The Balkans in World History (New Oxford World History)

The Balkans in World History. Andrew Baruch Wachtel. New Oxford World History . Part of the New Oxford World History - this book provides a.
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Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. The Balkans in World History 3. In the historical and literary imagination, the Balkans loom large as a somewhat frightening and ill-defined space, often seen negatively as a region of small and spiteful peoples, racked by racial and ethnic hatred, always ready to burst into violent conflict.

The Balkans in World History re-defines this space in positive terms, taking as a starting point the cultural, hi In the historical and literary imagination, the Balkans loom large as a somewhat frightening and ill-defined space, often seen negatively as a region of small and spiteful peoples, racked by racial and ethnic hatred, always ready to burst into violent conflict. The Balkans in World History re-defines this space in positive terms, taking as a starting point the cultural, historical, and social threads that allow us to see this region as a coherent if complex whole.

Eminent historian Andrew Wachtel here depicts the Balkans as that borderland geographical space in which four of the world's greatest civilizations have overlapped in a sustained and meaningful way to produce a complex, dynamic, sometimes combustible, multi-layered local civilization. It is the space in which the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, of Byzantium, of Ottoman Turkey, and of Roman Catholic Europe met, clashed and sometimes combined.

The history of the Balkans is thus a history of creative borrowing by local people of the various civilizations that have nominally conquered the region. Encompassing Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey, the Balkans have absorbed many voices and traditions, resulting in one of the most complex and interesting regions on earth.

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Cu toate acestea, prea multe erori: Aug 25, Bram rated it really liked it. My week in Slovenia made me pick this book up on my flight to Paris. I liked the way he developed an argument about the Balkans being a diverse ethnically and religiously crossroads from the time of the Roman conquest until the mid-twentieth century. The book is a great resource for world history teachers who want to integrate the Balkans a bit more into their classes. I definitely got some goo My week in Slovenia made me pick this book up on my flight to Paris.

I definitely got some good individual examples and visual resources. Now back to reading about sugar. Mar 05, Mary rated it really liked it.

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Balkans were, for thousands of years, bastions of peaceful tolerance, not only among "Serbs" "Croats" and "Bosnians"but also with significant Turkish and Spanish Jewish populations all living in relative harmony. Then the 20th century happened. Nationalism imported through intellectual youths from Europe taught people to think, "I am a Croat," whereas before they thought, "I'm a peasant," "I'm Dalmatian," or even "I speak Slavic. Strangely enough, Yugoslavia was a shining relatively beacon of multinationalism.

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Wachtel seems to think that the wars in Yugoslavia were sort of an eventuality of the nationalistic wars Greece, Albania and Bulgaria had already experienced. Now that Montenegro and Kosovo are independent, it seems strange to think how much the region has changed, cracked and homogenized so quickly. Jan 18, Christopher added it. His narrative is organized in a chronological manner over the course of five chapters following an introduction. Instead of repeating a period in history of the region, he seeks to find the elements of diversity in each era in the region as it demonstrates his thesis.

Watchel approaches the history of the Balkans from a perspective that aims at the heart of the nationalist discourse of the region by positing that heterogeneity and many cultures are the true nature of the region. In his first chapter, Watchel discusses the earliest areas of human settlement to the end of the Eastern Roman Empire. This chapter properly focuses on the interactions of the various peoples that came to dominate and contribute in the region. The author highlights the earliest evidence of Minoans, the later Greek and Hellenic influence.

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Watchel also mentions the role of Thracians as an important people in the region, began through Hellenization, by the Macedonians. After the Romans came, political stability arrived in the region, and the various peoples existed in a heterogeneous society. The Romans eventually came to bring a distinctive feature of the Balkans and that is assisting in the promulgation of Christianity, as Emperor Constantine became a supporter of the Church.


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Here Wachtel makes some errors. He describes the Ecumenical Patriarch as the leader of several national churches; however, this is an explicitly anachronistic definition, and currently refers to a one particular view of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the modern world. Moreover, it dampens his approach to trying to refer to the premodern era as typically heterogeneous and multicultural by suggesting the Orthodox world was divided by nation. He ends the chapter by highlighting how the Slavic invaders to the region converted to Orthodox Christianity as well.

The next chapter looks at the medieval Balkan states other than the Eastern Roman Empire, and Wachtel contrasts the later modern nationalist states with their medieval predecessors by emphasizing that the medieval states were not based on a common language or common religious views and customs, but because of the ambitions of rulers seeking to expand their state.

The author covers the expansion and conflicts of the Balkan states, but chooses to demonstrate that the choice of Christianity especially Orthodoxy had much to do with the politics of trying to play Constantinople off against Rome, and gain a level of respect with other kingdoms and empires in much of the known world, because they were Christian. Here, the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius bequeathed to the Slavic world an alphabet that became the norm of Slavic writing, mostly in a liturgical context.

The arrival of the Ottoman Empire and the incorporation of the former Roman ruled areas saw as many changes as it did see continuity. Wachtel makes a point of explaining that there were few forced conversions to Islam, and that the devshirme became a practice where many Ottoman subjects viewed it as an honor to elevate the status of their sons. The next point the author highlights is that the cities took on a multicultural face, as cities became administrative centers for Ottoman officials.

Wachtel even concludes it was Ottoman rule over the centuries that brought the right amount of cultural elements to define Balkan civilization. The millet system also helped to codify the religious diversity of the region. Where Islam did not engender many conversions, Christians and Jews were left to their affairs for the most part. In fact, the primary source of identity under the Ottomans stemmed from the religious, and less the ethnic source. Ethnic identity was a primarily local matter, while that of religious was more all-encompassing.

Despite the political changes and economic static reality, diversity was not only maintained, but also increased. The fourth chapter is important where Wachtel explicitly states the alignment of nation and state as it has become the accepted standard in modern times, and developed beginning in the late s, was not identifiable with Balkan life even up until the end of World War I. Over one thousand years of a multiethnic society did not prepare the Balkans for the shift revolutionary ideas brought to the region. The author underscores the process was an artificial one.

Wachtel emphasizes that even In Western Europe where the process of the development of the nation-state was more gradual and organic than in the Balkans it still involved violence and a level of artificial imposition. The difference with the Balkans is that the process was compressed into a shorter of time. This violence was not just with the Ottoman government, but also with other states, or emerging states that usually were competing with the others for the same territory.

Tied with the issue of claimed territory was a concept of an identity that often was reserve of the intellectual elite educated in the West. This is in contrast with the peasant who considered his or her identity in a more local fashion. It was one that had been the standard expression of identity for the majority of the Balkan peoples until the injection of Western concepts born from the Enlightenment and nationalism.


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    4. The successful creation of these new nation-states produced an elite culture consistent with their freshly created identities, but these countries suffered political immaturity and the majority of the populations were illiterate. The reliance on Vienna and other Western locations for elite education, and the inability to attract foreign investment in addition to their territorial disputes plagued the new states. These states were only secured through European arbitration where the Balkans from the nineteenth century onwards became a place where the Great Powers fought diplomatic and political battles to further their goals.

    In this way, the argument of identity became the basis for the coming of World War I, especially after the Treaty of Berlin in In the wake of the Great War, the Tsarist Russian Empire disappeared, the Ottoman Empire ended, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart, ending the power structure that had dominated the Balkans as it had been defined for a century. The war saw the creation of a Serbian dominated Yugoslavia, an emergent nationalist Turkish state formed and in the wake of Greece attempting to take advantage of the Ottoman collapse by major population transfers between Greece and Turkey.

    Wachtel discusses how despite the slow movement towards homogeneity in the region, and the uprooting of Greeks who had lived in Turkey for over a thousand years, the region remained highly heterogeneous and diverse, because the developing nation-state was an element foreign to the cosmopolitan region. The newly formed states following World War I lived under the shadow of the rising fascist threat in Germany and Italy, while the later point, until ; they were completely governed by a communist context.

    The leaders of these countries in the post-World War I era governed in a pre-Great War mindset, which meant they were for the most part unable to successfully navigate the complexities of the emerging twentieth century. Economic policies throughout the Balkans proved difficult to implement as successful as their Western European neighbors, while population transfers from the Great War caused short-term disruptions. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Academic Skip to main content.

    Choose your country or region Close. Ebook This title is available as an ebook. To purchase, visit your preferred ebook provider. The Balkans in World History Andrew Baruch Wachtel New Oxford World History Part of the New Oxford World History - this book provides a comprehensive, synthetic treatment of the "new world history" from chronological, thematic, and geographical perspectives, allowing readers to access the world's complex history from a variety of conceptual, narrative, and analytical viewpoints as it fits their interests.

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