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19th & 20th Century Balkan History

Misha Glenny. The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999. New York: Viking Penguin, 2000. 726 pages.

Award-winning BBC journalist Misha Glenny's history of the Balkans in the 19th and 20th Centuries focuses on the political conflicts and violence of the region. He depicts the collapse of the great empires of the region and the growth of nation-states and strong nationalist rivalry. His main argument, however, is that the region's contemporary strife and problems are the result of 200 years of interference from the imperialistic great powers rather than from nationalist violence and ethnic hatred in the Balkans. He claims that the fate of the Balkans was due to the great powers blundering in their approach to the Balkans, whose "political orientation was decided in the distant capitals of great powers" (p. 520). For example, Glenny points out that given "the geographical diversity and complex demography of the Balkans, any division of the region into new states that neglected to take into account local antagonisms was bound to fail" (p. 133). Yet this was exactly what happened at the Congress of Berlin ending the Serbo-Turkish War of 1876. In addition, Western popular opinion, according to Glenny, has always regarded "the Balkans as a toxin threatening the health of Europe" (p. xxiv). The solution then was to isolate the Balkans. This was especially the case during the Cold War.

Glenny's purpose in writing the book was to find out more about the history of the Balkans himself. As a British journalist covering the 1990 wars in Yugoslavia, he realized he was ignorant of Balkan history, and in order to understand the war he was covering, he needed to know more about the Balkans. He employs a chronological structure that starts in 1999 Kosovo in which he gives a brief overview of the history of the Balkans and states that his book concentrates on the "events and processes within and without the Balkans which have...

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19th & 20th Century Balkan History. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 02:23, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1698093.html