Preface

The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire became one of the most important issues at the   beginning of the 20th century. The gradual collapse of the once great empire was accelerated and followed by struggle by the European Great Powers and the Balkan national states over its territorial inheritance. While the European Great Powers aimed for new spheres of political-economic influence in South-East Europe, along with establishing a new balance of power in the continent, the collapse of the Ottoman state was seen by small Balkan nations as a unique historical opportunity to enlarge the territories of their national-states by the unification of all ethnolinguistic compatriots from the Ottoman Empire with the motherland.

The creation of a single national state composed of all ethnographic and historic “national” lands was seen by leading Balkan politicians as a final stage of national awakening, revival, and liberation of their nations which started at the turn of the 19th century on the basis of the German romanticist nationalism expressed in the formula: “One Language-One Nation-One State”.[1]

The geopolitical and geostrategic advantages of nation-state enlargement at the expense of the Ottoman Empire’s territory were the main driving forces of Balkan nationalism at the turn of the 20th century. The Kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria were preoccupied with the idea of being “the biggest” in the region, to control Balkan affairs in the future. Given the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of South-East Europe, each of the European Great Powers sought predominant influence in the region by fostering the territorial aspirations of its Balkan favourite nation(s).

A portion of the Balkan policy of each European Great Power was to exclude other members of the orchestra and dominate South-East Europe. The usual means was to oppose the territorial claims of Balkan nations that were under the protection of the rival political camp. Thus, the small Balkan nations were mainly puppets in the hands of their European protectors. The success of the national struggle of the Balkan states depended primarily on the political strength and diplomatic skills of their European patrons.

The creation of and fight for independent nation-states in the Balkans from 1804 to 1913 had two dimensions: [1] The national struggle to create an independent and united national state organization. [2] The rivalry between the European Great Powers for domination of South-East Europe.

The geostrategic position of the Balkan nations led the European Great Powers to support or oppose the existence of their smaller or bigger nation-states as in the case of independent Albania announced on November 28, 1912.[2] The magnitude of this dilemma can be understood only in the context of the geopolitical and geostrategic significance of South-East Europe as a region.

A populist description of South-East Europe (the Balkans) is a “bridge or crossroads between Europe and Asia”, a “mixing point or melting pot of races”, a “powder room or keg of Europe” or the “battlefield of Europe”.[3] However, one of the most important features of the region is the melting pot of cultures and civilizations.[4]

Geophysics and culture

The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by six seas on three sides: the Adriatic Sea and Ionian Sea on the west, the Aegean Sea and Sea of Crete on the south, and the Sea of Marmara and Black Sea on the east. The fourth, north, side of the Peninsula has a border on the River Danube. If the historical and cultural developments have to be taken into consideration, then the Balkan’s northern borders are on the Rivers Prut, Ipoly/Ipel, and Szamos (the last two in Hungary).

Practically, the Balkans refers to geography while South-East Europe refers to the historical and cultural linkages and influences. SE Europe refers to the Balkan Peninsula in pure geographical terms enlarged by the Romanian and Hungarian lands which are historically and culturally closely linked to both the territories of East-Central Europe[5] and the Balkans.[6]

The term Balkans probably has a Turkish root, meaning a mountain or mountain chain. Mountains most characteristic of the region. Favourable natural conditions of the peninsula attracted invaders throughout history, who created multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic societies and civilizations in this part of Europe. The significance of the region rose in the eyes of West European civilization from the time of the Ottoman conquest of the biggest part of South-East Europe (1354–1541) when this portion of the Old Continent was customarily marked as the lands between Europe, Turkey, and Russia.

Due to Ottoman lordship of the region (till 1913), its image (customs, culture, ethnography, behaviour, economic development, everyday life, urban settlement, cuisine, music, etc.), changed and many Western authors, especially travellers, considered the Balkans as a part of the Orient or, by virtue of geographical remoteness, as a part of the Near East. Prof. L.S. Stavrianos of Northwestern University, US, explains the heterogeneity in terms of the peninsula’s intermediate location between Central and East Europe on one hand and Asia Minor and the Levant on the other.[7]

South-East Europe culturally and historically is an integral part of European civilization, influenced through centuries by East Mediterranean, Central, West, and East European cultural features. From a physiographic viewpoint, the Pyrenees and the Alps separate the Iberian and the Apennine Peninsulas from the rest of Europe; the Balkan Peninsula is open to it. The River Danube is more linking than separating this part of Europe from the “outside world” especially with Central Europe. Geographers are willing to see the northern border of the Balkans on the River Danube, but historians note that this excludes the Trans-Danubian territories of Romania and the Sub-Carpathian region and Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld).[8]

The seas around the Balkans, and the River Danube, form a road to the neighbourhood. The 50-mile-long Strait of Otranto was the closest link between the Balkans and West European civilization and East Italy and the territories of Dalmatia, Montenegro, Albania, Epirus, and Peloponnesus connected West Europe with South-East Europe. The Dalmatian and Montenegrin littoral urban settlements throughout history accepted West Adriatic Italian style of life, architecture, municipal and social organization, culture, and structure of an economy.

This is visible especially in the Adriatic islands that bridged the Balkans and the Appenine peninsulas and their cultures. Probably the Adriatic islands, influenced by Italian and Balkan culture and civilization, are the best example of the Balkan melting pot of civilizations. The Aegean islands followed by Crete and Cyprus were natural links between the Balkans and Egypt and Palestine. For the Venetian six centuries-long trade links (1204 to 1797) between Italy and the Middle East, the Aegean islands, Crete (Candia under the Venetian rule), Rhodes, and Cyprus were vital for the existence of the Republic of St. Marco.

Even today there are numerous remains and examples of Venetian material and spiritual culture and civilization in these islands. Over the centuries they were occupied by the Egyptians, Romans, Byzantines, Knights of St. John, Venice, Ottomans, Italians, and Germans until their ultimate unification with Greece. Nonetheless, thanks to its geophysical characteristics, there was no natural centre of the Balkan Peninsula where a great political unity (state) could be formed.[9]

Crossroads and “division lines”

An extraordinary historical earmark of the Balkans was the fact that throughout the peninsula there were several political and cultural “division lines” and boundaries, for instance, between the Latin and Greek language, East and West Roman Empire, the Byzantine and Frankish Empire, the Ottoman and Habsburg lands, Islam and Christianity, Christian Orthodoxy and Christian Catholicism, and recently between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact (1955 to 1991).

The most remarkable examples of living “between division lines” are the Romanians and the Serbs. Being decisively influenced in the Middle Ages by Byzantine culture and civilization, both accepted the Byzantine civilization and Christian Orthodoxy. However, in the following centuries, one part of ethnic Romanians and Serbs became members either of the Uniate (Greek Catholic) Church (under the Pope’s supremacy)[10] or the Roman Catholic Church. On March 27, 1697 the union of a part of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvania (part of the historic Kingdom of Hungary) with the Roman Catholic Church was signed, resulting in the creation of the Greek-Catholic or the Uniate Church.[11] The church union with Rome, based on four points of the Union of Florence of 1439, recognized the authority of the Pope in return for recognition of the equality of the Romanian clergy with that of the Roman Catholic Church.

Similarly, part of the Serbs settled on the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy (Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Istria, South Hungary) from the mid-16th century, converted to Greek-Catholics and Roman-Catholics. All of them in the 20th century became Croats. Thus, the Serbs who came to live in the Žumberak area (on the border between Croatia and Slovenia) in the 16th century were Orthodox believers, while in the next century majority of them accepted the Union, and finally in the 18th century declared themselves as members of the Roman Catholic Church, and today as Croats.

Till the beginning of the 18th century, the national alphabet of the Romanians was Cyrillic, while in subsequent decades it was replaced by the Latin script (used till today). As the Serbian nation was influenced by the Byzantine, Ottoman, Italian, and Central European cultures, and lived from the 15th to the 20th centuries on the territories of the Republic of Venice, the Habsburg Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, contemporary Serbs use the Cyrillic and Latin scripts equally, while the official national alphabet is Cyrillic. Serbian nationhood is split from a religious point of view into East Orthodox, Muslim, and Roman Catholic believers, while the national identity mark created by foreigners is only East Orthodoxy and Cyrillic script.[12]

Three thousand years of Balkan history developed on the crossroads of civilizations resulted in two outcomes: 1) The presence of a great number of ethnic minorities; and 2) The existence of different religions and churches. The present-day Balkan ethnic minorities are distributed as follows: In Romania, the biggest ethnic minority is Hungarian living in Transylvania, followed by Serbs in Banat and Germans in Transylvania. The Macedonian ethnic minority is not officially recognized in Bulgaria and Greece, while a majority of Bulgaria’s ethnic Turks suffered forced assimilation from 1984 to 1989 and migrated to Turkey in 1989.[13]

In Greece, the biggest ethnic minority is Albanians, settled mainly in Epirus, while the biggest ethnic minority in Albania is Greeks followed by Serbs and Montenegrins. Most Balkan ethnic minorities live in Serbia and Montenegro: Albanians, Bulgarians, Vlahs, Romanians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Gypsies (Roma), Croats, Slovaks, and others. Croatia has Italian, Serbian, and Hungarian minorities, while in Macedonia the biggest ethnic minority are Albanians, followed by Turks, Muslims, Gypsies, and Serbs.[14] Finally, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the biggest minorities are Czechs, Poles, and Montenegrins.[15]

The ethnic composition of the Balkans and its distribution of religions is very complex too. In present-day Albania, there are three large denominations: Islam (70% of the population), Roman Catholic (10%), and Eastern Orthodox (20%). This division is due to Albania’s geopolitical position and historical development. Albania’s Orthodox population is located in the southern part of the country where Greek-Byzantine influences were dominant, while North Albania, open to the Adriatic Sea and Italy, was for centuries under the influence of Roman Catholicism. The presence of a great number of Muslims is due to the Ottoman lordship (1471–1912).

The overwhelming majority in Bulgaria is of East Orthodox faith, while there are 800,000 Muslim Turks, 55,000 Roman Catholics, and 15,000 Greek Catholics (Uniates). Bulgaria’s Muslims of Slavic (Bulgarian) ethnic origin, the Pomaks, have closer affinity to the Turks due to a shared religion.

A significant majority of Greece’s population is of East Orthodox Church. In the mid-1970s, there were 120,000 Muslims (in West Thrace), 43,000 Roman Catholics, 3,000 Greek Catholics, and even 640 Armenian Catholics.[16] On the territory of the former Yugoslavia, there are three major religions: Roman Catholic (western part), Eastern Orthodox (eastern part), and Muslim (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo-Metochia and Sanjak (Raška)). In 1990, there were 35 religious communities in Yugoslavia. According to the census of 1953, there was 41.4% of  Christian Orthodox population, 31.8% Roman Catholics, 12.3% Muslims, and 12.5% non-believers in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).[17] As in Albania, this division is legacy of Yugoslavia’s geopolitical position and different historical, cultural, and religious influences on its territory.

A symbiosis between religion and nation is visible in this part of Europe. The proper linkage between religious and ethnic identity among the Balkan peoples, especially in ethnically, culturally, and religiously mixed areas, can be seen from the fact that the Serbian Orthodox Church has been a self-conscious contributor to the development of a national ideology among the Serbs, especially in Kosovo-Metochia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.[18] Bosnia-Herzegovina, situated on the crossroads of different cultures and civilizations, became in the 1990s an example of the meeting ground of divergent religions, nations, cultures, habits, and civilizations in the Balkans.

The linkage between religious and ethnic identity is crucial for the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbian Orthodox Church, Croatian Catholic Church, and Bosnian Muslim community were a defining factor in the process of ethnic differentiation. Religion became a badge of identity and guardian of traditions for the Croats, Serbs, and Muslims (Bosniaks), as well as for other peoples in the region, but not for the Albanians, who are the most important exception from this phenomenon.

This was particularly important for the preservation of identity and culture as various foreign empires dominated the region.[19] In fact, the simultaneous oppression of both religion and nation tended to solidify the connection between the church and the nation as well as religious and ethnic identity.[20] The complex Balkan ethnic and religious composition is a pivotal cause for the existence of its different cultures, as also for ethnic conflicts which are frequent in this part of Europe. The Balkan Peninsula is at the same time the meeting ground of civilizations and the powder keg of Europe.

References & Endnotes:

1] The language criteria as the crucial factor of national determination was established by the German Romanticist Herder at the end of the 18th century; Herder understood linguistic borders as national borders. His model of “linguistic nationalism” was developed at the beginning of the 19th century by the Germans Humboldt and Fichte. Fichte made the most influential interpretation of the relationship between the language and the national in his famous Reden an die deutsche Nation in 1808: only Germans succeeded in preserving the original (ursprünglich) Teutonic language in its purest form. He claimed that only the nation that conserved the old Teutonic language has the right to call itself Germans, i.e. Teutons. Fichte urged the German national-political unification on the basis of language. One of the oldest examples of the language-nation relationship was pointed out in Mielcke C., Litauisch-Deutsches und Deutsch-Litauisches Wörter-Buch, Königsberg, 1800.      

2] ????? ?????, ??????? ?? ??????? ???? ?? ?????, ???????: CLIO, 2001, 139.

3] Castellan G., History of the Balkans: From Mohammed the Conqueror to Stalin, New York:  Colombia University Press, East European Monographs, Boulder, 1992, 1.

4] About the problem of the socio-genesis of the concepts of “civilization” and “culture”, see in Elias N., The Civilizing Process. Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, Cornwall, 2000, 3–45.

5] About the concept of Central Europe from a historical perspective, see Magocsi R. P., Historical Atlas of Central Europe. Revised and Expanded Edition, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.

6] A view that Romanian and Hungarian lands belong to the Balkans is advocated by The National Geographic Society which printed the Supplement “The Balkans” in its February 2000 issue. According to Gazetter, Atlas of Eastern Europe the whole area from the Baltic Sea to Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea belongs to East Europe. Poulton Hugh is sure that Hungary and Romania do not belong to the Balkans: The Balkans. Minorities and States in Conflict, London: Minority Rights Publications, 1994, 12]. Finally, the authors of the annual Westermann Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte are not quite sure where the exact historical northern borders of the Balkans are.        

7] Stavrianos L. S., The Balkans since 1453, New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1958, 1–33.

8] The close historical, economic, cultural, and political connections between the Balkans, Transdanubia, and Great Hungarian Plain are indicated in Kontler L., Millenium in Central Europe. A History of Hungary, Budapest: Atlantisz Publishing House, 1999. About confessional relations and influences between Central European Hungary and Balkan Byzantine Empire, see Moravcsik Gy., “The Role of the Byzantine Church in Medieval Hungary”, The American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. VI, ? 18019, 1947, 134–151.    

9] About Balkan geophysical conditions and creation of the Balkan states, see Cvijic J., La Péninsule Balkanique, Paris, 1918.

10] The Uniates or Greek Catholics were former Christian Orthodox who accepted union with the Vatican but continued to follow Byzantine liturgical rites. The Vatican did not require complete conversion to Roman Catholicism, only acceptance of the four essential points that were the foundation for the Union of the Orthodox and Catholic churches proclaimed by the Council of Florence on July 6, 1439: 1) The recognition of Pope’s supremacy; 2) The “filioque” in the profession of faith (Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son); 3) The recognition of the existence of purgatory; and 4) The use of unleavened bread in the mass.

In exchange for accepting the union with Rome, the Orthodox clergy was accorded the same privileges as their Roman Catholic counterparts. See Bolovan I. et al, A History of Romania, The Center for Romanian Studies, The Romanian Cultural Foundation, Iasi, 1996, 185–190. For the Union of Florence in 1439 more details are in Hofmann G., “Die Konzilsarbeit in Florenz”, Orient. Christ. Period., ? 4, 1938, 157–188, 373–422; Hofmann G., Epistolae pontificiae ad Concilium Florentinium spectantes, Vol. I–III, Roma, 1940-1946; Gill J., The Council of Florence, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1959; Gill J., Personalities of the Council of Florence, Oxford, 1964; Ostroumoff N. I., The History of The Council of Florence, Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1971. About the Uniate Church, see Fortescue A., The Uniate Eastern Churches, Gorgias Press, 2001.    

11] On Romanian relations between confession and ethnicity in Transylvania, see Oldson O. W., The Politics of Rite: Jesuit, Uniate, and Romanian Ethnicity in 18th Century, New York:  Colombia University Press, East European Monographs, Boulder, 2005.

12] About the history of the Serbs in the New Age, see ??????? ?., ???? ??????? ?????? ????? ? ?????. ???????? ???? ? ????? ???? (1492-1992), ?????, ???????? ??????, ???????: Evro-Guinti, 2010.

13] TANJUG, March 28, 1985, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Eastern Europe / 7914 B/ 1, April 1985; Bulgaria: Continuing Human Rights Abuses against Ethnic Turks, Amnesty International, EUR/15/01/87, 5; Amnesty International, “Bulgaria: Imprisonment of Ethnic Turks and Human Rights Activists”, EUR 15/01/89.

14] The total population of Macedonia according to the 1981 census was 1.912.257 [1.281.195 Macedonians, 377.726 Albanians, 44.613 Serbs, 39.555 Muslims, 47.223 Gypsies, 86.691 Turks, 7.190 Vlahs and 1984 Bulgarians], Poulton H., The Balkans. Minorities and States in Conflict, London: Minority Rights Publications, 1994, 47.

15] Sellier A., Sellier J., Atlas des peuples d’Europe centrale, Paris, 1991, 143-166; ???????? ?., XX ??? ?? ???????. ??????, ?????, ??????, ???????: ???????? ???? ???, 53–55; Statistical Pocket Book: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Belgrade, 1993.

16] Europa Yearbook 1975, London, 1976. The following ethnic and religious groups lived in Aegean Macedonia in 1912: Macedonians, Muslim Macedonians (Pomaks), Turks, Christian Turks, Cherkez (Mongols), Greeks, Muslim Greeks, Muslim Albanians, Christian Albanians, Vlahs, Muslim Vlahs, Jews, Gypsies, and others.

17] Jugoslovenski pregled, ? 3, 1977.

18] Steele D., “Religion as a Fount of Ethnic Hostility or an Agent of Reconciliation?”, Janjic D. (ed.), Religion & War, Belgrade, 1994, 163–184.

19] Ramet P., “Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslavia”, Ramet P. (ed.), Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics, Durham, 1989, 299–311.

20] Markovic I., Srpsko pravoslavlje i Srpska pravoslavna crkva, Zagreb, 1993, 3–4.

 *