the period when distinct national identities began to form. Contrary to later nationalist myth, the lines between Bulgarian, Serbian and Bosnian historically not so clear to the people living in the region. It was common to identify with a different ethnicity by choice, based on what was more convenient or appealing at the moment. Religious identity was more important, but even that was far more permeable and ecumenical than we tend to assume today. In the Balkans people would often practice all religions simultaneously or view apostasy more as the accretion of new beliefs rather than the total shedding of old ones. This spiritual promiscuity is reminiscent of pre-Partition India with its shared shrines, saints and religious practices.

During the dismemberment of Ottoman Europe, new identities were ginned up according to the logic of modern nationalism. The new countries and peoples created were haphazardly constructed and the poor inhabitants of the new states failed to live up to the grand visions of nationalist ideologues. The Balkans today — including Greece — are the product of peasant movements that briefly caught the fever of nationalism during its early 20th century heydey. With significant Western European help these people threw off empire. In doing so however they also mostly annihilated the ethnic cosmopolitanism that was one of its hallmarks, expelling, killing or forcibly assimilating anyone who did not conform to the new national identity. The result is a more homogenous and in some ways drabber Eastern Europe than the colorful diversity provided by the Hapsburgs or Ottomans at their best.

While much of the broad history was already known to me, the fascinating anecdotes and quotes that Mazower mined for this book were certainly not. He gives an adequate portrait of how the Balkan states came to be where they are and what they need to thrive in an increasingly(?) post-national 21st century world. A recommended read even for those familiar with the region's history.

[Kenneth P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is indeed a short history. Most of it is very good. We get an informative overview of the empires (Byzantine, Ottoman, Austrio-Hungarian) that ruled the Balkan peninsula and left indelible cultural markers. Lest we leap to conclusions about the alleged Balkan propensity for violence, Mr. Mazower takes great pains to remind us of the crimes of the West. Of course he's right. But it comes off, eventually, as "See, everybody else does it." He treats the Balkan wars of the 1990's with an epilogue. It's a nine page lecture entitled "On Violence" that explains how the people of the Balkans are no more violent than the rest of us. In doing so he walks away from his job. He refuses to write history. His attitude seems to be, oh well, in a civil war stuff happens. There is no mention of the 4 year long siege of Sarajevo, of the Serbian death-camps in Srebrenica and elsewhere, of the tens of thousands of raped Bosnian women. Nor does he speak of the atrocities committed against Serbian civilians by the KLA. He speaks only of American lynchings of Blacks and German concentration camps. We get it Professor Mazower. We all have skeletons. But when you walk away from the 90's Balkan wars I wonder if you have an agenda, a dog in the fight. As an educator you should know that Political Correctness is always your enemy.

[Spotted Towhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

To call it a short history is a bit misleading. The basic premise of this book is that the primary cause of political violence in the Balkans over the past 200 or so years has not been the diversity of ethnic & national groups in the area as has sometimes been claimed, but the combination of national identity as the central group identity form (which Mazower says only rose to prominence in the 1800s & gained dominance in the 1900s) with the imperial interests of other states and the unrest attendant to the societal shift into 'modernity'. Much of the book's information is given in service to that end, though Mazower does his best to provide an overview of the area from the Ottoman empire through to the mid-2oth century -- probably not the most helpful for constructing a detailed chronological understanding of the political formations at play during a given period of Balkan history, but valuable in its ability to help one understand the social and political atmospheres that prevailed in the area over time. I think this would make a good companion piece to a more thorough history; it would also serve well to help a reader gain one's bearing as they begin research into the subject. But the latter half of the 20th century gets very little attention, and there's much Mazower can't cover while keeping to his topic and his page limit, so the book can't take the place of longer studies of the area.

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mazower has achieved something remarkable with this book –a clear, readable, measured historical overview of a complex region in just 135 pages that explains the factors underlying the violent conflicts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on the transition from peasant societies, organised by religious community under the Ottoman empire, to modern nation states.

The introductory chapter is called ‘Names’. The first paragraph tells us that the name by which we call the region, the Balkans, has only been used over the last two hundred years or so. Under the 500 year Ottoman rule, it was Rumeli.

Mazower offers an incisive summary of the stereotypes applied by most westerners to ‘the Balkans’ and to ‘the Ottomans’, noting that the basic historiographical challenge is how to fit the Ottoman centuries into the history of Europe as a whole and concluding that European Romantic nationalism gave the Balkan peoples the ethnic categories by which they defined themselves and which led to destructive wars and genocides. Names become labels of identity and identification, indicators of inclusion or exclusion, acceptance or rejection.

Following Braudel and some political geographers, Mazower discusses the influence of the mountainous terrain of the region on political and economic life and the pressure points like who controls the trade routes and the good land.

He outlines the Ottoman system of government, in which subjects were divided into communities on the basis of belief (Christian – both Catholic and Orthodox- Muslim and Jewish) and ruled largely by their own ecclesiastical hierarchy but these communities lived together in relative harmony, with considerable blurring of the divide between them in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Mazower outlines the introduction of European ideas from the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement, including an emphasis on the cultural value of peasant languages such as Bulgarian, Serbian or Romanian, which led to the creation of the first Balkan nation states in the 1830s.

The second half of the book deals with the tensions between these new states, the struggles between the Great Powers for influence in the region, and the conflicts that flowed from the states’ push for territory and ethnic homogeneity, displacing and killing millions.

At the time of writing, Mazower saw the main threat to the Balkan nation states as coming, not from the old empires or the rivalry and hostility of its neighbours, but from the globalizing international economy.
In 2001, The Guardian reported that Mazower’s concern about misinterpretation of the causes of the most recent Balkan wars drove him to write this book. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
‘His hope is that by presenting some historical facts about the region in a demystifying way, "a number of people will make the correct argument that it wasn't all about ancient ethnic hatreds, and that the real history of the Balkans is very different, and the roots of modern violence are a little bit more complicated than just putting it into the past. But that just makes the question of what that past actually was more pertinent. It doesn't necessarily help with policy, because policy wants to know about other things, but it helps people understand the region, and perhaps in a funny way makes the present seem less like the only thing that matters. If you see that it was very different 300 years ago, by implication it could be very different in 200 years' time, and that's not a completely trivial thing to bear in mind."

[Lauren]

CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING //

• THE BALKANS: A Short History by Mark Mazower, 2000.

A foundational and accessible cultural history of the modern Balkans from the Ottoman Empire to the end of the 20th century.

This is a "broad strokes" history with a specific lens on social and religious history, tracking the geopolitical shifts in 200-some pages - empire to empire to empire. Not being that familiar with the historical details of this region, I found this to be a very useful text, along with the great maps and introduction on place names.

Mazower has a straightforward and clear style, and while there are plenty of opportunities to drill down deeper (and I definitiely will look into Mazower's large backlist and more history in this region) this one keeps things at the macro level, providing just enough context for the various historical literature titles translated from this region.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite history books, not just because Mazower is a master of concise, insightful writing but because it's a wonderful counterweight to the Western-centric history we're taught in school. The book sheds light on the Ottoman Empire as a beacon of education and religious tolerance at a time when Catholic Europe was burning witches. The Sultan granted Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition asylum as well as freedom to practice their religion. The juxtaposition of diverse religions resulted in fascinating new cultural traditions. Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Jewish peasants living and working together typically practiced all three religions, attending services at the mosque, temple and church as a matter of insurance just in case their own religion turned out to be wrong. Bektashism, the worship of saints from all three religions, evolved out of this tolerance and openness to new ideas. A favorite quote: "Albanians will profess any religion that allows them to carry a gun." Women could improve their financial lot in life by leaving their peasant Christian husbands and marrying urban Muslims (the Christian marriage was considered annulled when these women converted to Islam), which perhaps explains why there is deep reverence for the Virgin Mary among Muslims today - because at one time they had Christian mothers. Constantinople was a clean, beautiful city at a time when Europeans lived without sanitation systems and it's fascinating to read about the city life of wealthy, educated Muslims versus peasant life in nomadic villages. This book delves into the tragic hubris of Western European powers which decided to "help" the Balkan people by forcing them to stop their nomadic sheep-herding lifestyle and adopt European farming traditions (despite the lack of fertile soil in the dry desert-like climate), which devastated the economy and the environment and set the stage for ethnic strife between families fighting over once-shared limited resources.

[Antonis Michailidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Μια πολύ ουσιαστική κάλυψη της ιστορίας των λαών της Βαλκανικής των τελευταίων αιώνων με εξαιρετική τεκμηρίωση σε πληθώρα πηγών, οι οποίες ανοίγουν νέα διαβάσματα για όποιον ενδιαφέρεται να εμβαθύνει στα της περιοχής. Ο Βιβλιογραφικός Οδηγός στο τέλος είναι πολύτιμος. Πολύ πυκνό σε πληροφορίες βιβλίο, αλλά παρά τούτο διαβάζεται με πολύ ενδιαφέρον. Η μετάφραση είναι άψογη και η διόρθωση υποδειγματική. Ως έκδοση είναι επίσης πολύ αξιόλογη. Διαβάστε το οπωσδήποτε!

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Прекрасный краткий и общий концептуальный обзор истории полуострова и, конечно, эволюции культурно-исторических стереотипов восток-запад, которые мало где так, как на Балканах, искрометно проявлялись. Стоя, так сказать, здесь, между Европой и Азией, "пытаясь понять, зачем я здесь" (с), эта книжка пригодится как мало какая. А кроме того - необходимая подложка под бОльшую часть "романа в работе". Недаром же полуостров, на котором еще в 19м веке "время остановилось", фигурирует там настолько отчетливо: это плацдарм для "противоденствия".

На нем сошлись и наложились друг на дружку (далеко не всегда совпадая) решетки и матрицы национальности (не в первую, кстати, очередь), веры, государственности, классовости, социальности, имущественности, территориальности, топографии, топологии и даже пространственного распределения (горная публика против долинной), еще много чего. Это одно из самых пинчоновских по духу мест на планете (за исключением, разве что, Винляндии).

Кроме того, проясняется (для меня) и довольно мерзкая роль России в печальной и хаотичной судьбе Балкан. Любить кого-то за их вероисповедание - очень скверная практика, греки русских in toto исторически больше ни за что особо и не любят. Не факт даже, что они чем-то лучше мусульман (от османов исторически случалось гораздо больше пользы этим территориям, чем от русских; хотя и кровушки они больше местным народам попортили, что есть, то есть). Но смена веры, например, внесла свою не только лепту, но и не одну драхму в сексуальное раскрепощение и освобождение полов (особенно женщин) - она была прекрасным поводом для развода (практиковали это как христиане, так и мусульмане). Ну а переход в мусульманство как схема избегания налогов и вообще прекрасен сам по себе (где еще такое было, я даже не знаю).

Сам же Мэзауэр - по-прежнему наш герой, он написал сгусток полезных знаний.

[Caleb.Lives · Rating 1 out of 5]

Little more than apologia for Ottoman empire, with the amount of bias and selective presentation of info that would probably put even the most nationalistically-bent Turkish historians to shame.

[Michael Kotsarinis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short but concise book on Balkan history, very useful for everyone wishing to get the broad picture of the area and its history. It focuses on people and politics highlighting their evolution as societies and states without sentimentalism and prejudice commonly found in other books.

[Nickolas B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Εξαιρετικό βιβλίο.
Συμπυκνωμένη η ιστορία μιας περιοχής, η οποία παράγει περισσότερη ιστορία από αυτή που μπορεί να καταναλώσει.
Ο Μαζάουερ είναι λιτός, περιεκτικός και κυρίως παραθέτει τις πηγές του έτσι ώστε να ξεκαθαρίσει στο μυαλό του αναγνώστη παγιωμένες απόψεις και παρερμηνείες τις ιστορίας.

Απαραίτητο ανάγνωσμα για κάθε Βαλκάνιο κι όχι μόνο!

[Eressea · Rating 4 out of 5]

又消滅一本閱讀器藏書啦
當初衝著3.99RMB買了才發現....是繁轉簡
但繁體版已經絕版很久了
不知道簡體版螃蟹多不多
不過整體看來沒有什麼斷裂感

以本書的厚度，不太可能講得很深入
但反正我對巴爾幹歷史也幾乎一無所知
拿來打底也不錯
只是中文書似乎沒有更深入的參考資料了

整個看下來巴爾幹半島的民族化
過程真是噩夢一場
十九世紀以前鄂圖曼的統治大體上各宗教都和平相處
政府的戶口分類以宗教為主，沒有種族的概念
年深日久甚至產生混合宗教的跡象
直到民族主義興起鄂圖曼控制力下降
才開始硬要分你我，於是變成歐洲火藥庫

另一方面從本書再次感覺到
鄂圖曼似乎是非典型伊斯蘭帝國
這本也可以看到土耳其蘇丹
很依賴半島農業產出和人力資源
為了稅收甚至會抑制伊斯蘭化進度
帝國政府也很需要許多非穆斯林官員
這一切都在十九世紀之後逐漸瓦解了

總之，民族主義真是害人不淺

[U · Rating 2 out of 5]

The entire history of this nation simply cannot be packed into a 200-ish page book. But to be honest, the length wasn't what took away from the quality of the book. It was truly the author's style of writing; it just didn't make sense to have such long chapters detailing the smallest events, and the lives of the peasants while merely focusing on the Balkans 'star' Greece's history of relations with Turkey. No thought virtually for outside of Balkan relations, like their thought of Russia and how they influenced outsider culture, the development of Balkan thought and the arts they brought into existence. Even the parts that detailed the industrialization of the area failed to captivate me. Both the beginning of the modern Balkan's rule and the mid/post war/breakup of Yugoslavia seemed to be virtually non-addressed, besides, again, the simple comparison of the more powerful folk living in somewhat civilized cities vs those who lived in the mountains, and those who are "low-life" peasants. This book seems to leave out so much in those 200 pages, yet it's difficult to read through and seems as though the book is more 350 pages. Would only recommend if you're interested in Greek/Turkish and peasant/more civil relationships. And at that, it's not the book for an enriched history of the region.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Balkans can seem rather forbidding to a Westerner who sees the whole region as the epitome of violence and savagery. Mark Mazower, on the other hand, takes the Balkans as a whole rather than skipping from country to country and losing the reader in the process. It is only in the last two chapters of The Balkans: A Short History that Mazower identifies the destructive forces of nationalism that, for all intents and purposes, did not exist before the decay of the Ottoman Empire, but only came into play toward the end of the 19th century.

Incidentally, the author treats Greece as one of the Balkans, as it rightly should. We tend to give the country a Get Out of Jail Free card because of its remote association with Athenian democracy.

If you read this book, as I think you should, you will end up thinking better of the old Ottoman Empire and far, far worse of the virulent nationalisms that replaced it, at least on the Balkan Peninsula.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to the incredibly complex and confusing history of the Balkans. But it really is just a starter at less than 125 pages. It whet my appetite to learn more but I probably couldn't have handled a longer history without knowing these basics first.

[Sabrina Salov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marks the beginning of my solo journey to understanding my heritage and what actually happened in the events leading up to and during the formation of an independent Croatia. There is much revisionist history on this matter and I don’t know if my fam drank the koolaid.

Anyways… long story short capitalism ruins one’s relationship to the land, specifically agrarian economies and cultures, in favor of global trade and mass production. Also nation states, which encourage racial/ ethnic/ religious homogeneity and extreme nationalism, create unnecessary misery and death and oftentimes become popular during economic instability… finding many throughlines to current events. Would eat those AP contextualization points up

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truly a short history of the Balkan region, going back to the medieval era and tracing changes in population, religion, and governance. Mazower pays special attention to religious history, (and there is a lot of it in this region!) which I appreciated. His answer regarding why Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted so peacefully in that region for centuries was a bit surprising (elements syncretism; intermarriage between Christians and Muslims) but he had evidence for it. More than other similar books I've read, The Balkans uses travelogues to illustrate daily life in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Mazower's take on why the Balkans have experienced long periods of unrest in recent centuries was riveting. He surmises that "just as Europe gave the Balkans the categories with which its peoples defined themselves, so it gave them also the ideological weapons--in the shape primarily of modern romantic nationalism--with which to destroy themselves. Trying to understand the Balkans, in other words, challenges us to look at history itself as something more than a mirror which we hold up, blocking out the past to reflect our own virtues." (xliii) This approach was particularly interesting in light of the epilogue, "On Violence," in which he glossed over violence in the Balkans by comparing it to violence elsewhere in the world, so he could argue (rightly) that the Balkans are not inherently "more violent" than other "more enlightened" regions of the world. I wasn't fully convinced of his project in comparing violence in one region of the world to violence in another, because comparing suffering is a terrible idea, but his goal of de-stigmatizing the region is worthy. However, I think he would have gotten farther if he had emphasized the violence in the Balkans in the 20th century as taking place during wartime. As awful as those tragedies were, they were not novel war crimes.

Recommended to anyone interested in a brief history of the Balkans, focusing on the middle ages through the 19th century.

[Cav · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Balkans was a decent short read. Author Mark Mazower is a British historian. His expertise is Greece, the Balkans, and 20th-century Europe. He is Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University in New York City, according to his Wikipedia page.

Mark Mazower :


The Balkan Peninsula is bounded by the Adriatic Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea (including the Ionian and Aegean seas) and the Marmara Sea to the south and the Black Sea to the east. Its northern boundary is often given as the Danube, Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has a combined area of about 470,000 km2 (181,000 sq mi) (slightly smaller than Spain). It is more or less identical to the region known as Southeast Europe.
The term "the Balkans" is used more generally for the region; it includes states in the region, which may extend beyond the peninsula, and is not defined by the geography of the peninsula itself.

Historians state the Balkans comprise Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. Its total area is usually given as 666,700 km2 (257,400 sq mi) and the population as 59,297,000 (est. 2002). Italy, although having a small part of its territory in the Balkan Peninsula, is not included in the term "the Balkans".
The term Southeast Europe is also used for the region, with various definitions. Individual Balkan states can also be considered part of other regions, including Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Europe. Turkey, often including its European territory, is also included in Western or Southwestern Asia.

The Balkan Peninsula, as defined by the Soča–Vipava–Krka–Sava–Danube border :


The Balkans has decent formatting, which is always nice. It is separated into chapters, and the writing is broken into easily-digestible paragraphs. A simple thing that many books sadly don't get right...

The Balkans begins with a brief history of the term "Balkan", and some pre-19th century views on the region. It then works its way forward, in a chronological manner.
Author Mark Mazower first talks about the climate and geography of the region, before diving into the social and cultural aspects of the various countries.

The book tells a bit of the long story of the civilizational-scale rift between Islam and Christianity: Wars between the two religious groups have taken place for the entirety of Islam's ~1,400-year history. Mazower mentions Samuel P. Huntington's book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order in describing this ideological divide.
The identity of the Balkans is dominated by its geographical position; historically the area was known as a crossroads of cultures. It has been a juncture between the Latin and Greek bodies of the Roman Empire, the destination of a massive influx of pagan Bulgars and Slavs, an area where Orthodox and Catholic Christianity met, as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity.

Not only were the Balkans divided along religious and ethnic lines, they were also to be divided along ideological ones, as well:

"...By 1923, the Eastern Question had come to an end. A decade of wars had finally destroyed the empires that had ruled the Balkans, and much of eastern Europe, for centuries. But the collapse of empires did not bring the peace anticipated by Western liberals. The successor states appealed to the principle of nationality to claim their neighbors’ lands: irredentism lived on,
and few Balkan borders were uncontested. Moreover, the nationality principle cut two ways. All the new states had ethnic minorities whose existence undermined their claims to rule in the name of the Nation. Nor did Europe’s Great Powers succeed after 1918 in patching up the differences that had led them into war. On the contrary, their rivalries were now sharpened and intensified by ideology as fascism and communism took hold. Thus the twentieth century, like the nineteenth, was scarred by the bloody intersection of regional Balkan quarrels and Great Power competitiveness. The era of religion was over; that of ideology lay ahead: nationalism spanned them both..."

The book features an interesting Epilogue, where the author wraps up the themes covered, and argues a case that the Balkans did not necessarily undergo more violence than other regions, citing Arnold Joseph Toynbee:

"...Yet for centuries, as this book has attempted to show, life in the Balkans was no more violent than elsewhere; indeed the Ottoman empire was better able than most to accommodate a variety of languages and religions. To Arnold Toynbee, witnessing its final days, it was evident that the source of conflict lay outside the region. “The introduction of the Western formula [of the principle of nationalism] among these people,” he wrote in 1922, “has resulted in massacre. . . . Such massacres are only the extreme form of a national struggle between mutually indispensable neighbors, instigated by this fatal Western idea.” “Ethnic cleansing”—whether in the Balkans in 1912–1913, in Anatolia in 1921–1922 or in erstwhile Yugoslavia in 1991–1995—was not, then, the spontaneous eruption of primeval hatreds but the deliberate use of organized violence against civilians by paramilitary squads and army units; it represented the extreme force required by nationalists to break apart a society that was otherwise capable of ignoring the mundane fractures of class and ethnicity..."

The history of this region is an interesting topic, and this book did a decent job of summarizing the big picture themes, considering its short page count.
I would recommend it to anyone interested.
4 stars.

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I spent 8 hours walking around the streets of Sarajevo with a Bosnian man and learned way more about the history of the Balkans than this book could ever hope to teach me.

I’m not sure who the audience for this book is. I picked it up hoping to get a general history of the Balkans and got quote after quote after quote from various 19th century Western European travelers. Common phrases in this book include “noted a British traveler,” “observed a French bystander,” and even “noted a 1966 Time-Life.” I’m not interested in reading Balkan history through the perspective of Lord Random Rich Guy writing about “these mystical Easterners” in his travel diary. In fact, it call comes across as very “pseudo noble savage,” as another reviewer here brilliantly put it. Maybe someone writing a thesis on peasant life in 19th century Montenegro would find this useful.

You’d have to have a strong background in Balkan history to really get anything from this book, I think. It tries to cram SO MUCH into SO FEW pages, while also focusing heavily on Greece and Turkey. In fact, I had to Google “is Greece part of the Balkans” - technically yes but as the Encyclopedia Brittanica puts it, “it is arguably better characterized as a Mediterranean country.”

Finally… there is so little mention of the incidents of the ‘90s that I had to go back and see when this book was actually written.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-written, engaging, and concise history of the (political, social, religious) shifts in the Balkan region from the Ottoman Empire to the 1990s. It gives you enough to get a terrific overview of the complexity of the region, but it is not too pedantic or exhaustive in its discourses. The author is also good at illustrating, again in a straightforward manner, the ways in which the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Byzantine, and other, smaller, empires either discouraged or shaped the modern ideas of "nation" versus "nationality" in the Balkans. You can't help but think of similar regions in the world where people align their loyalties, not to nations, but to ethnicities, churches, or even classes. This is actually a pretty fun and easy read (I read it in two sittings!)- a nice mix of military, religious, cultural, social, and economic history.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is quite a task to take on as wide a subject as this within 150 pages and hence, it's not a bad introduction to the subject. I did feel, however, that the complexity of the Balkans would require a far mightier tome and I found the thematic approach to be a little irritating. Yes - it makes sense to move beyond the chronological take that most books until this point used, but at times this was just too broad brush.

The main messages include the assertion that the Balkans are an almost entirely fictional construct, that the early twentieth century urge to nationalism has landed us in a lot of hot water and that the peoples of southeast Europe are no more inclined to violence than those of Didcot or Boca Raton. All arguments convince and it's noteworthy that Mazower manages that unusual feat of being popular with the public and his fellow academic historians.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this small volume Mazower does not provide a full history of every Balkan nation, but instead provides an overview beginning with geography and spending time with Ottoman rule, the Orthodox church, growing nationalism in the 19th century (for Mazower a poison from the West), and war, communism, and modernity in the 20th century. I might wish for more criticism of the Ottomans (where is discussion of the Janissaries?) and a less political discussion of the church, but this book is packed with insights about local life and political order and is beautifully written. His history of 20th century Europe, The Dark Continent, was a brooding, dense and wonderful book. The prose here is easier and the author's real love of the topic shines through.

[todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

mazower provides an excellent overview of dominant themes present throughout the history of the region and expertly punctures many persistent myths. unfortunately, the title suggests that this book serves as a good introduction to the history of the balkans, whereas i often found myself wishing that i had already read a (more truly) introductory work. recommended for those who are already familiar with the geography and history of the region.