The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers 1804 - 1999

by Misha Glenny

This unique and lively history of Balkan geopolitics since the early nineteenth century gives readers the essential historical background to recent events in this war-torn area. No other book covers the entire region, or offers such profound insights into the roots of Balkan violence, or explains so vividly the origins of modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. Misha Glenny presents a lucid and fair-minded account of each national group in the Balkans and its struggle for statehood. The narrative is studded with sharply observed portraits of kings, guerrillas, bandits, generals, and politicians. Glenny also explores the often-catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the Great Powers, raising some disturbing questions about Western intervention.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, European History, Politics, War, World History, 19th Century

752 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Nation is a group of people united by a mistaken view about their past and hatred of their neighbours” Karl Deutsch wrote in "Nationalism and its alternatives" which is out of print, symptomatically of our times. This quotation was constantly in my mind when i was reading “The Balkans”. It is about 2 centuries of so called nation building, myths and misconceptions, realpolitiks and enormous bloodbath it has created.

This is an informative introductory history of the Balkans. As well as former Yugoslavia, it includes Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania, as well as the relevant information about the Ottoman empire.

I was not very familiar with the history of Bulgaria and Romania. This book was quite instrumental in covering this gap. For me, those countries were always satellites of Russia - totally wrong misconception on my part and very far from the truth. So for me this book was full of discoveries. I did not know, that Bulgaria has managed to save the majority of its Jews from Holocaust, in spite of being in alliance with the Nazi Germany.

It was also interesting to find out about the formation of the Greek state. Though the book is a bit sketchy on details. Albania is another country about which one hardly hear on the news. There is a brief outline about its history in the book. I was better familiar with the history of ex-Yugoslavia. And my edition of this book ends in 1999. So i found it a bit less revelatory, but still useful for the outline of the events there.

All these 200 years or so are pretty gruesome. But two episodes stood out for me even on that beak background. The first is the invasion of Asia Manor by the Greeks in 1921 and subsequent killing of Muslims by them. The second part of this awful story is better known - the Fire of Smirna and the population exchange. But the fact that the Greeks were actually initiating massacres straight after the invasion before 1923 is less well known.

The most hard for me to grasp was the Second World War. I could not read more that a page or two at a time. And it is not because “Himmler was determined to reduce the psychological suffering which mass murder inflicted on his executioners.” by contemplating the final solution. This is the horror in its pure form. But what was also shocking in that war the Croatians were killing the Serbs; the Serbs were killing Muslims and the Croatians. And all this madness was justified by nations’ idea. Of course it has all got repeated in the 90s… .Shocking and sad…

[Titi Coolda · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte de istorie așa cum ar trebui să fie toate scrierile despre trecut,prezent,popoare și războaie. Documentată, fără patimă sau parti pris-uri, demontând legende eroice și istorii cosmetizate. Un spațiu geografic alambicat și policrom, un rai dar și-un iad , un creuzet cosmopolit în veșnică mișcare, ăștia-s Balcanii.

[Lili Kyurkchiyska · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Балканите не са буре с барут, както често се твърди: метафората е неточна. Те са просто фитила, който Великите сили сами са поставили. Барутният погред е Европа".
За западняка Балканите са черна дупка, от която излизат войни, кръвопролития и престъпност. Като балканци не можем да отречем, че сме инатливи, избухливи, все гледаме у чуждата чиния и ще си запалим къщата, за да изгори на Вуте плевнята. Но да твърдим, че регионът е движен от "тайнствена вродена кръвожадност" е удобно извинение на международната общност (модерен евфемизъм за Великите сили), когато имат нужда да си измият ръцете от негативните последствия от вмешателството си в неговите проблеми. Тази проста истина ни посочва Глени, журналист, следящ Балканите от десетилетия. Той може да не е изкарал университетска диплома по "Минало и съвремение на Югоизточна Европа", но май ни схваща повече от политиците във Вашингтон, Лондон и Брюксел - все пак написал е дебела, обстойна и що годе обективна* книга, но трябва да му взема една звезда, защото след Втората световна България изчезна от наратива**, а и имаше някои фактологични грешки - не толкова съществени, но все пак досадни.
Това си е и ценен урок - не съди за региона само по кризите му.


* Нека си признаем, че никога не може да си докрай обективен.
** А ми беше страшно интересно да се запозная с мнението му за Възродителния процес. Но все пак трябва да посочим, че е той е породен от вътрешни проблеми и се развива със слабо вмешателство от страна на големите и включването му би ни отклонило от основната тема.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a journey. I have mixed thouhts. Misha opened my eyes to a world of good information. His thesis is sound: the Balkans only become a "powder keg" when the Western powers get involved. This is especially true of NATO"s satanic bombing of Serbia in '99. However, I critique him on one point. He says the religious issue isn't as important as the interventionist one. But this only downplays subjective valuation in historical study. But i digress.



The Good Points:

It was a *very* thorough review of the past 2 centuries. He covered every Balkan country.



The Bad points:

He downplayed the heroic resistance teh Serbs gave to the Ottomans. He downplayed Draza Mikhailovich and the Chetnicks. He also didn't give sufficient mention on how th West sold them out to th communists.



Still, probably the best book on the subject. Read it, but find other sources as well.

[Cheenu · Rating 4 out of 5]

My interest in the conflict ridden history of this region was piqued by the controversy that always erupts whenever two teams from the former Yugoslavia play each other in soccer.

The number of factions and interests is just bewildering. It's a uphill battle trying to mentally keep up with all of them while reading the book.

To start off, you have divisions along religious lines. Not just Christians and Muslims but factions within factions, such as different denominations of Orthodox Churches and Muslims split on ethnic lines such as Slavs and Ottoman Turks.

Then ethnicity. Croats, Serbs, Albanians, Montegrenins, Greeks, Macedonians, Bulgars and so on.

Then class. Nobles, landowning elite, warrior chieftains, traders, peasants, bureaucrats, intellectuals, soldiers, bandits and so on

Then ideology. Monarchists, constitutionalists, nationalists, communists, liberals and so on. Ideology within ideology such as Stalinists and anti-Stalinists.

On top of that, continuous interference from so called "great powers" such as Britain, France, Russia, United States and neighborhooding states.

We're talking direct invasions, economic sanctions, conditional loans, ideological dispersion, assassinations and so on.

Almost all of it reactionary by a great power to counter to "influence" of another great power in the Balkans, creating self fulfilling prophecies where every great power has to interfere because every other great power is interfering.

Add a final mix of human greed to it as local authoritarian leaders exploited all these aspects for personal enrichment and you get the sad history of the Balkans.

And, predictably, the biggest victims are just ordinary working class people who were victims of pogroms of genocidal dictators and frenzied mobs.

Hopefully, this century is kinder to the everyday people than most of the 20st century was.

[Larry Loftis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent scholarly work, and one that I'm using as a reference for my next book. It's tedious, as most scholarly works are, but if you want to sink your teeth into the history of the Balkans (particularly Yugoslavia), this is your book.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of what I read is to better understand friends. The influx of refugee Bosnians into our East Rogers Park neighborhood in Chicago and my own former sister-in-law's mixed Yugoslav identity (Serb and Bosnian)--one now being instilled in my niece--has led me to read many books about the history and politics of the Balkans.

Of all the books I've read on the subject so far, Glenny's is most sympathetic and constructive. Rather than blame the peoples of the Balkans for some occult primitivism, he puts the region in a broader perspective, outlining the influence of the stronger powers over the last few centuries, particularly as regards the breakup of Yugoslavia.

[Igor Ljubuncic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an awesome book.

Rich, complex, compelling, written with great style and attention to detail.

The main purpose of the book is to answer the question: why so much trouble in the Balkans?

And at the end of it, while the answer is simple to understand, it's not so easy to explain.

In essence, the southeast part of Europe has been the source of serious national and ethnic strife for the past 200 years. It boils down to two main reasons: the constant interference by big powers due to the region's strategic importance and the Ottoman practice of coinciding religion with ethnicity (millets), which is why the region developed the concept of secular state identity so late compared to the rest of Europe, and remains locked in a national-religious struggle.

In between, Misha tells an amazing tale of the decay of the Ottoman empire, the rise of peasant socities and forming of Balkan kingdoms, with none of the industrial and social revolutions that took place to the north and west, the rise of Germany - and its rivalry with Britain, leading to two world wars, the use of Balkans as the seed for conflict, in both cases, the post-ww2 Balkans and the continued oppression of the peasant class, and the turbulent end of the 20th century with the Yugoslav boogaloo.

The wealth of facts is amazing, appalling, mindboggling. Turkey only had its first bank in 1850, and only 2% of the Ottoman population were literate. Fascism gripped pretty much all of Europe in the 20s and 30s except Britain and Russia. Germany was sympathetic to the Yugoslav Kingdom and did not want to get involved in the Balkans, but the coup there precipitated a second front and spoiled German plans against Russia. The Balkans kings of the 20s were an odd bunch - Boris liked to drive trains, Peter was a serial womanizer, and Zog never went outside without his mother. The Communist leaders of the 50s and 60s were another curious bunch. Tito played the West and East admirably but failed to reform the nationalistic question in the 70s - Serbs vs Croats and Serbs vs Albanians. Caucescu created a police state but was loved and wooed by the West. Hoxha created a hermit state full of bunkers. Just as ww2 ended, the Greeks had a brutal civil war, as if the killing in the previous four years weren't enough.

It's all connected, intertwined - the pinnacle is of course the Yugoslav wars 1990-1999, and the sad things is, nothing has changed compared to 1941 or 1914. Still the same tensions, still the same strife, still the same unresolved issues. It will probably take another 100 years across the entire region - hopefully through the participation in a wider EU supra-body to develop the national state identity as in the West.

Extremely recommended. My favorite historian list just got another entry. I've already bought several more Misha's books.

Seriously, I can't praise this work enough. Get it!

Igor

[Christian Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I both enjoyed and struggled with this book. It is stunning how much information is in this book. The author must have done an insane amount of research to get all the regional histories and perspectives. However, I did struggle. It is long. It is slow in parts. The tone is flat for long stretches. I think the "take away" is I learned a bunch about a subject I knew little about before. There were entertaining parts, just a little tough to give it a whole hearted recommendation.

[Andrew Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s easy to look at the history of the Balkans and decide that, “no, we can’t all just get along”, that people are inherently violent. But that’s a superficial and cynical take. One that is used to justify atrocities, sometimes genocides, suggesting they are inevitable rather than the consequences of deliberate actions. Misha Glenny counters this argument several times in this book. A few examples:

“The role of the elite and the political environment in which such disgusting phenomena occur have been underappreciated in favour of a more emotive response, which accuses a particular nation or community of being especially prone to bloodthirsty behavior. The mob always has the effect of minimizing or obscuring the role of those who bear political responsibility for its direction. All Balkan massacres this century have enjoyed the specific approval of state organs whose agents have usually been the instigators as well.”

“Such events are invariably accompanied by a historical justification which can usually be boiled down to the simple formula of ‘eternal enmity’ between two communities. The construction of this justification by historians newspapers and other media understate influence, however, tends to mask the real intentions of the elite.”

“Before 1999, the great powers had intervened three times in the Balkans. These three interventions were so destructive that they guaranteed the Balkans’ relative economic backwardness, compared to the rest of Europe. And the violence that these interventions encouraged, often inflicted by one Balkan people on another, ensured the continuation of profound civil and nationalist strife. In the west, however, these events are rarely regarded as the result of external intervention on the contrary, the Balkan countries are seen as culprits who forced the reluctant outside powers into their unfathomable conflicts. This imaginary Balkans - a world where people are motivated not by rational considerations, but by a mysterious congenital bloodthirstiness - is always invoked when the great powers seat to deny their responsibility.”

That said, this is a book about war in a particularly bloodsoaked region. It doesn’t shy away from it. It’s a sometimes dizzying account of seemingly perpetual conflict. It took me a long time to read it, but if I had read it the way I read most non-fiction - looking up people and events that are new to me while I read - it might’ve taken years. I stopped pulling up Wikipedia pages early on. My advice to anybody who is less than an expert on the region is to just read it right through, don’t worry about familiarizing yourself with every name or every group, it isn’t necessary and would be a tough task. They become less obscure as the modern nations start to take shape and the events and players are within living memory or close.

If you’re interested in the region or geopolitics at all, this is a superb read and worth taking your time.

[Razvan Zamfirescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous but excellent work! Must read if you want to understand Europe history, and how and why Great Powers can not understand why they can't shape countries and the world only by themselves.

[Rob M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely mammoth tome, covering a densely packed historical epoch with a good mix of overarching distance and intimacy. Despite the author's detailed knowledge, the book is written accessibly enough, although is by its nature challenging due to the complexity of the subject matter.

That said, one of the main takeaway points of Misha Glenny's The Balkans is that, despite being complex and brutal, the last 200 years of Balkan history is by no means unintelligible. There is a *lot* going on, but it mostly follows rational and explicable patterns and processes, which Glenny does an admirable job of laying bare.

Glenny treats his subject matter with a fairly even hand, no mean feat in a field which incites terrifying political passion even today. His own liberal instincts creep in here and there, although he treats the Great Powers, the Stalinists, and the "International Community" to reasonably clear eyed scrutiny each in their turn.

For those specifically interested in communist politics in the Balkans, I also enjoyed (Gal Kirn's history of socialist Yugoslavia Partisan Ruptures: Self-Management, Market Reform and the Spectre of Socialist Yugoslavia and Kristen Ghodsee's The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe, but in terms of setting these states in deep historical time, this is a valuable and rewarding text.

Not for the feint of heart, but recommended nonetheless!

[Alismcg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A weighty, well written and researched volume -

A few crumbs tossed back behind my feet along my path in :

1. The inclusive attitude of the Ottoman Empire toward all religions... their millet system ... connection to Nationalism.

"The Islam of the Empire excluded nobody on grounds of faith, a fact often obscured by twentieth-.century western perceptions of Islam."

"Imperial subjects were divided into millets. A Millet gathered all members of a faith whose origins lay in the Old Testament - the three largest were the Muslim, the Greek Orthodox, and the Jewish millets."

"The word millet means nation. For the Ottomans, nationhood meant religious affiliation, so that Bosnian, Turkish, and Albanian Muslims, for example would all speak different languages and enjoy widely different cultural traditions but would still be part of the same 'nation'."

"Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian nationalists insist to this day that it is only possible to claim membership of the nation if one adheres to the Orthodox rite."

2. The inherent horror of Nationalism ... genocidal violence ... the endless massacres of the innocents

"...nationalism and national identity in the region are built on fragile foundations. Fragile, because such supposedly well-established identities as the Greek, Serb, and Bulgarian can feel so threatened by a national community which even now numbers less than two million; and because throughout the region, and especially in contested regions like Macedonia, national identity or identities do not remain stable. They change over a few generations; they mutate during the course of a war; they are reinvented following the break-up of a large empire or state; and they emerge anew during the construction of new states. Balkan nationalism evokes such ferocious passion because, paradoxically, it is so labile."

"Nationalist violence knows no eternal enemy. The current enemy is always eternal."

3. The suffering of women... How men destroy the last trace of their own humanity through the demonic filth of their brutality and violation of women (and children). All of the nightmarish horrors of their victims' carnage that cannot be shared.

A print , entitled Bulgarophagos (Bulgar-eater) of an elite Greek infantry soldier "holding a living Bulgarian soldier with both hands, while he gnaws the face of his victim with his teeth, like some beast of prey." (Carnegie Commission Report - 2nd Balkan War 1913)

“An entire people,

Not yet born,

But condemned to birth,

In columns before birth

Foetus beside foetus,

An entire people,

Which does not see, does not hear, does not understand,

But moves forward.

Through writhing bodies of women,

Through the blood of mothers

Unconsulted.”

__Ana Blandiana,
"The Children’s Crusade" 1984
Romanian Poet

"...The women volunteered to act as bearers, scaling mountains with canon parts and ammunition roped to their back. 'We tie thick ropes around their waists...and policemen standing on higher levels pull them up...And these women, heavily loaded as they are, climb up like goats... and often throw rocks at the enemy below..." When the Italians attempt to invade Greece via Albania during WWii.

4. A desire to read more about Tito and Yugoslavia. His bold stand against Stalin.

5. The difference between Italian and German Fascism

"Italian fascism did not feed on any real or supposed conspiracies hatched by Jews, Bolsheviks, or the French and British establishments. Instead it focused on the chaotic degeneration of Italian politics and society."

And how I stumbled out again, so very different than when I came in...

"...the reporting of the Bulgarian massacres triggered a pattern that persists in western attitudes to the Balkans to this day - little sympathy is expressed for the victims of conflict if they belong to the national community which is considered the original aggressor."

"As the British were prepared to sell out Romania, the one country in the Balkans where there was absolutely no support for a communist régime, the Soviet Union was quite happy to reciprocate in Greece where the communists enjoyed overwhelming popular backing. The deal was then enshrined in the Churchill/Stalin percentage agreement of October 1944."

"This imagined Balkans - a world where people are motivated not by rational considerations but by a mysterious congenital bloodthirstiness - is always invoked when the great powers seek to deny their responsibility for.the economic and political difficulties that the region has suffered as a consequence of external interference."

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Mircea Poeana · Rating 5 out of 5]

O lucrare-maraton despre butoiul cu pulbere al Europei nu te poate lasa indiferent.
O parcurgi ca pe un thriller in care momentele de respiro sunt putine.
Balcanii s-au remarcat cel putin in ultima suta de ani prin instabilitate, nationalism acerb, razboaie care nu au dus la nimic, conflicte interetnice cu final imprevizibil.
Aici te poti astepta oricand la o explozie devastatoare tocmai cand esti asigurat ca totul e in regula.
Analiza pertinenta creionata de mana extrem de sigura a lui Misha Glenny merita lecturata cu multa rabdare.
Vom invata, poate inca o data, ca focul mocnit nu se stinge niciodata si ca de undeva, din inima Serbiei, se pot naste flacari mistuitoare care pot parli mare parte din lume.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book! Only disappointment is that following Tito's death the book solely talks about Yugoslavia or what's left of it. Hardly a mention of Ceaucescu's downfall, Albanian Civil War or Bulgaria

[Bill Tress · Rating 4 out of 5]

The saga of the Balkans is covered in 726 pages and covers a period from 1804 to 1999. There are very few writers who have the special perspective and knowledge to write such an epic. Misha Glenny special perspective comes from his career as the Central European correspondent for the BBC World Service. His view is that of “The Great Powers”, yet, he possesses an insider’s knowledge of this subject.
In addition to a 600-page narrative, he includes extensive notes and a Bibliography that covers an addition 100 page. This book is a primary source for any one researching the Balkan wars.
Glenny has a good style of writing that provides a good flow to the story. The layout of the story is by region and country and this is helpful in putting things in context. As he progresses through the conflicts of each country, the narrative does skip around at times and this can be confusing.
Glenny’s vast knowledge of the people, leaders and places is evident throughout and it can be hard to keep up with his use of the exotic names and places he describes, reference to the maps in the front of this book is a necessity.
The common thread throughout this narrative is the reasons for war; such as religion, which in it’s self is incomprehensible because killings, rape and innumerable atrocities are committed in the name of a God! Another reason – Politics: people in power who are monster’s and kill the citizens who elected them. hate: that goes back to the 15th century. Capital P politics: where the great powers jockey for position and influence in the region, and a few other miscellaneous reasons; yet, all the reasons for war fall on the helpless peasant populations of the countries that make up the Balkans. Glenny’s descriptions of the inhumanity at times make the reader recoil in disbelief. The one thing that "The Balkans" has taught this reviewer is that there is no rhyme or reason for the atrocities, just hate! and man's inhumanity! talk all you want about who did what, or who should have done what. Savages are unleashed on helpless woman and children, who are raped and slaughtered for the pure joy of it, and this repetition throughout the book makes for a difficult read at times, yet, these things can not be deleted or glossed over by the writer because they represent the facts of the history of the Balkans.
In the final chapter, the writer expresses his feelings that the great Powers did not demonstrate the will to control the outcomes of these wars. Yet, this reviewer’s thoughts are the Great Powers feared a quagmire and were hesitant to commit troops. The Great Powers will bomb cities and the poor peasants and even throw money at the situation, but cannot solve these conflicts, only the Balkan people can overcome their own history and move into the 21st century, but it will take education and Statesmen, who have not surfaced to date.
If this subject interests you and/or this knowledge is necessary for you, than this book is recommended, the author is extremely well informed, he is a professional writer and he has amassed a great deal of information all incorporated into one text.

[Lily]

The main thesis of this book is summarised in a chapter towards the end:

“Before 1999, the great powers had intervened three times in the Balkans. The first was at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 when European diplomats agreed to replace Ottoman power by building a system of competing alliances on the Balkan Peninsula. The second began with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia in the summer of 1914 and culminated in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne and the Great Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey. The third started with Italy’s unprovoked attack on Greece in March 1940 and ended with the consolidation of unrepresentative pro-Soviet regimes in Bulgaria, Romania and a pro-western administration in Greece.

These three interventions were so destructive that they guaranteed the Balkans’ relative economic backwardness, compared to the rest of Europe. And the violence that these interventions encouraged, often inflicted by one Balkan people on another, ensured the continuation of profound civil and nationalist strife. In the West, however, these events are rarely regarded as the result of external intervention. On the contrary, the Balkan countries are seen as culprits who force the reluctant outside powers into their unfathomable conflicts. This imagined Balkans - a world where people are motivated not by rational considerations but by a mysterious congenital bloodthirstiness - is always invoked when the great powers seek to deny their responsibility for the economic and political difficulties that the region has suffered as a consequence of external influence.”

The book is very long and dense and I had to make multiple pauses in order to take it all in. It seems well-researched but it’s a blend of fact and opinion - Glenny, a journalist who has also been personally active in the region, frequently provides his assessment of what he’s describing; understandably for this type of book, he keeps to a bird’s eye view for the most part, rarely offering glimpses into the lives of ordinary people (when he does, it is in times of extreme crisis). In many respects, it’s an interesting read that makes a point which sounds convincing but as with anything that offers an analysis of history partially rooted in contemporary politics, it should be accompanied by further reading and research. As Ian D. Armour writes in his review of the first edition in The English Historical Review (Vol. 116, No. 467 (Jun., 2001), pp. 685-687), there is a marked preference for "simple, monocausal explanations"; the limit here lies in Glenny’s journalistic - rather than academic - grounding, and as a result the book fails to provide what it has set out to do - a clear general history of a complicated region.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

En 700-siders murstein om Balkans historie fra 1804 til 2012. Du skulle kanskje tro denne er mest spennende å lese før/under oppholdet i Balkan?

Du har selvsagt helt rett.

Boka er antakelig helt klinkers for dem som vil lese om alle mer eller mindre viktige hendelser på tvers av hele regionen de siste 200 årene, beskrevet i veldig høy oppløsning. Og her høres jeg kanskje spydig ut, men dere hyller jeg, dere sta jævler.

Jeg tilhører ikke nevnte gjeng. Her er det spennende historier, ok+ språk og etter sigende korrekte fremstillinger, men det er for mye å gape over for en historie-casual.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the 2012 edition which is subtitled 1804-2012 and does have an additional chapter on events since it was published in 1999. I would advise potential readers not to worry if they don't or can't get hold of the updated edition. This is a history based on the experiences of the author in various war zones in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s and the histories and historical literature that was published before then. This is a history written with the intention of explaining 'The Balkans' to all those English speaking readers who were struggling, post the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, with the discovery that 'European' history was not confined to the areas of second home ownership in places like France/Germany/Italy but also with the realisation that despite what Francis Fukuyama said history had not ended. It is now thirty years old, a product of the late twentieth century and while Mr. Glenny is a good journalist and never succumbed to cliches like 'historic/traditional hatred/feuds' as explanations for monstrosities like the Srebrenica massacre his book has about as much depth as a pavement puddle.

I do mean that to be as harsh as it sounds. Two hundred years of history; eleven countries (as of June 2024) if you include Greece which many definitions of the Balkans don't, but then many definitions exclude Romania, in fact what countries are 'Balkan' is very much matter of constant change and disagreement. What languages are 'Balkan' depends on whether you mean 'Balkan' languages or languages spoken in the Balkans, and of course what period you are talking about; 700 pages to cover all that seems barely sufficient to claim even superficiality for this history.

That so many reviewers were impressed and claim to have learnt much from this book can only be taken as praise if you remember that increasing their knowledge by one fact will be an increase of 100%. The reality is that when I was a schoolboy in the 1970s and studying the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the 'Eastern Question' and the causes of WWI I was grappling with the history of the Balkans under these headings. I was also dealing with the involvement/intervention in the area by Austria-Hungary, the Russian and Ottoman empires. That Mr. Glenny places the involvement/intervention in the Balkans as a central causation of much of its 'historic' violence is admirable but can hardly be regarded as a revelation. Maybe growing in a country (Ireland) whose 'deep seated' and 'deep historical' sectarian problems were actually exacerbated if not created by a colonial power as a divide and rule tactic to remain in control means that I take it for granted that big powers interfere in small countries for reasons which are always tainted.

When Mr. Glenny includes the post surrender history of the victorious allies in Ottoman Turkey and the encouragement by Lloyd George of Greece's attempt to resurrect a Greek empire in Asia Minor (an empire that hadn't existed since Cyrus the Great conquered Greece's colonies in Asia Minor in 547 BCE) the book is tottering into its own 'imperial overstretch'.

This is a history covering too much in terms of years and countries. Instead of reading a history of the 'Balkans' I would recommend reading histories which within a narrower focus illuminate a greater canvas. For example:

'Salonica: City of Ghosts' by Mark Mazower. 'They make a desert and call it peace' is something anyone reading about the history of the Balkans should always remember and if you read Mr. Mazower's 'Salonica' you never will.

'Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination' by Vesna Goldsworthy (Mr. Glenny lists this work in his bibliography but I can't help thinking he missed the author's broader message).

'Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948' by Tara Zahra. Bohemia is not the Balkans but language and nationalism were inextricably linked in both Bohemia and the Balkans. The way 'myths' simplistically defined, explained and justified turning neighbors into strangers needs to be understood because it was not unique to a particular part of Europe.

'The Fall of the Sultanate: the Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1922' by Ryan Gingeras. If you believe the Ottoman empire was an 'outside' power interfering in the Balkans then you desperately need to read this book.

Finally I was going to mention some literary works but trying to be either fair or comprehensive is beyond me. One work I will mention is 'The Prodigals' by Petru Dumitriu which provides a devastatingly honest portrait of what the various wars in the Balkans meant for the richly varied and complicatedly intertwined ethnic communities as borders changed and with them definitions of foreignness. Overnight neighbors became not simply strangers but no longer members of communities. Dumitriu's portrayal of ethnic cleansing is only a tiny part of his novel which actually gives it greater resonance and power.

Finally I can't help mentioning 'The Maze' by Panos Karnezis which is unsparing in its depiction of the barbarities against muslims by the invading Greek army in 1922 but also shows it as indifferent to the fate of Anatolian Greeks.

Finally, to be fair to Mr. Glenny's book, it isn't so much bad, as inadequate. The complicated history of this region deserves better. Sometimes knowing a little, but knowing it well, is better than trying to know everything superficially. For this reason I have to shelve it as bad-disappointing.

[Tom Nixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those subjects that has long fascinated me but I've never actually had the time to sit down and find out much about it. Happily, Misha Glenny paints as close to an all-encompassing picture as one could hope for in his voluminous history of The Balkans, which covers the period from 1804 to 1999.

This troubled region has long been seen as backwards and troublesome in traditional Western narratives, ranging from Bismark's prediction that the war would begin over 'some damned foolish thing in the Balkans' to the general perception that the region is always a half-step outside of modernity- a perception that Glenny turns on its head with his well-defended thesis that Western Europe bears much of the blame when it comes to the history of warfare that has rocked the region over the course of the past century.

Glenny's narrative opens in the early 19th Century, which saw the acceleration of the long decline of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence, slowly but surely of national movements all across the region- Serbia being amongst the first to break away, followed quickly by Greece and then Bulgaria- and then the rest. As the Ottoman Empire grew weaker, the European powers grew progressively more predatory. feeding off the Ottoman economy and saddling the sclerotic empire with more and more debts it could not afford. It took about a century to do it, but eventually, the Ottomans were essentially chased out of Europe, confined to the small chunk of land west of Istanbul that Turkey holds today.

In it's wake, the Ottoman Empire left a new region for the great powers to squabble over. Austria-Hungry pushed deep into what is now Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia- Russia tied itself to Serbia and soon the other Great Powers were jockeying for influence as well, creating a system of alliances so complex and so rigid that when Gavarilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the explosion that followed afterward seemed almost inevitable.

Through the tumultuos period of the First and Second Balkan War, which laid the groundwork for the bloody nationalisms which racked the region after the end of the Cold War through the equally chaotic interwar period of the various dictatorships that emerged and into the horrors and bloodshed of the Second World War and the long hard Cold War, the Balkans have been victims of the power politics of the era time and time again and the series of wars and ethnic strife that has resulted has been the collateral damage of great power meddling that encouraged nationalism and pitted one country against the other to further their own ends. That's Glenny's thesis from page 1 and the next six hundred pages or so present more than enough evidence to back that up and then some.

Thesis aside, the sheer amount of knowledge that Glenny backs into his book is impressive, to say the least. I know a lot more about pretty much every country in the region now. I did think Macedonia and Slovenia got short shrift- especially in his description of the events leading up to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. And Glenny completely glosses over the events of 1989 in Bulgaria, Albania and Romania at the expense of the rapidly disintegrating Yugoslavia. But then again, Glenny is faced with the extremely hard task of bringing the distinct cultures and histories of these countries together into one overarching volume- so it's probably inevitable some things got missed, but Glenny does an extraordinary job pulling it off. It's no surprise that he's written another book, The Fall of Yugoslavia. That has now 'fallen' onto my Amazon.com Wish List.

Overall: It's kind of a long, hard slog, but it's oh so worth it- you want to get your knowledge on about the Balkans? Want to understand why we were bombing Kosovo way back when? This is the book for you!

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is based on the first 400 pages of "The Balkans". I am familiar enough with the World War II, post-war and post 1989 periods to not feel I missed much in skipping those parts of the book.

Glenny is a journalist. "The Balkans" whips along like many good pieces of reporting strung together, concentrating on great men, battles and peace conferences while ignoring religion (other than outlines of the clashes between and among Orthodox Catholics, their Roman facing brethren and the Islam of the Ottoman Empire), culture, society and politics. Constant descriptions of this peasant uprising followed by this set of battles followed by this truce conducted by these third party (Great Power) leaders doesn't give much insight into the region.

Best approached as a chronology of events and not an explanation of them.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Misha Glenny has undertaken a monumental task, to provide a readable, one volume history of what amounts to 13 countries over the relatively short period from 1804-2011. Glenny covers this large geopolitical region by picking a time or an event and writing about how it effected the different countries. At times the book felt disorganized because he would jump from one country to another. But now having finished the book I don’t think there was a better way to do it. Sometimes there are repetitions, but it goes to show that everyone was interfering or somehow involved with everyone else. He provides some helpful maps in the beginning of the book, and a glossary of (mostly Turkish and Muslim) terms in the back. What would be extremely useful for future editions is a character list. The hardest part of this book is that he talks about hundreds of people, leaders, politicians, rebels, artists, etc. without explaining who they are. A glossary of major players would have increased my comprehension of all that went on. I mostly focused on understanding the context of what has happened to the people of the Balkans, rather than trying to retain all of the explicit details of the politicking and battles.

In many ways this book was a horrifying read. It is no wonder that Glenny says it took him 4 years to write it. It took me many months to read because I had to take breaks. The violence emanating from this text is so strong that it would effect my mood by the time I had read my pages for the day. And this is just reading about it. I cannot imagine what the poor people living in this region have gone through, what the reality of the massacres really is. Glenny writes with dispassionate compassion. It is obvious that he cares much for this region and its people by the way he comes down so hard on Western Europe, and toward the end, the U.S. too. He undermines the general perception of the Balkans that it is unstable and violent by nature; a “powder keg,” by accusing the West’s almost constant interference with the region as deliberately (and sometimes naively) provoking the strife, for their own benefit. As the Ottoman Empire was being dismantled at the end of the 19th century the Austro-Hungarians, the Germans, the French and the British tried to reorganize the region into countries that would suit their economic purposes, completely disregarding any natural nation building that would have happened. They stirred up the nationalism and ethnic divides that have led to brutal massacres again and again, because warring groups are people easily manipulated. The West has never taken responsibility for their sins in the region and Glenny makes the case that it is the people of the Balkans who are victims of the West, not the other way around. In the chapter “A Maze of Conspiracy” Glenny describes how events spiraled into creating WWI: “The great powers seemed to have all but lost their ability to cajole the Balkan states into serving external interests on the peninsula. The Balkans were not the powder keg, as is so often believed: the metaphor is inaccurate. They were merely the powder trail that the great powers themselves had laid. The powder keg was Europe” (243). Glenny enlightens the reader as to why Franz Ferdinand was murdered. It had always been taught to me as somewhat vague, that the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne was just vacationing through Sarajevo when he was shot, when in reality he had been interfering with Serbia for quite some time. The chapter about WWI is one of the best in the book, it really clears up a lot of myths by telling this story from the Balkan’s point of view.

Glenny does not infantilize the populations of the Balkans. His condemnation of the Great Powers does not excuse the manipulators, criminals, corrupted politicians and the perpetrators of violence who wreak havoc in the region and have prevented stable nations from developing for so long. He describes how most of the countries had peasant foundations and they were urbanized without the social building of education and job opportunities. Add into this the fierce competition between the Muslims, Jews and Christians of the region and sensitivities flare. This makes it very easy to cause a conflagration at the whim of whoever has seized power for the moment. Glenny doesn’t spend time fantasizing about how the Balkans would have developed after the Ottoman’s collapse if they had been left alone, but he does make the case that interference prevented a natural social evolution, but instead gave power to the wrong people.

Another theme of the book is the interactions that the different ethnicities of the region have with each other. He goes into depth about the Serb, Croat and Albanian conflicts over Bosnia and Hercegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia. Bulgaria and Greece also come into conflict over Macedonia. He explains why the first Yugoslavia failed and why the second one was destined to fail. Croats and Serbs were being played off of each other instead of being encouraged to work together to create a real nation where equality is sought. He quotes a follower of Tito’s, Dobrivoj Radosavljević who criticized his leader with these words: “Tito committed a historical error by encouraging Albanian-Serb and Croatian-Serb conflict. Yugoslavia will pay a heavy price for it,” (593) sadly his words were prescient. He explains how Albania’s culture is tribal and that created issues with trying to modernize the nation. He describes the horrors of the Communist era for Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria. While Yugoslavia suffered under Tito’s communism, they were economically and culturally better off because they were not behind the Iron Curtain, and were still somewhat accessible to the West. But his regime was cruel too. Glenny also spends a fair amount of time discussing Turkey and the influence they had and then lost on the region.

Glenny does not spare the reader the atrocities that happen all over the region throughout the centuries. However, he also does not revel in it. He describes the situations but doesn’t glorify it by spending more time, or using gory language. This allowed me to read about some terrible things and keep my compassion for the region. While it seems like there are no good guys, Glenny reminds the reader over and over again that it is always the civilians who are massacred, who have to pick up the pieces and try again. There is a survival instinct that brings hope to the region.

Glenny ends the book with describing the utter uselessness of NATO or the UN to stop the ethnic cleansings and the extreme violence that happened when Yugoslavia broke up in 1991. He goes into detail about what caused the breakdown and how it spiraled into the unfortunately recognizable style of warfare perpetuated on civilians that has been going on for centuries. As a result of this Bosnia and Hercegovina are one country with two parts: the Federation and the Serbian portion, the Republic of Srpska. There is still a NATO base monitoring the situation. Kosovo is a sovereign nation according to some, though Serbia still contests it. Albanians in Kosovo are fighting for equality. Greece and Bulgaria both lay claim to portions of Macedonia. Croatia and Montenegro have become vacation destinations and Slovenia has moved closer to Central Europe culturally. Things seem to be steadily improving and people are hopeful that the 21st century can be different for the people of the Balkans, if they can survive the economic crisis that is currently bankrupting Greece and hurting everyone.

[Araik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dit is het bewijs dat al mijn aankopen van dikke historische titels het écht waard zijn (gekocht in 2018, gelezen in 2025)

[Kevin Tole · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Before 1999, the great powers had intervened three times in the Balkans. The first was the Congress of Berlin in 1878 when European diplomats agreed to replace Ottoman power by building a system of competing alliances on the Balkan Peninsula. The second began with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia in the summer of 1914 and culminated in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne and the Great Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey. The third started with Italy’s unprovoked attack on Greece in March 1940 and ended with the consolidation of unrepresentative pro-Soviet regimes in Bulgaria, Romania and a pro-Western administration in Greece…… And the violence that these interventions encouraged, often inflicted by one Balkan people on another, ensured the continuation of profound civil and nationalist strife.”

How to sum up 200 years of intense and prolonged conflict in a region little known and often overlooked? And in one volume! Misha Glennie is to be congratulated for even attempting such a challenge. This is a book that needed writing (and probably needs updating having been first published 25 years ago in 1999) and certainly required reading by all the leaders of the great powers.


Political Map of the Balkans

The above map broadly shows how it stands now. The book begins at the start of the 19th century when the Ottoman Empire still held sway and it ends with the NATO debacle of Kosovo. Throughout 200 years what Glennie delineates is how the intervention of the great powers, as the quote at the top implies, have accentuated differences in a region and exacerbated conflicts. In a region with potential clashes through ethnicity, nation, religion and class, the West has tried to impose it’s order like a blind man stumbling into a minefield. To manage 200 years of strife in one volume is a compromise between reportage of events and readability. Some detail is lost in the necessity of having to cover such a vast swathe of injustices. At times the violence and scale of atrocity is overwhelming Some day there might be a three-volume work on the history of the region which manages to address the complexity of all the issues. But Glennie sets out to produce a volume which is readable and opens the eyes (and probably wanted to influence the influencers). As a study it stands right up there in history books with The Proud Tower, The World Turned Upside Down and The Fatal Shore. This is an eye-opening study of history and hubris.

[Huw Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

The post-Imperial history of Africa is a demonstration of the perils of imposing artifical boundaries across tribal lands. A closer example of this heinous stupidity is found in the Balkans, an area that even today is regarded by most europeans as vestigial and primitive. In 1999 centuries of Balkan tribalism exploded into the Kososvo war which sucked in many nations in an attempt to prevent things escalating and,subsequently, demonstrated how inhumane we can be if the opposition is seen as sub-human.
Misha Glenny is a great reporter with specialist knowledge of the area. In this book he explores the two hundred years of mismanagement, bitterness and hatred that led up to Kosovo. It is a hard read but worth every page.

[Adrian Fingleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this a few years back - just remembered when someone I know put it as 'want to read'. It's a great book and really explains the confusing complexities and origins of the conflict in that troubled part of the world. A great and educational book

[Indraroop · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF -- too dry and academic. The author's clearly done a ton of research but the narrative is much more focused on details than readability.

[Cool_guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Misha Glenny does an admirable job navigating the confused history of the Balkans, a place where ethnic and national loyalties seem always to be shifting; to even say it is a cliché. Take Macedonia for example: in the 1990s forced by the Greeks to call itself "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" because Athens insisted that it was not, in fact, the real Macedonia. I wonder if this inspired Prince. He changed his name only a year after the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

[Dimitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Misha Glenny neemt in dit boek de hele Balkan onder de loep over de periode 1804-1999. De periodisering is wellicht niet toevallig. Glenny wil vooral aantonen dat de hedendaagse conflicten in Joegoslavië geen stammenconflicten zijn, een strijd tussen wilde onbeschaafde volkeren, maar hun oorsprong vinden in het nationalisme, dat ontstond in de 19de eeuw en dat aan de basis ligt van de moderne Balkanstaten. Meer bepaald ziet hij terecht in de Napoleontische oorlogen en de instelling van de Illyrische provincie op een deel van het Joegoslavische grondgebied de kern voor de Zuidslavische idee, die werd overgenomen door de latere, naar autonomie strevende nationalistische stroming in Kroatië. De liberale revolutie van 1848 werd op de Balkan bijna altijd op nationalistische manier ingevuld. De zgn. etnische conflicten op de dag van vandaag gaan dus in Glenny's visie in de eerste plaats terug op de ontwikkeling van het nationalisme in de 19de eeuw. De problemen van de tweede afgrenzing -- al kan het nauwelijks zo genoemd worden --, de Balkan als geografisch en politiek gebied, behandelt de auteur expliciet in zijn proloog. De perceptie en definitie van het gebied is in de loop van de geschiedenis zeer variabel, gedeeltelijk te wijten aan het feit dat de buitenlandse kennis van de regio meestal nogal beperkt is.
De ondertitel: 'nationalisme, oorlog en de grote mogendheden', kondigt aan dat Glenny ook de rol van de grote mogendheden in het gebied wil bestuderen. Zo is er de aanwezigheid van het Oostenrijks-Hongaarse koninkrijk in het westen en de Osmaanse staat in het oosten van het gebied. Een groot aantal conferenties van de grote mogendheden bepaalden de statelijke fysionomie van de Balkan. Denken we maar aan die van Berlijn (1878), het Verdrag van Versailles na de Eerste Wereldoorlog, de onderhandelingen over de verdeling van de invloedssferen na de Tweede Wereldoorlog tussen Stalin en Churchill in 1944. De revoluties van 1844 of 1914 hadden diepgaande repercussies op de Balkan. Het boek geeft dus ook regelmatig verwijzingen naar de kernpunten van tweehonderd jaar internationale diplomatieke geschiedenis.
Het perspectief van waaruit Glenny deze omvangrijke materie te lijf gaat, staat niet los van zijn vroeger werk als journalist. De hoofdmotivatie waarom hij tweehonderd jaar teruggaat is het besef van de relevantie van de geschiedenis voor het begrijpen van de huidige conflicten. Daarbij wordt intelligent gezocht naar patronen, herhalingen in de geschiedenis, maar dan toch uit het besef dat "het hetzelfde is, maar anders". M.a.w., Glenny kleeft als andere goede kenners van de Balkangeschiedenis de overtuiging aan dat onder nieuwe omstandigheden toch vergelijkbare patronen te ontdekken zijn, en dat dit de interpretatie van de huidige problemen vergemakkelijkt. Ondanks de transformaties van de toestanden valt er dus uit de geschiedenis te leren.
Glenny staat dus voor een aanzienlijke opdracht bij het begin van het boek. Het schetsen van menigvuldige complexe ontwikkelingen, een ware geografische en periodieke balkanisering. Op het eerste gezicht lijkt het wel dat Glenny zal wegzinken in anekdotiek. De behandeling is met uitzondering misschien van de proloog absoluut niet academisch. De auteur houdt er een eenvoudige vertelstijl op na. Deze narratieve aanpak verglijdt op het eerste gezicht in onnoemelijk gedetailleerde beschrijvingen. Maar mijn aanvankelijk wantrouwen smelt weg als sneeuw voor de zon. De details blijken uitermate goed gekozen en worden bijna altijd verbonden met essentiële ontwikkelingen.
Het boek wordt gestructureerd aan de hand van subperiodes, waarvan de beginpunten ook juist dikwijls door de diplomatie van de grote mogendheden worden gedicteerd. Het eerste hoofdstuk schetst de opstand en de revolutie van de boeren tegen de gevestigde orde opgelegd door de Osmanen (1804-1866). Dan wordt ingegaan op de redenen voor het verval van het Osmaanse rijk (1839-1878). In de zuidelijke Balkan wordt het labyrint van samenzweringen getekend, in de noordelijke een rijk van illusies (1878-1914). De volgende periode omvat de Eerste Wereldoorlog en de gevolgen ervan (1914-1924). De koningshuizen en de precaire democratieën in het interbellum vormen het onderwerp van het zesde hoofdstuk (1923-1941). Dan volgt weer de exaltatie van de Tweede Wereldoorlog (1941-1949). Ten slotte wordt de communistische overheersing beschreven (1949-1989). Een korte epiloog van minder dan dertig bladzijden beschrijft dan het hedendaagse conflict (1989-1999), met daarin vooral aandacht opnieuw voor de rol van de internationale gemeenschap en met oog voor de invloed van de economische ontwikkelingen op de politieke gebeurtenissen. Het werk bevat een goed register, een beperkte maar essentiële literatuurlijst en nuttige kaarten. Het enige wat misschien ontbreekt is een chronologie, een tijdstabel -- globaal of misschien zelfs per regio. Het opnemen van de gebruikte tussentitels van de hoofdstukken zou het raadplegen van dit standaardwerk achteraf ook vergemakkelijken.
[Robert Stallaerts]
Copyright (c) Vlabin-VBC2000 Bron: http://www.deleeswolf.be

[Lachlan]

ready to be an annoying history grad on the backpacking trip.