History of the Balkans

Current political map of the Balkans. Countries firmly considered part of the region are in green; countries sometimes considered part of the region are in turquoise.

Balkan peninsula (as defined geographically, by the Danube-Sava-Kupa line)

The Balkans is an area of southeastern Europe situated at a major crossroads between mainland Europe and the Near East. The distinct identity and fragmentation of the Balkans owes much to its common and often violent history and to its very mountainous geography.

Early History

Early cultures of the Balkans were predominantly agricultural. Archaeologists have identified several early culture-complexes, including the Cucuteni culture (4500 to 3500 BC), Vinča culture (5000 to 3000 BC), Linear pottery culture (5500 to 4500 BC), and Ezero culture (3300—2700 BC). The Eneolithic Varna culture (4600-4200 BC radiocarbon dating) produced the world's earliest known gold treasure, communicated with the Mediterranean and had sophisticated beliefs about afterlife. A notable set of artifacts is the Tărtăria tablets, which appear to be inscribed with an early form of writing. The Butmir Culture (2600 to 2400 BC), found on the outskirts of present-day Sarajevo, developed unique ceramics, and was likely overrun by the Illyrians in the Bronze Age.

The "Kurgan hypothesis" of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origins assumes gradual expansion of the "Kurgan culture", around 5000 BC, until it encompassed the entire pontic steppe. Kurgan IV was identified with the Yamna culture of around 3000 BC.

A modified and still widely held form of Kurgan theory by J. P. Mallory, dates the migrations to around 4000 BC and puts less insistence on their violent or quasi-military nature. Colin Renfrew is the main propagator for a newer theory dating from 1987, according to which the Proto-Indo-Europeans were farmers in Asia Minor who expanded peacefully in South East Europe from around 7000 BC (wave of advance). The Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) suggests that the Indo-European languages originated in Europe and have existed there since the Paleolithic.

The Indo-European invasion began around 2000 BC, by conquering the local agricultural cultures, using the advantage of better weapons and the use of horses. The first Greek tribe to arrive in Greece were probably the Achaeans, around 2200-1900 BC, meeting a presumably non-Indo-European people whom they called Pelasgians. Achaeans created the Mycenaean civilization which peaked around 1600-1400 BC and was the earliest Indo-European civilization in the Balkans. Achaeans extended for the first time the Greek influence in the Aegean, Kreta (eventually overrunning the Minoan civilization) and Asia Minor. They declined after a long period of turmoil that included great migrations and wars between powers all over Eastern ad Central Mediterranean (see Trojan War, Peoples of the Sea), finally ending at the South Balkans with the arrival of the Dorian Greeks around 1200-1100 BC (see: Greek Dark Ages) from the Epirus region.

Illyrian tribes are believed to be associated with the Hallstratt culture, an Iron Age people coming to the Western Balkans after 2000 BC. A less plausible theory is that Illirians are native to the area.

Around 1500 BC, Thracians settled in the Balkans, in Thrace and adjacent lands (now Romania, Bulgaria, northeastern Greece, European Turkey, eastern Serbia and Republic of Macedonia). They spoke the Thracian language, a Indo-European language.

The Phrygians seem to have settled in the southern Balkans at first, centuries later continuing their migration to settle in Asia Minor.

Antiquity

Early states

After the period that followed the arrival of the Dorians, known as the Greek Dark Ages or the Geometric Period, the classical Greek culture developed in the southern Balkan peninsula, the Aegean islands and the western Asia Minor Greek colonies starting around the 9–8th century and peaking with the 5th century BC Athens democracy. Hellenistic culture spread throughout the empire created by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC. The Greeks were the first to establish a system of trade routes in the Balkans, and in order to facilitate trade with the natives, between 700 BC and 300 BC they founded several colonies on the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) coast, Asia Minor, Dalmatia, Southern Italy (Magna Graecia) etc. By the end of the 4th century BC Greek language and culture were dominant not only in the Balkans but also around the whole Eastern Mediterranean.

The other peoples of the Balkans organized themselves in large tribal unions, such as the Odrysian empire, created in the 5th century BC. Other tribal unions existed in Dacia at least as early as the beginning of the 2nd century BC under King Oroles. The Illyrian tribes, including Autariatae and Dassaretae were situated in the kingdom of Illyria, much of which corresponds the lands from ister river to etolia(west part of Hungary east part of Austria, all Sllovenia, Croatia, Bosna, Serbia and Montenegro, Albania Epirus and Macedonia (In italy venetian and messapian tribe). Some non-Indo-European tribes continued to exist in the area.

In the Roman Empire

Starting in the 2nd century BC the rising Roman Empire began annexing the Balkan area, transforming it into one of the Empire’s most prosperous and stable regions. To this day, the Roman legacy is clearly visible in the numerous monuments and artifacts scattered throughout the Balkans, and most importantly in the Latin based languages used by almost 25 million people in the area. However, the Roman influence failed to dissolve Greek culture, which gradually acquired a predominant status in the Eastern half of the Empire.

Beginning in the 3rd century AD, Rome's frontiers in the Balkans were weakened because of political and economic disorders within the Empire. Though the situation had stabilized temporarily by the time of Constantine, waves of non-Roman peoples, most prominently the Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Huns, began to cross into the territory, first (in the case of the Visigoths) as refugees with imperial permission to take shelter from their foes the Huns, then later as invaders. Turning on their hosts after decades of servitude and simmering hostility, Visigoths under Fritigern eventually conquered and laid waste the entire Balkan region before moving westward to invade Italy itself. By the end of the Empire the region had become a conduit for invaders to move westward, as well as the scene of treaties and complex political maneuvers by Romans, Goths and Huns, all seeking the best advantage for their peoples amid the shifting and disorderly final decades of Roman imperial power.

Christianity

Christianity first came to the area when Saint Paul and some of his followers traveled in the Balkans passing through Thracian and Greek populated areas. He spread Christianity to the Greeks at Veroia, Thessaloniki, Athens, Corinth, Dyrrachio (Greek colony in the modern-day Albania, today city of Durrës). Saint Andrew also worked among the Dacians and Scythians, and had preached in Dobruja and Pontus Euxinus. In 46 AD, this territory was conquered by the Romans and annexed to Moesia. In 106 AD the emperor Trajan invaded Dacia. Subsequently Christian colonists, soldiers and slaves came to Dacia and spread Christianity. In the Third Century the number of Christians grew. When Emperor Constantine of Rome issued the Edict of Milan in 313, thus ending all Roman-sponsored persecution of Christianity, the area became a haven for Christians. Just twelve years later in 325, Constantine assembled the First Council of Nicaea which made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The East-West Schism, known also as the Great Schism (though this latter term sometimes refers to the later Western Schism), was the event that divided Christianity into Western Catholicism and Greek Eastern Orthodoxy, following the dividing line of the Empire in Western Latin-speaking and Eastern Greek-speaking parts. Though normally dated to 1054, when Pope Leo IX and Patriarch of Constantinople Michael I Cerularius excommunicated each other, the East-West Schism was actually the result of an extended period of estrangement between the two Churches. The primary claimed causes of the Schism were disputes over papal authority—the Pope claimed he held authority over the four Eastern patriarchs, while the patriarchs claimed that the Pope was merely a first among equals—and over the insertion of the filioque clause into the Nicene Creed. Most serious (and real) cause of course, was the competition for power between the old and the new capitals of the Roman Empire (Rome and Constantinople). There were other, less significant catalysts for the Schism, including variance over liturgical practices and conflicting claims of jurisdiction.

Middle Ages

The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine empire, Imperium Graecorum, Graecia, Terra Graecorum, Imperium romanorum, Roman empire)

Byzantine Empire (Greek: Βασίλειον τῶν Ρωμαίων) is the term conventionally used since the 19th century to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered at its capital in Constantinople. Byzantium may be defined as a multi-ethnic empire that emerged as a Christian empire, soon comprised the Hellenized empire of the East and ended its thousand-year history, in 1453, as a Greek Orthodox state: An empire that became a nation, almost by the modern meaning of the word.

In the centuries following the Arab, Bulgar and Lombard conquests in the 7th century, its multi-ethnic (albeit not multi-national) nature remained even though its constituent parts in the Balkans and Asia Minor contained an overwhelmingly large Greek population.

The Eastern Roman Empire (also known as Romania, not to be confused with modern day Romania) was the eastern half of the Roman empire after it was legally divided into two parts. The Western empire held some of the old Roman places, such as parts of Italy. The Eastern Roman Empire had its capital at Constantinople (formerly Byzantium or Byzantion), and its core territory was the south-eastern Balkan peninsula. During most of its history the Eastern Roman empire controlled many provinces in the Balkans and in Asia Minor. The Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian for a time retook and restored much of the territory once held by the unified Roman empire, from Spain and Italy, to Anatolia. Unlike the Western Roman Empire, which met a famous if rather ill-defined death in the year 476 AD, the Eastern Roman Empire came to a much less famous but far more definitive conclusion at the hands of Mehmet II and the Ottoman Empire in the year 1453. The Western Roman Empire collapsed from inside when Rome was sacked, thus putting an end to the classical age. Its holdings would gradually be given over to various kings and chiefs. To this day, the dominions of the Roman Empire have never been fully reunified. By contrast, the Eastern half of the empire, which gradually evolved into a medieval power which has often been called the Byzantine Empire (and in which Greek eventually became the dominant language) was gradually whittled away over the centuries Its nemesis was the Ottoman Empire, with which it shared a somewhat transitory boundary. Over time, it lost piece after piece of territory to invaders, and was actually invaded (and the capital sacked) by the Fourth Crusade.By the end, the empire consisted of nothing but Constantinople, with all other territories in both the Balkans and Asia Minor gone. The conclusion was reached in 1453, when the city was successfully siege by Mehmet II, bringing to an end the Eastern Rome. Byzantium was arguably the only stable state in Europe during the Middle Ages. Its expert military and diplomatic power ensured inadvertently that Western Europe remained safe from many of the more devastating invasions from eastern peoples, at a time when the Western Christian kingdoms might have had difficulty containing it (this role was mirrored in the north by the Russian states of Kiev, Vladimir-Suzdal and Novgorod). Constantly under attack during its entire existence, the Byzantine Empire shielded Western Europe from Persians, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, and for a time, the Ottomans.

The 20th century has seen an increased interest by historians to understand the empire, and its impact on European civilization is only recently being recognised.

Byzantium played an important role in the transmission of classical knowledge to the Islamic world and to Renaissance Italy. Its rich historiographical tradition preserved ancient knowledge upon which splendid art, architecture, literature and technological achievements were built. It is not an altogether unfounded assumption that the Renaissance could not have flourished were it not for the groundwork laid in Byzantium, and the flock of Greek scholars to the West after the fall of the Empire.

The Emperor Justinian I's formation of a new code of law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, and the revisions it constantly underwent (most notably in the Macedonian Dynasty), had a clear effect on the evolution of jurisprudence. The Codex itself compiled all previous statutes of Roman emperors, paved the way for a more developed system of appeals courts and a system of maritime law which strongly influenced their modern equivalents. In this Byzantium arguably contributed more towards the evolution of jurisprudence and modern legal systems than its direct predecessor, Roman law.

The Byzantine Empire was the empire that introduced the widespread adoption of Christianity to Europe — arguably one of the central aspects of a modern Europe’s identity. This is embodied in the Byzantine version of Christianity, which spread Orthodoxy and eventually led to the creation of the so-called "Byzantine commonwealth" (a term coined by 20th-century historians) throughout Eastern Europe. Early Byzantine missionary work spread Orthodox Christianity to various Slavic peoples, where it still is a predominant religion. Such modern-day countries are Armenia, Bulgaria, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, Romania and Ukraine; of course, it has also remained the official religion of the Greeks via the uninterrupted continuity of the Greek Orthodox Church. Less well known in the West is the influence of the Byzantine religious sensibility on the millions of Christians in Ethiopia, the Coptic Christians of Egypt, and the Christians of Georgia and Armenia, though they all belong to the Orthodox Faith.

Byzantine Art and Byzantine Architecture were largely based around the Christian story and its heralds, and the importance of icons in Orthodox society. In terms of architecture, Byzantines emphasized the Dome, the arch and the Grecian cross lay out. It is evidenced today in countless examples of old Byzantine Churches with their traditional mosaics depicting Saints and figures from the Bible. Its impact was such that it spawned a Neo-Byzantine architectural revival in later years. Byzantine Art was also important in this respect, its impact on Orthodoxy can be witnessed across southeast Europe, Russia, the Holy Land and parts of the Middle East, but also in those areas of Turkey where it was allowed to survive.

The finest Byzantine literary works were Hymns and devotionals. The other area where the Byzantines excelled was in practical writing. While rarely works of genius, a series of competent, diligent writers, both male and female, produced many works of practical value in the fields of public administration, military affairs, and the practical sciences. The early theological work of the Byzantines was important in the development of western thought. Historiography influenced later Russian chroniclers.

Most of the writing was in classical Greek. Vernacular literature developed much more slowly than in the west. There was little fiction, the best-known work being the epic poem Digenis Acritas, written in something approaching the vernacular. Much of the writing of the day was history, theology, biography, and hagiography. Many letters have survived, some work-a-day correspondence, a few minor masterpieces, as well as a few large encyclopedic works, such as the huge Suda. Perhaps the Byzantine empire's greatest contribution to literature was their careful preservation of the best works of the ancient world, as well as compilations of works on certain subjects, with certain revisions, most specifically in the fields of medicine and history.

Robert Byron, one of the first Philhellenes, argued that the greatness of Byzantium lay in what he described as "the Triple Fusion": that of a Roman body, a Greek mind and an oriental, mystical soul.

Age of Migrations

Nomadic peoples

Western Huns empire stretched in 434 AD from Central Europe to the Black Sea and from the Danube river to the Baltic. The Hunnish-Bulgar association existed throughout the period between 377-453 AD - the time of the Hunnish hegemony in Central Europe.

Other transient incursions were made by Goths, Gepids, Onogurs, Avars. At one point the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths were Christians, but Arians. Ulfilas was the apostle to the Goths and he translated the Bible from Greek into the Gothic language, fragments have survived and are known as the Codex Argenteus. One hypothesis is that together with the above Christianised people, the Romanic population was also Christianised. The creed of Ulfilas, as appended to a letter praising him written by his foster-son and pupil the Scythian Auxentius of Durostorum (modern Silistra) on the Danube, who became bishop of Milan, was a clear statement of central Arian tenets. It is very possible that the Gothic Alphabet of Wulfila to be basis for the creation of the Cyrillic Alphabet. (On May, 24th-26th 2003 the Balkan Media Academy organized in the Wulfila-House in Simeonovo, near Sofia an international seminar "The Gothic Alphabet of Wulfila (Ulphilas) - basis for the creation of the Cyrillic Alphabet" Main lecturers: Acad. Dr. Rossen Milev, Dr. Valentin Hristov) Goths history in Balkans is subject of controversy. Some consider that Getae are the same with goths. Jacob Grimm stoutly maintained that Getae and Daci (Dacians) were identical with Goths and Danes "Spread over the plentiful space from the Danube to the neighborhood of the Scythian Black Sea, do there inhabit fierce and barbarous nations, which are said to have burst forth in manifold variety like a swarm of bees from a honeycomb or a sword from a sheath, as is the barbarian custom, from the island of Scania, surrounded in different directions by the ocean. For indeed there is there a tract for the very many people of Alania, and the extremely well-supplied region of Dacia, and the very extensive passage of Greece. Dacia is the middle-most of these. Protected by very high alps in the manner of a crown and after the fashion of a city. With Mars' forewarning, raging warlike peoples inhabit those tortuous bends of extensive size, namely the Getae, also known as Goths" - [From chapter 2, second paragraph in Gesta Normannorum by the chronicler Dudo of St.Quentin's] The most known book regarding the Goths is an ancient book: Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths, XI, 69.

Cumans and Pecenegs

The whole of Patzinakia is divided into eight provinces with the same number of great princes. The provinces are these: the name of the first province is Irtim; of the second, Tzour; of the third, Gyla; of the fourth, Koulpei; of the fifth, Charaboi; of the sixth, Talmat; of the seventh, Chopon; of the eighth, Tzopon. At the time at which the Pechenegs were expelled from their country, their princes were, in the province of Irtim, Baitzas; in Tzour, Konel; in Gyla, Kourkoutai; in Koulpei, Ipaos; in Charaboi, Kaidoum; in the province of Talmat, Kostas; in Chopon, Giazis; in the province of Tzopon, Batas." (Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, c. 950, translation by R. J. H. Jenkins)

Traces of the migrating people

the Visigoths left traces primarily of their material culture, such as the great find at Sântana de Mureş in central Transylvania and the burial grounds at Spantov and Târgşor, south of the Carpathians on the Muntenian plain

Vestiges of thе Goths in Bulgaria:

Beroe (today Stara Zagora) - the monastery of Saint Athanasius near Zlatna Livada, region of Chirpan - Kireka - Madara - Pliska - Preslav - Shumen - the early Christian centre near Chan Krum - Veliko Tarnovo - Nicopolis ad Istrum - Storgosia (today Pleven) - the fortress of Sadovez. The Goths lived in Transylvania for about a century (from the end of the 3rd to the end of the 4th century); the Gepidae, another Old-Germanic people, for more than two centuries (from the early 5th century to the end of the 7th).

An inscription found on a sword belonging to the Goths in present-day Bulgaria reads 'I do not await Time, I am Time itself'.

The Avars subjugate the Slavs in the 6th century from the area spanning modern-day southern Poland. During 6th and 7th centuries together with the Slavs invaded the Eastern Roman Empire, settling in what is now Bosnia, Herzegovina, and the surrounding lands.

Slavs

The Slavs, who had originated in areas spanning modern-day southern Poland, were subjugated by the Turkic Avars and together they invaded the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th and 7th centuries. Split into various tribal divisions, the influence of this first wave can chiefly be seen in the geographic terms bearing their name. The White Serbs and White Croats came in a second wave, invited by Emperor Heraclius to drive the Avars from Dalmatia.

Two major historical theories address the issue of the original homeland of Slavs:

the autochthonic theory assumes that Slavs had lived north of the Carpathian Mountains since 1000 BC.
the allochthonic theory assumes that the Slavs came there in the 5th or 6th century AD.

At the time of the Slavic migration, the western, south-western region of the Balkan peninsula (Dalmatia, Illyria) was occupied mostly by Romanized Illyrians, with unromanized groups perhaps remaining in the interior. Slavic mythology

Croats and Serbs

The Slavic tribes called the Croats and the Serbs are recorded to have migrated southwards from areas of today's southeastern Poland and Ukraine into the Dinaric Alps between 610 and 641.

The names "Croat" and "Serb" are not of Slavic origin and are suggested to derive from the same root. Similar names have been found along the path of the migration of the Sarmatians. According to various modern theories based mainly on philological and etymological evidence, these nomadic warriors probably subdued groups of Slavs and became their ruling caste or merged into them, with the resulting group retaining the Iranian name. During the Hunnic invasion in 375 AD, White Croats and White Serbs (as opposed to the Red Croats, who remained on the Don) retreated northwest over the Carpathians. There the White Croats and Serbs intermingled with the Slavs of the central Slavic regions and adopted their language, it is believed that the modern day Sorbs are ancestors of White Serbs.

The migration of these tribes was triggered by the call from the Byzantine empire to drive away the Avars. The Croats and Serbs accepted the call and attacked the Avars, they were promised the land they are at today by the Byzantines for this favor. The Avars had started to approach Constantinople so Byzantine needed help driving them off. After the decline of Avar power (after 627) the coastal city-states were nominally under Byzantine suzerainty, while the hinterland was ruled by the Croats in the northwest and the Serbs in the southeast:

Rascia/Raška (present-day western Serbia and northern Montenegro),
Bosnia/Bosna (present-day south-central and southeastern Bosnia),
Zachumlie/Zahumlje (western Herzegovina),
Trebounia/Travunija (eastern Herzegovina),
Pagania/Paganija (middle Dalmatia) and finally
Duklja/Zeta (predecessor to Montenegro).

In the 10th century, several Croatian dukes rose in prominence, forming the medieval Croatian state. They conquered surrounding districts, including Dalmatia; this fact was attested by Venetian contestation. In 1091, the Croatian ruling dynasty lost its last descendant, and after a decade of instability, Croatian parliament elected Coloman of Hungary as the King of Croatia.

In the 12th century, Serbian dukes, starting with Stefan Nemanja, established control over several southern districts. The Serbian state expanded to the north and the south, reaching a peak under Stefan Dušan in the 14th century, when it was extended even further southward, into Epirus and Thessaly.

In the meantime, the dukes of Bosnia started building up their state in the 13th century, as did the dukes of Herzegovina. They developed independently from the Catholic Croats and Magyars to the northwest and the Orthodox Serbs to the southeast, even supporting their own Bosnian Church. The strongest Bosnian monarch was Tvrtko Kotromanić at the turn of the 14th century, who expanded his state westward to include all of Herzegovina and most of the Dalmatian coast.

Serbia eventually succumbed to the Ottoman Empire following a defeat in the Battle of Kosovo. Bosnia and Herzegovina followed half a century later, and another century later, most of Croatia was occupied by Turkish forces as well.

The Croats, Serbs and other southern Slavs speak South Slavic languages. See Croatian language, Bosnian language, Serbian language, also differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia for details.

Magyars

The Magyar leader Árpád is believed to have led the seven Hungarians tribes into the Carpathian Basin (and the Pannonian plain) in 896. When entering the Carpathian basin, the Magyars found a local romanic population there, under the reign of "Dukes" (Dux) (in the Anonymous Chronicles there are mentioned: Menu Morout, Glad, Gelou and Salanus), a largely Slavic population, such as the Bulgarians, Slovaks, Slovenians, Croats, etc., some kazars along the Apuseni Mountains and a few pecinegi; also minor remnants of the Avars (in the southwest).

The Bulgars and Magyars shared a long-lasting relationship in Khazaria, either by alliance or rivalry.

There is some controversy about Szeklers (in English, Secui in Romanian, Seculi in Latin, Szekely in Hungarian). There is a theory about two Magyar migrations, one before Árpád and one which resulted in Szeklers and Arpad migration. There are theories suggesting Avar, Gepid, Scythian, or Hunnish ancestry, the last one being sustained by contemporaneous written documents.

Bulgars and Bulgarians

The Bulgars (also Bolgars or proto-Bulgarians), a people of Central Asia, probably originally Pamirian, came to Europe in two waves, the first of which in the middle 5th century as a part of the Hunnish-Bulgar alliance. After the disintegration of the Hunnish empire the Bulgars dispersed mostly to Eastern Europe. At the end of the 5th century (probably in the years 480, 486, 488) they fought against the Ostgoths as allies of the Byzantine emperor Zenon. From 493 they started frequent attacks over the Balkan territories of the Eastern Roman Empire until the middle of the 6th century, when the two main Bulgar tribes (Kutriguri and Utiguri) started an internal war. In the end of the 6th century the Utiguri were conquered by the Avars, while the Kutriguri allied with them. At that time the second Bulgar wave commenced with the arrival of Asparuh's Bulgars. They had occupied the fertile planes of Ukraine for several centuries until the Khazars swept their confederation in the 660s and triggered their further migration. One part of them — under the leadership of Asparuh — headed southwest and settled in the 670s in present-day Bessarabia. In 680 AD they invaded Moesia and Dobrudja and formed a confederation with the local Slavic tribes who had migrated there a century earlier. After suffering a defeat at the hands of Bulgars and Slavs, the Byzantine Empire recognised the sovereignty of Asparuh's Khanate in a subsequent treaty signed in 681 AD. The same year is usually regarded as the year of the establishment of Bulgaria (see History of Bulgaria). A smaller group of Bulgars under Khan Kouber settled almost simultaneously in the Pelagonian plain in western Macedonia after spending some time in Panonia.

As from the beginning of the 9th century, the fledgling Bulgarian state started to play a more and more important role in the European Southeast. After defeating the Avars in 804, Khan Krum added to Bulgaria Transylvania, eastern Panonia, Bačka and Srem. His descendants, Omurtag, Malamir and Presian, continued the Bulgarian territorial expansion southward conquering the inland parts of Thrace and Macedonia. The addition of these territories strengthened additionally the Slavic element in the Bulgar state and helped the assimilation of the Bulgars by the Slavs. By the middle of the 9th century, the Bulgars and the Slavs had already to a large extent coalesced to one people — the Bulgarians — through mixed marriages (even in the royal dynasty, Omurtag was not already married to a Slavic woman but also gave two of his sons Slavic names) and as a result of the laws of Khan Krum and the abolition of the autonomy of the Slavic tribes undertaken by Omurtag. The process of coalescence was additionally strengthened by the en masse conversion to Christianity under Boris I Michael (864) because of the dominant Byzantine influence in Macedonia and Thrace. At the end of the 9th century Bulgars and Slavs lived as Bulgarians in most of Moesia, northern Thrace and upper inland Macedonia and spoke a Slavic language with a minor admixture of Bulgar words. The non Indo European Bulgar language is now extinct. The first mention of the slavic dialects that would later constitute the Bulgarian language as the "Bulgarian language" instead of the "Slavonic language" comes in the work of the Greek clergy of the Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid in the 11th century, for example in the Greek hagiography of Saint Clement of Ohrid by Theophylact of Ohrid (late 11th century).

In 886 AD, Bulgaria adopted the Glagolitic alphabet which was devised by the Byzantine missionaries Saint Cyril and Methodius in the 850s. The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superseded in later centuries by the Cyrillic alphabet, developed around the Preslav Literary School in the beginning of the 10th century. Most letters in the Cyrillic alphabet were borrowed from the Greek alphabet, but those which had no Greek equivalents represent simplified Glagolitic letters.

In 893 the vernacular of the Bulgarian Slavs was adopted as the official language of the Bulgarian state and church. The following years saw the military victories of Simeon the Great against the Byzantines which resulted in an additional territorial expansion and the recognition of the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and of the title of Tsar for Simeon's successor, Peter I. Very soon the state got weakened, however, in the middle of the 9th century as a result of barbaric raids from the north and the Bogomil heresy. After an assault by the Rus' in 969, eastern Bulgaria and the capital of Preslav became subdued by Byzantine Emperor John Tzimisces in 972. The Bulgarians managed to maintain an independent state in the west for some time due to the efforts of Samuil who even managed to recover eastern Bulgaria and conquer Serbia in the 990s. A final defeat at Kleidion in 1014, however, precipitated the fall of the whole of Bulgaria under Byzantine rule in 1018. The Bulgarian state was restored by a revolt of the Asenides in Moesia in 1185. Thrace and Macedonia were conquered by Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II and throughout the first half of the 13th century Bulgaria was again one of the powerful states in Southeastern Europe, taking advantage of the disastrous effects that the fourth crusade had over the Byzantine Empire. The Tatar raids and the series of mediocre rulers after Ivan Asen II, however, reduced Bulgaria to a narrow strip of land between the Balkan mountains and the Danube at the end of the 13th century. The royal dynasties of Terter and Shishman managed to restore some of the former might of the Bulgarians in the first half of the 14th century. The raids of the Ottoman Turks since the 1350s cut, however, short the Bulgarian territorial expansion; by 1396 the whole of Bulgaria was overrun by the Ottomans.

Vlachs (Romanians, Aromanians, Morlachs, Istro-Romanians)

"Vlach", "Wallach", "Vlakh" and other variations of the term date back in time nearly 2,000 years and refer to a variety of Latin-speaking peoples whose origin is ultimately Latin colonizers and Latinized indigenous peoples.

The maximum extent of the Roman Empire in southeastern Europe occurred after 106 AD when conquest of the Dacians extended the empire from modern Greece to Romania. By all accounts, the Latin-speaking people of the Roman Empire represented both a variety of indigenous people as well as colonists who came into the region. Under barbarian pressure, the Roman Legions retreated from Dacia (modern Romania) in 271-275. According to Romanian historians, Roman colonists and the Latinized Dacians retreated into the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania after the Roman Legions withdrew from the area. This view is supported to the extent that archeological evidence does indicate the presence of a Romanised population in Transylvania by at least the 8th Century.

By the late 4th Century the Roman Empire was plagued by internal problems and by the incursions of various barbarian tribes. By the 7th and 8th Centuries, the Roman Empire existed only south of the Danube River in the form of the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople. In this ethnically diverse closing area of the Roman Empire, Vlachs were recognized as those who spoke Latin, the official language of the Byzantine Empire used only in official documents, until the 6th Century when it was changed to the more popular Greek. These original Vlachs probably consisted of a variety of ethnic groups (most notably Thracians, Greeks) who shared the commonality of having been assimilated in language and culture of the Eastern Roman, later Byzantine Empire.

The Vlach Connection and Further Reflections on Roman History

The Ottoman Empire

Main article: Ottoman Empire

The Ottomans were one of the most powerful and influential civilizations of the modern period. The Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1923), created by Turkish tribes in Anatolia, persisted until the 20th century and did not end until after World War I when Turkey adopted a more European style secular government (under Kemal Atatürk).

Ottoman rule over the Balkans was characterized by centuries of bloody struggle for freedom and protracted periods of stalemate with the Habsburgs along the border in Hungary as well as anti-Turkish propaganda in Europe, and with invasions from the east. Even before the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire controlled much of Greece, Bulgaria and had Serbia and Wallachia as vassals.The defeat in the 1456 Battle of Belgrade stopped Ottoman expansion for a while, but by the middle 16th century Serbia and Hungary were occupied, while Moldavia and Transylvania also became vassals. With the failed Siege of Vienna in 1683 began the prolonged agony of the Ottoman Empire, faced with the growing threat of Austrian and Russian expansionism, the entangled interests of Britain and France and with the rise of national consciousness among its inhabitants.

National Awakening in the Balkans

Serbia

The 1804 First Serbian Uprising was an uprising at the beginning of the 19th century in which Serbs living in Belgrade Pashaluk in the Ottoman Empire, led by Karadjordje, managed to liberate the Pashaluk for a significant time, which eventually led to the creation of modern Serbia.Though ultimately unsuccessful, this first Serbian Uprising paved the way for the Second Serbian Uprising of 1815, which eventually succeeded in making Serbia autonomous.

Greece

The reasons why the Greeks were the first to break away from the multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire and secure recognition as a sovereign power are several. The fact that the Ottoman Empire was in manifest decline made such a revolt feasible. Some Greeks enjoyed a privileged position in the Ottoman state, and Ottoman Turks had always afforded a specific class of Greeks a degree of power. Since the Hellenisation of the Byzantine Empire they had controlled the affairs of the Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, based in Constantinople, and the higher clergy were always Greek. From the 18th century onwards Phanariot Greek notables (Turkish-appointed Greek administrators from the Phanar district of Constantinople) played an influential role in the governance of the Ottoman Empire.

A strong maritime tradition in the islands of the Aegean together with the emergence in the 18th century of an influential merchant class generated the wealth necessary to found schools and libraries and to pay for young Greeks to study in the universities of Western Europe. Here they came into contact with the radical ideas of the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Rigas Velestinlis (Pheraios), aimed to overthrow sultanic rule and replace it with a balkan federation by an armed uprising, although Rigas was killed by the Turks before he could put his ideas into practice. In 1814 three young Greeks, much influenced by the martyrdom of Rigas, founded the Filiki Eteria, the secret "Friendly Society" which laid the organizational groundwork for the revolt. The society was founded in Odessa, an important centre of the Greek mercantile diaspora. The Greeks' success marked the beginning of the gradual break-up of the Ottoman Empire, Moreover, the other peoples of the Balkan peninsula were to follow the Greek example in seeking their freedom from Ottoman rule.

One of the early writers who helped shape opinion among the Greek population in and out of the Ottoman Empire was Rigas Feraios (Ρήγας Φεραίος). Born in Thessaly and educated in Constantinople, Feraios published a Greek-language newspaper Ephimeris in Vienna in the 1790s. He was deeply influenced by the French Revolution and he published revolutionary tracts and proposed republican constitutions for Greek and pan-Balkan nations. He was arrested by Austrian officials in Trieste in 1797 when he was betrayed by a Greek merchant in that city. He was handed over to Ottoman officials and was transported to Belgrade with his co-conspirators. They were all strangled to death and their bodies dumped in the Danube River in June, 1798. Instead of diminishing support for Feraios' ideas, his death fanned the flames of Greek independence.

In 1821 the Greek revolution, striving to create an independent Greece, broke out on Moldavian ground, supported by the princes of Moldavia and Muntenia. A secret Greek organisation called the Friendly Society (Filiki Eteria) was formed in Odessa during 1814. On March 25 (now Greek Independence Day) 1821 of the (Michael Liebel April]], 1821 of the Gregorian Calendar the Orthodox Metropolitan Germanos of Patras proclaimed the national uprising. Simultaneous risings were planned across Greece, including in Macedonia, Crete and Cyprus. The revolt began in March 1821 when Alexandros Ypsilantis, the leader of the Etairists, crossed the Prut River into Turkish-held Moldavia with a small force of troops. With the initial advantage of surprise, and aided by Ottoman inefficiency, the Greeks succeeded in liberating the Peloponnese and some other areas. Saint Gregory V, the Patriarch of Constantinople was martyred by the Turks in 1821 in reaction to the Greek War of Independence. On January 22, 1822, Korinth, the key to the isthmus, passed into the Greeks' hands, and only four fortresses--Nauplia, Patras, Koron, and Modhon--still held out within it against Greek investment. Not a Turk survived in the Peloponnesos beyond their walls, for the slaughter at Tripolitza was only the most terrible instance of what happened wherever a Muslim colony was found. In Peloponnesos, at any rate, the revolution had been grimly successful.

In 1832 A Greco-Turkish settlement was finally determined by the European powers at a conference in London; they adopted a London protocol (February 3, 1830), declaring Greece an independent monarchical state under their protection. (Greece has lost 50000 people and Ottomans 15000, Russia 10000 and Egypt 5000).

Romania

The Greek uprising was supported by the Wallachian uprising of 1821. The movement, which was started about the same time by the ennobled peasant, Tudor Vladimirescu, for the emancipation of the lower classes, soon acquired, therefore, an anti-Greek tendency. Vladimirescu was executed by the Etaireía; the latter were completely checked by the Turks, who, grown suspicious after the Greek rising and confronted with the energetic attitude of the Romanian nobility, consented in 1822 to the nomination of two native boyars, Ioniţă Sandu Sturdza and Grigore IV Ghica, recommended by their countrymen, as princes of Moldavia and Wallachia, respectively. The iniquitous system of 'the throne to the highest bidder' had come to an end. The Phanariote regime in Wallachia and Moldavia ended after the uprising of 1821. The 1829 Treaty of Adrianople (called also Treaty of Edirne), was settled between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Turkey gave Russia access to the mouths of the Danube and additional territory on the Black Sea, opened the Dardanelles to all commercial vessels, commerce is liberated for cereals, live stocks and wood, granted autonomy to Serbia, promised autonomy for Greece, and allowed Russia to occupy Moldavia and Walachia until Turkey had paid a large indemnity.

The Crimean War was provoked by Russian tsar Nicholas I's continuing pressure on the dying Ottoman Empire, and by Russia's claims to be the protector of the Orthodox Christian subjects of the Ottoman sultan. Britain and France became involved in order to block Russian expansion and prevent Russians from acquiring control of the Turkish Straits and eastern Mediterranean.

Russia was defeated in the Crimean War (1853-1856). The peace Congress in Paris (February-March 1856) decided that Wallachia and Moldavia, which had been under Ottoman suzerainty, were now placed under the collective guarantee of the seven powers that signed the Paris peace treaty. These powers then declared that local assemblies be convened to decide on the future organisation of the two principalities. The Treaty of Paris also stipulated: the retrocession to Moldavia of Southern Bessarabia, which had been annexed in 1812 by Russia (the Cahul, Bolgrad and Ismail counties); freedom of sailing on the Danube; the establishment of the European Commission of the Danube; the neutral status of the Black Sea.

As a result, Wallachia and Moldavia both elected Alexander John Cuza in 1859 as their prince, creating a personal union. This personal union was turned into a state union, named Romania, which in 1866 adopted prince Carol from the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family as its monarch.

Bulgaria

The social and cultural events of the Bulgarian National Revival moved parallel to important political changes. Bulgarian aid to the Russians in the Russo-Turkish wars of 1806-12 and 1828-29 did nothing to loosen Ottoman control. Then the Ottoman Empire ruthlessly quelled major uprisings 1835-1837 (Manchova buna in north-western Bulgaria), 1841 (Nis uprising), 1850 (Vidin uprising), and some minor ones 1835 ("Velchova zavera") 1841-42 (Braila revolts), 1856 (Kapitan Djado Nikola-insurrection in Turnovo and "Dimitrakieva buna" in north-western Bulgaria), 1862 ("Hadzhistavreva buna"), as well as the many organized from abroad revolutionary chetas during the 1860s. Those uprisings still bore the disorganized qualities of the hajduti, but they established a tradition of insurrection for the next generation.

In late spring 1850, a delayed reaction to revolutionary events in central Europe occurred in the north-western part of Bulgaria. Bulgarian peasants had all the time been opposed to the feudal oppression which, as practiced by the Ottoman regime, involved a direct robbery disguised as tributes levied by Turkish feudal lords. Bulgaria's first young intelligentsia strove to make Bulgarian peasants correlate the demand for abolition of primitive feudal oppression with the claim for autonomy for the Bulgars. It was too early at that time, in confrontation with the still prevailing Ottoman power, to envision the full freedom for Bulgaria. After the Hungarian revolution had fallen, several thousand revolutionaries began arriving by August 21, 1849 in t he Turkish city and fortress of Vidin in northwestern Bulgaria. There came almost a thousand Poles, several hundred Italians, and less than a hundred Germans. Among the revolutionaries were Lajos Kossuth, Josef Bem, and other Hungarian and Polish generals. On October 30, 1849, they began moving to another Turkish fortress, Shumla (today's Shumen). Contacts with interned soldiers of the Hungarian revolution, prominent politicians and generals among them, their independent and critical attitude to Turkish authorities, a possibility to communicate with the Poles due to language affinities, all encouraged Bulgarian leaders. In 1849,in an area between the western part of the Balkan mountains and the Danube, preparations for an uprising commenced. Although appearing later as spontaneous, the uprising had been carefully planned and prepared. At the beginning of 1850, peasant representatives gathered in the Rakovitsa monastery and set the date of June 1, 1850 as the first day of fighting. Military leaders were appointed. The program of demands put forth to the Turkish authorities sought consent to the sale of land to individual villages and abolition of Bulgarian peasants' tributes to the Muslim feudal lords. All the Hattisherif decisions and generally all the Tanzimat acts were to be fully implemented. The initial fights of the Bulgarian uprising took place between May 27 and June 8, 1850, but the principal actions, as planned, were carried out between June 1-12, 1850. About a thousand-strong peasant party, without firearms, led by Captain Kriztio, took the town of Lom. Soon, however, a battle with a well-armed Turkish detachment broke out near the town. The insurgents lost, Kriztio was killed, but the Bulgars did not scatter and, led by Ivan Kulin, set forth toward Belogradchik. Further four hundred volunteers joined them en route. About three thousand insurgents commanded by Petko Marinov marched toward Vidin to block the fortress. The regular Turkish army, however, defeated the insurrectionaries after a two-hour battle; the Bulgarian forces split up into smaller groups and scattered in various directions. The longest operation of the Bulgarian forces took place near the town of Belogradchik. Several thousand volunteers who had only two-hundred guns between themselves blocked the town for ten days. When the regular Turkish troops, reinforced by bashibosouks, arrived from Vidyn, a whole-day battle ensued. The insurgents retreated to the mountains, some moving to Serbia; the Turks did not dare to pursue them. The Bulgarian uprising involved a total of ten thousand Bulgarian peasants, about seven hundred being killed in combat. Appeals for help to Russia whose army was stationed in Wallachia, on the other bank of the Danube, was unsuccessful, since the tsar's army would never support the fight for peoples' freedom. The Serbian duchy also failed to assist the insurgents significantly. For their part, the Turks began a bloody vengeance. About three thousand peasants, mostly women and children, were slain. All Bulgars were killed in Belogradchik. Although the peasants sent a delegation to Istanbul to deliver the "Islozhenie", the terror did not abate. Europe, however, witnessed the aftermath of the insurrection with a growing outrage. Bulgarian activists prepared a lengthy memorial in French and passed it to foreign diplomats. Diplomatic pressure on the Sublime Porte resulted in concessions. Principles of land management and the tax system were changed, families of the murdered Bulgarians were paid compensations. Although their effort ended with a defeat, the insurgents of northwestern Bulgaria won a partial victory as the agrarian relationships in the country changed. All that stimulated Bulgarians' political identity and agitation for independence. The Vidin uprising of 1850 was a delayed echo of the European revolutions of the two preceding years.

The rise of nationalism in the Balkans found its expression in Bulgaria in the Bulgarian revival movement. Unlike Greece and Serbia, the nationalist movement in Bulgaria did not concentrate initially on armed resistance against the Ottomans but on peaceful struggle for cultural and religious autonomy, the result of which was the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate on February 28, 1870. A large-scale armed struggle movement started to develop as late as the beginning of the 1860s with the establishment of the Internal Revolutionary Organization and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee, as well as the active involvement of Vasil Levski in both organizations. In 1875 several hundred Bulgarians took a part in the September Uprising in the region of Stara Zagora and north-east Bulgaria. The struggle reached its peak with the April Uprising which broke out in April, 1876 in several Bulgarian districts in Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia. The barbaric suppression of the uprising led to the Conference of Constantinople and eventually to the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78, which led to establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian principality north of the Balkan mountains.

1877-1878 War

In early 1877, Russia came to the rescue of beleaguered Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian volunteer forces when it went to war with the Ottoman Empire. Within one year, Russian troops were nearing Constantinople, and the Ottomans surrendered. Russia's nationalist and pan-slavist diplomats and generals persuaded Alexander II to press the Ottomans into signing the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, creating an enlarged, independent Bulgaria that stretched into the south-western Balkans. When Britain threatened to declare war over the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano, an exhausted Russia backed down. At the Congress of Berlin in July 1878, Russia agreed to the creation of a smaller Bulgaria. See: Russian history, 1855-1892

On 4 April/ 16 April 1877, Romania and Russia signed a treaty at Bucharest under which Russian troops were allowed to pass through Romanian territory. About 120,000 soldiers were massed in the south of the country to defend against an eventual attack of the Ottoman forces from south of Danube. On 12 April/24 April 1877, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire and its troops entered Romania.

In 1877, following the Russian-Romanian-Turkish war, Romania was recognized independent by Treaty of Berlin, 1878 and acquired Dobruja, though she was forced to surrender southern Bessarabia to Russia.

In February 1878 the Russian army had almost reached Constantinople, but disturbed the city might fall, the British sent a fleet to warn off the Russians. The presence of the British fleet combined with the fact that the Russians had suffered such enormous losses (by some estimates about 200,000 men) caused Russia to settle for the Treaty of San Stefano (March 3), by which Turkey recognized the independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and the autonomy of Bulgaria. Alarmed by the extension of Russian power into the Balkans and apprehensive of the eventual fall of Constantinople to the Russians, the Great Powers modified the provisions of the treaty in the Congress of Berlin.

Bosnia

The Ottoman Sultans attempted to implement various economic reforms in the early 19th century in order to address the grave issues mostly caused by the border wars. The reforms, however, were usually met with resistance by the military captaincies of Bosnia. The most famous of these insurrections was the one by captain Husein Gradaščević in 1831. Gradaščević felt that giving autonomy to the eastern lands of Serbia, Greece and Albania would weaken the link between Bosnia and the Ottoman Empire. He raised a full-scale rebellion in the province, joined by thousands of native Bosnian soldiers who believed in captain's prudence and courage, calling him Zmaj od Bosne (the Bosnian dragon). Despite winning several notable victories, notably at the famous Kosovo polje, the rebels were eventually defeated in a battle near Sarajevo in 1832 after Gradaščević was betrayed by Herzegovinian nobility. Husein-kapetan was banned from ever entering the country again, and was eventually poisoned in Istanbul. Bosnia and Herzegovina would remain part of the Ottoman empire until 1878. Before it was formally occupied by Austria-Hungary, the region was de facto independent for several months.

The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in October, 1908, led to a controversy between the Dual Monarchy and Turkey. It also led to international complications which for several weeks early in 1909 threatened to end in a general European war.

Albania

Albania's history is full of conquest, re-conquest, and division of its territory by the surrounding states, including Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia (Vukadinovič, 2002:118-19; Andijašević, Rastoder, 2003:5). From the kingdom of Illyria (1270-167 BC) through the Roman occupation (167 B.C – A.D 395) and the battles against the Ottoman Empire and beyond, Albanians have endured numerous occupations and undergone social transformations in order to conform to the ruling party of that era (Camaj, 2001; Swire, 1930:4; Andijašević, Rastoder, 2003:5; Judah, 2000).

For Albanians, a significant point of Albanian history lies with a famous Christian general Gjergj (Albanian - George) Kastrioti, called Skenderbeg (Camaj, 2001; Logoreci, 1977; Noli, 1947 in Albania.com:1). Skenderbeg was a young boy when the Sultan Beyazid I had requested his father's (Gjon – [John] Kastrioti) four sons as a guarantee against Albanian rebellion. That is, if Gjon guaranteed that he would not rebel against the Ottoman empire, his four sons would not be harmed (Noli, 1947, Logorecci, 1977). It is said that Skenderbeg grew in stature and ability until he became a general in the Turkish military; however, his loyalties remained with the Albanians (Noli, 1947; Logorecci, 1977). Skenderbeg was said to have assisted in the crusades, that is, a defender of the Balkan bridgehead leading into Europe proper.

During a battle against the Hungarians led by John Hunyardi (1443) in Niš (Presently located in Serbia), Skenderbeg mutinied and returned to his ‘homeland’ in Albania (Logoreci, 1977; Noli, 1947 in Albania.com:1;Camaj, 2001). Upon his return to his birthplace in central Albania-Kruja, Skenderbeg raised a red flag with a black double headed eagle (present day Albanian Flag) and it is said that he declaimed, “I have not brought you liberty, I found it here among you.” (Logoreci, 1977; Noli, 1947 in Albania.com:1). Albania also became involved in the Balkan wars of 1912 & 1913, to which end, their largely Muslim affiliations, a direct impact of Ottoman influence, categorised all Albanians as Turkish vassals. Many Albanians, including the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, did not agree with these associations, however, they had no choice.

Until the 1990s, Albania remained under the communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. Enver Hoxha, was extremely brutal to his population and ruled with an iron fist. By allying with China, after falling out with Russia, Hoxha's government assumed an isolationist policy. However, after his death and the fall of communism, Albania began to integrate itself into the international community. As a result of the oppressive rule, many Albanians emigrated, creating a large diaspora in countries such as the United States, Australia, Germany, Sweden, France, England, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, and many others.

The Albanian Identity is primarily defined by Illyrian kinship lines which remains heavily promoted within their given constituencies world-wide (Camaj, 2001;Swire, 1937;Logerecci). Even with the global diaspora, many Albanians remain in other Balkan territories, especially Montenegro, and Kosovo. Within these territories, many cultural incompatibilities and social cleavages exist between the Serbian/Montenegrin people and Albanians locally, and remain to the present day (Ramet, 2004; Toft, 2003). These cultural incompatibilities may have resulted in the ethno-nationalist rise which led to the violent confrontation between the Serbian military and the Kosovo Albanians who had seen Kosovo reinstated as a parallel Albanian state.

The cause of the last conflict between Serbians and Albanians is much more complicated than what we have suggested, however, for practical purposes we have only mentioned a sample. Furthermore, the notion that one issue caused the last conflict between the Serbians and Albanians cannot be supported, either empirically or theoretically, regardless of the approach one may choose. The last conflict must be thought of multi-dimensionally, rather than relying on primordialist explanations (in reality very few advocate this view), because they do not explain why both ethnic groups (Serbs & Albanians) actually cooperated for the many years in between conflict, even to the extent of allying against the Turks (T. Nikolic, 2006).

Ethnic Macedonians

The national awakening of Macedonia, referring to the national awakening of the Macedonians who today identify as ethnic Macedonians, can be said to have begun in the nineteenth century, this is the time of the first expressions of ethnic nationalism by limited groups of intellectuals in Belgrade, Sophia, Thessaloniki and St. Petersburg.^[1]

Balkan Wars

First Balkan War

On October 8, 1912 the First Balkan War began when Montenegro declared war against Ottoman Empire - pre-empting a warning from Russia and Austria-Hungary. Among other battles, the Greek army defeated the Ottoman Empire in the Central Macedonia Battle of Giannitsa, October 19. The Bulgarian 2nd Army, commanded by General Vladimir Vazov, began its siege of Adrianople (Edirne) on the 15th of November and managed to capture the previously unseizeble fortress on 26 March. During this battle the Bulgarians bombarded the city and so became the first nation, which used air-planes as a weapon. Albania declared independence on November 28, 1912. On December 2, the Balkan League signed an armistice with Turkey ending the war. Turkey withdrew to the Enos-Media Line. An initial peace was concluded at the Treaty of London in May 1913. By the time of the Armistice, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece had overrun Albania.

Second Balkan War

At the Treaty of London, Austria-Hungary and Italy strongly supported the creation of an independent Albania. In light of this, Serbia and Greece sought compensation from the Macedonian territories that had been overrun by Bulgaria. Bulgaria unsuccessfully attempted to resist this by force of arms. Defeated by Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, and Romania in the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria signed an Armistice on July 31, 1913. At the Treaty of Bucharest in August 1913, the final territorial adjustments were made.

The Balkans in modern times

World War I in the Balkans

World War I (then known as the Great War) started when a Serb man called Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand. Princip was a member of a Serbian militant group called the Black Hand. Following the assassination, Austria-Hungary sent Serbia an ultimatum in July 1914, which Serbia mostly followed but it was made so that Serbia could never really accept it in whole. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July, 1914.

Many members of the Austro-Hungarian government, such as Conrad von Hötzendorf had hoped to provoke a war with Serbia for several years. They had a couple of motives. In part they feared the power of Serbia and its ability to sow dissent and disruption in the empire's "south-Slav" provinces under the banner of a "greater Slav state." Another hope was that they could annex Serbian territories in order to change the ethnic composition of the empire. With more slavs in the Empire, some in the German dominated half of the government, hoped to balance the power of the Magyar dominated Hungarian government. Until 1914 more peaceful elements had been able to argue against these military strategies, either through strategic considerations or political ones. However, Franz Ferdinand, a leading advocate of a peaceful solution had been removed from the scene, and more hawkish elements were able to prevail. Another factor in this were developments in Germany which gave the Dual-Monarchy a "blank cheque" to pursue a military strategy assured of Germany's backing.

Austro-Hungarian planning for operations against Serbia was not extensive and they ran into many logistical difficulties in mobilizing the army and beginning operations against the Serbs. They encountered problems with train schedules and mobilization schedules which conflicted with agricultural cycles in some areas. When operations began in early August Austria-Hungary was unable to crush the Serbian armies as many within the monarchy had predicted. One difficulty for the Austro-Hungarians was that the had to divert many divisions north to counter advancing Russian armies. Planning for operations against Serbia had not accounted for possible Russian intervention, which the Austro-Hungarian army had assumed would be countered by Germany. However, the German army had long planned on attacking France before turning to Russia given a war with the Entente powers. (See: Schlieffen Plan) Poor communication between the two governments led to this catastrophic oversight.

As a result Austria-Hungary's war effort was damaged almost beyond redemption within a couple of months of the war beginning. The Serb army, which was coming up from the south of the country, met the Austrian army at the Battle of Cer beginning on August 12, 1914.

The Serbians were set up in defensive positions against the Austro-Hungarians. The first attack came on August 16, between parts of the 21st Austro-Hungarian division and parts of the Serbian Combined division. In harsh night-time fighting, the battle ebbed and flowed, until the Serbian line was rallied under the leadership of Stepa Stepanovic. Three days later the Austrians retreated across the Danube, having suffered 21,000 casualties against 16,000 Serbian casualties. This marked the first Allied victory of the war. The Austrians had not achieved their main goal of eliminating Serbia. In the next couple of months the two armies fought large battles at Drina (September 6 to November 11) and at Kolubara from November 16 to December 15.

In the autumn, with many Austro-Hungarians tied up in heavy fighting with Serbia, Russia was able to make huge inroads into Austria-Hungary capturing Galicia and destroying much of the Empire's fighting ability. It wasn't until October 1915 with a lot of German, Bulgarian, and Turkish assistance that Serbia was finally occupied, although the weakened Serbian army retreated to Corfu with Italian assistance and continued to fight against the central powers.

The Serbian Army also penetrated the three Croatian historic lands of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia, multiethnic Bosnia etc. The Serbian prime minister announced that Serbia would fight for the unification of all slavs in a single state. From this plan, a new kingdom would eventually be born: The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians.

Montenegro declared war on 6 August 1914. Bulgaria, however, stood aside before eventually joining the Central Powers in 1915, and Romania joined the Allies in 1916. In 1916 the Allies sent their ill-fated expedition to Gallipoli in the Dardanelles, and in the autumn of 1916 they established themselves in Salonika, establishing front. However, their armies did not move from front until near end of the war, when they marched up north to free territories under rule of Central Powers.

(more will be added later)

Consequences of World War I

The war had enormous repercussions for the Balkan peninsula. People across the area suffered serious economic dislocation, and the mass mobilization resulted in severe casualties, particularly in Serbia. In less-developed areas World War I was felt in different ways: requisitioning of draft animals, for example, caused severe problems in villages that were already suffering from the enlistment of young men, and many recently created trade connections were ruined.

The borders of many states were completely redrawn, and the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia, was created. Both Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were formally dissolved. As a result the balance of power, economic relations, and ethnic divisions were completely altered.

Some important territorial changes include:

the addition of Transylvania and Eastern Banat to Romania
The incorporation of Serbia, Montenegro, Slavonia, Croatia, Vojvodina, Carniola, part of Styria, most of Dalmatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
Istria, Zadar, and Trieste became part of Italy,

Between WWI and WWII, in order to create nation-states the following population movements were seen:

in the interwar period, 1.5 million Greeks were cleansed from Turkey; 400,000 Turks cleansed from Greece
The 1919 Treaty of Neuilly-Sur-Seine provided for the reciprocal emigration of ethnic minorities between Greece and Bulgaria. Between 92,000 and 102,000 Bulgarians were cleansed from Greece; 35,000 Greeks were cleansed from Bulgaria. Although no agreement on exchange of population between Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was ever reached because of the latter's adamant refusal to recognise any Bulgarian minority in its eastern regions, the number of refugees from Macedonia and Eastern Serbia to Bulgaria also exceeded 100,000. Between the two world wars, some 67,000 Turks emigrated from Bulgaria to Turkey on basis of bilateral agreements.
Under the terms of 1940 Treaty of Craiova, 88,000 Romanians and Aromanians of Southern Dobruja were forced to move in Northern Dobruja and 65,000 Bulgarians of Northern Dobruja were forced to move in Southern Dobruja.

World War II in Balkans

Consequences of World War II

Yalta Conference
Western betrayal
Operation Keelhaul
Greek Civil War - The Greek Civil War was a war fought between 1944 and 1949 in Greece. On one side were the armed forces of the Greek government, supported at first by Britain and later by the United States. On the other side were the forces of the wartime resistance against the German occupation, whose leadership was controlled by the Communist Party of Greece.
After World War II, when the cession of the Cadrilater by Romania to Bulgaria was confirmed, 110,000 Romanians were compelled to move north of the border, while 65,000 Bulgarians living in southeastern Romania shared an opposite fate (See Ethnic Cleansing and the Normative Transformation of International Society, a study by Purdue University).

Balkans during the Cold War

During the Cold War, most of the countries in the Balkans were ruled by Soviet-supported communist governments. The nationalism was not dead after WWII. Yugoslavia was not an isolate case of ethnic tension. For example: in Bulgaria, beginning in 1984, the Communist government led by Todor Zhivkov began implementing a policy of forced assimilation of the ethnic Turkish minority. Ethnic Turks were required to change their names to Bulgarian equivalents. Those who refused to assimilate lost their jobs and were denied access to education. At the same time, Mosques were closed and Muslim practices as regards burial and circumcision were prohibited - those who disobeyed were imprisoned. In 1989, a Turkish dissident movement was formed to resist these assimilationist measures. The Bulgarian government responded with violence and mass expulsions of the activists. In this repressive environment, over 300,000 ethnic Turks fled to neighboring Turkey. as in Ethnic Cleansing and the Normative Transformation of International Society However, despite being under communist governments, Yugoslavia (1948) and Albania (1961) fell out with the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia, led by marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), first propped up then rejected the idea of merging with Bulgaria, and instead sought closer relations with the West, later even creating the Non-Aligned Movement which brought them to closer ties with third world countries. Albania on the other hand gravitated toward Communist China, later adopting an isolationist position.

The only non-communist countries were Greece and Turkey, which were (and still are) part of NATO.

Religious prosecutions

The Greek Catholic Church was the second largest denomination in Romania (approximately 1.5 million adherents out of a population of approximately 15 million) in 1948 when Communist authorities outlawed it and dictated its forced merger with the Romanian Orthodox Church. At the time of its banning, the Greek Catholic Church owned more than 2,600 churches, which were confiscated by the State and then given to the Orthodox Church, along with other facilities. Other properties of the Greek Catholic Church, such as buildings and agricultural land, became state property.
Religious persecutions took place in Bulgaria, too. They were especially directed against the Catholic and the various Protestant churches in the country. Antagonism between the communist state and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church eased somewhat after Todor Zhivkov became Bulgarian Communist Party leader in 1956. Zhivkov even used the Bulgarian Orthodox Church for the purposes of his nationalist policies of forced assimilation of the Turkish and Gipsy minorities. These attempts led to the open discrimination of Muslims and forced change of Muslim names in Bulgaria, which became particularly intense towards the end of the 1980-es (and ended in 1990).

Post-Communism

The late 1980s and the early 1990s brought the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. As westernization spread through the Balkans, many reforms were carried out that led to implementation of market economy and to privatization, among other capitalist reforms.

In Albania, Bulgaria and Romania the changes in political and economic system were accompanied by a period of political and economic instability and tragic events. The same was the case in most of former Yugoslav republics, except for Slovenia.

Yugoslav wars

Main article: Yugoslav wars

The Yugoslav federation also collapsed in the early 1990s, followed by an outbreak of violence and aggression, in a series of conflicts known alternately as the Yugoslav War(s), the War in the Balkans, or rarely the Third Balkan War (a term coined by British journalist Misha Glenny). The disintegration of Yugoslavia was particularly the consequence of unresolved national, political and economic questions. The conflicts caused the death of many innocent people.

The collapse of Yugoslavia was due to various factors in various republics that composed it. In Serbia and Montenegro, there were efforts of different factions of the old party elite to retain power under new conditions along, and an attempt to create a Greater Serbia by keeping all Serbs in one state. In Croatia and Slovenia, multi-party elections produced nationally-inclined leadership that followed in the footsteps of their previous Communist predecessors and oriented itself towards capitalism and secession. Bosnia and Herzegovina was split between the conflicting interests of its Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks, while the Republic of Macedonia mostly tried to steer away from conflicting situations.

The ten-days war in Slovenia in June 1991 was short and with few casualties. However, the war in Croatia in the latter half of 1991 brought many casualties and much damage. As the war eventually subsided in Croatia, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) started in early 1992. Peace would only come in 1995 after such events as the Srebrenica massacre, Operation Storm and the Dayton Agreement, which provided for a temporary solution, but nothing was permanently resolved.

The economy suffered an enormous damage in all of BiH and in the affected parts of Croatia. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia also suffered an economic hardship under internationally-imposed economic sanctions. Also many large historical cities were devastated, for example Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, Zadar, Mostar, Šibenik and others.

The wars caused large migrations of population. With the exception of its former republics of Slovenia and Macedonia, the settlement and the national composition of population in all parts of Yugoslavia changed drastically, due to war, but also political pressure and threats.

Initial upsets on Kosovo did not escalate into a war until 1999 when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) was bombarded by over 30 members of NATO for several months and Kosovo made a protectorate of international peacekeeping troops.

Ethnic cleansing

During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, the breakup of Yugoslavia caused large population transfers, mostly involuntary. Because it was a conflict fueled by ethnic nationalism, people of minority ethnicities generally fled towards regions where their ethnicity was in a majority.

Since the Bosniaks had no immediate refuge, they were arguably hardest hit by the ethnic violence. United Nations tried to create safe areas for the Bosniak populations of eastern Bosnia but in cases such as the Srebrenica massacre, the peacekeeping troops failed to protect the safe areas resulting in the massacre of thousands.

The war in Bosnia brought major ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs from the regions that today make up the Republika Srpska: throughout Bosanska Krajina (notably the significant minority population of Bosniaks and Croats in Banja Luka, slight majority of Bosniaks in Prijedor), Bosnian Posavina (Croats as well as Bosniaks, from Brčko, Bosanski Brod, Doboj, Odžak, Derventa), eastern Bosnia (Bosniak majority population of Foča, Zvornik, Višegrad, Srebrenica, Žepa), eastern Herzegovina (Trebinje). During the Bosniak-Croat conflict, Bosniaks were ethnically cleansed by Croats and sometimes vice-versa in areas of Central Bosnia, central and eastern Herzegovina (Mostar and Stolac).

The Dayton Accords nominally ended the current war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, fixating the borders between the two warring parties roughly to the ones established by the autumn of 1995. One immediate result of population transfers following the peace deal was a sharp decline in ethnic violence in the region. See Washington Post Balkan Report for a summary of the conflict, and FAS analysis of former Yugoslavia for population ethnic distribution maps.

A number of commanders and politicians, notably Serbia's former president Slobodan Milošević, were put on trial by the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for a variety of war crimes, including deportations and genocide. Croatia's former president Franjo Tuđman and Bosnia's Alija Izetbegović died before any alleged accusations were levelled at them at the ICTY. Slobodan Milošević died before his trial could be concluded.

A massive and systematic deportation of Serbia's Albanians took place during the Kosovo War of 1999, with around 800,000 Albanians (out of a population of about 1.5 million) forced to flee Kosovo. This was quickly reversed at the war's end, but thousands of Serbs were in turn forced to flee into Serbia proper. Unfortunately, the 20th century has been one of the most violent centuries in recorded history (Kegley & Whitkopf, 2004); not only has the globe been captivated by major media stations relaying stories of death and destruction, rather, we have also seen the brutality and asymmetrical attributes of ‘war’ that do not only encompass death, genocide, ethnic cleansing and combatant on combatant confrontations. The attributes of ‘war’, also encompasses the rapes of men, women and children - (mass-rapes included), the pillaging of towns, villages and homesteads with the aim of inflicting as much pain and trauma upon its unwilling participants as possible (Diken & Lausten, 2005). We were captivated by images of refugees streaming across regional borders looking for assistance from neighbouring countries (Judah, 2000). People that once had somewhere to live, a place to call home, were now internationally displaced, begging authorities for food, water, and basic healthcare (Judah, 2000). Furthermore, the civil and political ramifications of ethnic conflict, particularly violent, can also be linked to the successive stages of transnational organised crime (Carment & James, 1998:3). With the increased movements across borders by refugees seeking shelter and safety, we also see the increased exploitation of criminal gangs seeking to expand their business. For instance, within the refugee exodus, we may also see the blending of criminal elements trafficking in drugs, people smuggling and forced trafficking in human beings, weapons trafficking (conventional and potentially nuclear weapons), transportation of currencies and products (Carment & James, 1998; T. Nikolic, 2006).

Current state and perspectives

Since 2000, most Balkan countries are friendly towards the EU and the USA.

Greece has been a member of the European Union since 1981 and of NATO since 1952. Greece is also a member of the Eurozone and the Western European Union. Slovenia and Cyprus are EU members since 2004, and Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU in 2007. Turkey initially applied in 1963 and as of late 2005 accession negotiations have begun, although analysts believe 2015 is the earliest date the country can join the union due to the plethora of economic and social reforms it has to complete. Croatia and Macedonia also received candidate status in 2005, while the other Balkan countries have expressed a desire to join the EU but at some date in the future.

In 2004 Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia also became members of NATO.

In 2006, Montenegro separated from the state of Serbia and Montenegro, also making Serbia a separate state. There were fears that this separation would lead to regional instability, but so far this has not been the case.

Kosovo remains unstable.

References

Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
History Of Bulgaria--Serbia--Greece--Rumania--Turkey
Andijašević, M, Ž. Rastoder, Š. (2003) The History of Montenegro. Podgorica Diaspora Library. Podgorica Diaspora Centre.
Camaj, Z, K. (LLB) (June 25, 2001) Relations between the Albanians of Montenegro, the Albanians of Kosovo and the Albanians of Albania. N.P.
Carment, D. & James, P. (March 1998) Escalation of Ethnic Conflict. [Internet Site] Available from: < http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Vk90udYFYG8J:www.fundea.org/masterco/hemeroteca/Escalatioofnethnic.pdf+security+dilemma+and+ethnic+conflict&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=29 > Journal of International Politics Vol 35. pp 65-82. [Accessed 09-12-2006].
Diken, B. Lausten, B, C. (2005) Becoming Abject: Rape as a Weapon of War. Journal of Body & Society, Vol. 11 (1). Pp111-128. Sage.
Judah, T. (2000) Kosovo: War and revenge. Yale University Press, New Haven London.
Kegley, W, C (JR). Wittkopf, R, E. (2004) World Politics: Trends and Transformations. (9th Ed). Thomson, Wadsworth.
Logoreci, A. (1977) The Albanians. London. In Albania.com [Internet resource] Available from: <http://www.albanian.com/information/culture/famouse/skenderb.html> [Accessed 11-03-2006].
Noli, S, Fan. (1947) Goerge Castrioti Skenderbeg. New York. In Albania.com [Internet resource] Available from: <http://www.albanian.com/information/culture/famouse/skenderb.html> [Accessed 11-03-2006].
Ramet, P. S. (2004) Explaining the Yugoslav Meltdown, 1; “For a charm of pow’rful troubly, like a hell broth boil and bubble: Theories about the Roots of the Yugoslav Troubles. Nationalities Papers: Vol. 32, No 4. December 2004. Carfax, Tayler and Francis Group.
Swire, J. (1930) Albania; The Rise of a Kingdom. New York.
Vukadinovic, R. (2002) Security in South-Eastern Europe. Politička kultura: Zagreb. ISBN 953-6213-42-7.

Timelines

CNN. "A timeline of tensions." 1998.
BBC. "Yugoslavia & The Balkans 1900 - 1998." Accessed May 29, 2006.
Time. "Bosnia: Keeping the Peace." Accessed May 29, 2006.
Howell, Timothy, ed. "Balkans." Center for Cooperative Research. Accessed May 29, 2006.