The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-2011

If you want something to read because there is nothing on television, then this is not the book for you. If you want to really, really understand the people and the politics of the Balkans, then this is the one book that you want.Great author. It's the best history book that I have ever read.

The great object lesson of this book is that the Balkans as a terms really is only appropriate in geography. Politically and socially it is a meaningless term. Misha Glenny's narrative begins around 1800 and continues through 1990s and provides ample proof of this thesis. The Balkans tended to function during this period as a area for influence contests involving the great powers of their day, be they Turkey, Russia, Italy, Great Britain, France, Austira-Hungary and Germany. This dynamic imposed itself on the nations in question who waged foreign policy as a zero sum game with implications down to the present day.To begin with the Balkans are a mix of a variety of language groups, religions, and separate ethnic groups. It represents a fault line between the east and west, among Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Islam, as well as between the Slavic and Latin worlds. Conflict is more than a tendency, it is a way of life. The only way that peace is generally possible or at least since 1800 has been from the influence of outside forces gaining a measure of control over events.The independence of the various Balkan countries occurred over a period during the first 70 years of the 19th century. Ottoman influence was on the wane, due to a failure of the central government to maintain control over the provinces. Initial rebellions against Turkish forces were against the local officials who were extracting high taxes from farmers who developed stronger commercial ties with Vienna than with Istanbul. Istanbul welcomed these uprisings and looked forward to displacing disobedient local officials with their own candidates. Imagine the surprise when the peoples of the Balkans failed to share this vision.As Turkey continued to decline, outside powers such as Britain, France, Austria and Russia all tried to manage this process. The first nation to be created was Greece, followed by Romania, which took advantage of the Crimean War to play all four sides off against each other. Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro followed.By the time of 1900, influence had passed from Turkey to the great powers, which by this point included Germany and Italy. The countries made up of the former Ottoman Empire had moved from fighting Turkey to fighting each other and the Balkan wars served as yet another instance of great power rivalry driven mainly by local conflict.Both world wars were nothing short of horrific. The first of these wars began, aas Bismarck predicted "over some foolish thing in the Balkans." Serbia and Romania received the blunt of a combined Bulgarian, Austro-Hungarian, and German attack. Serbia evacuated the country to preserve the nation abroad. Romania was forced to withdraw its forces to the northeastern portion of the country, both sustained huge losses. After the war, Serbia was incorporated into a confederation of southern Slavs and Romania received Transylvania both at the Treaty of Versailles. Bulgaria, despite claims that it had in favor of Wilson's Fourteen Points all along, was given short shift. Athens, though given permission to pursue the "Great Idea" of an enlarged Greece, to include Ionia on the Aegean coast, was defeated by Ataturk, who recreated Anatolia into Modern Turkey.The Second World War was nothing short of horrific where the Balkans became a theatre of conflict between both Communist Russia and Nazi Germany. The behavior by various nation leaders during the period was nothing short of shameful as they sought to preserve themselves in the face of such a titanic struggle. The Iron curtain era that followed, though stable was ultimately absurd, with nations subordinated to megalomaniac leaders who sought to gratify their vanity and Moscow.If there was ever a place that gave lie to the expression "the end of history," it was, as Glenny demonstrates, the Balkans. The breakdown of communism coupled with the breakup of Yugoslavia "unfroze" history. The wars that followed were not so much a failure of policy as they were a failure to appreciate history. All of the fissions that had been hidden or swept under the table under communism suddenly appeared. The Balkans was not the only place to experience this phenomenon, but it probably was the bloodiest example.Any book that can tell such a remarkable but complex story with full command of the facts is definitely worth reading. This work by Glenny is likely to be the definitive text of the subject for some time. It is worth reading by anyone who has an interest in the history of the region and the history of Europe.

I bought this book because I didn’t know very much about the Balkans. Mostly my knowledge consisted of news stories that come out during big stories, such as the destruction of Yugoslavia. I wanted to understand more of the back story to these news articles. In particular, I wanted to understand why Yugoslavia fell apart.The book did cover 200 years in detail, so I can now recount what happened. But I still don’t understand why things occurred as they did. Maybe that is the hazard of reading about a territory by a journalist instead of a historian. Journalists don’t usually look at the big picture.There were three particular areas in which I was dissatisfied.1) The biggest problem with the book is he never explained why the people of the Balkans are so fractious and localized. Other large areas have come together as countries in Europe, such as France, England, Germany, and Italy. Those countries all had regional disputes, but the countries held together. I have some theories on possibilities:a. Maybe the countryside was more rugged than other areas that resulted in successful countries, so the localities were more separate culturally than in other countries? Glenny did not discuss this possibility at all, so who knows?b. Perhaps being part of an empire for so many years which had a different state religion than most of the Balkans, and who were actively discriminated against, made the residents more rebellious against any centralized authority? (I realized later that Croatia and Slovenia were never part of the Ottoman Empire, which weakens this idea. I did not realize this about Croatia and Slovenia from reading this book; did he even discuss it? I may have just missed it.)c. Coming together as a country in the 20th Century might be the killing issue, after the other large countries were already consolidated. Also, the other countries might have been able to use more draconian methods in earlier centuries to hold the group together.But Glenny didn’t discuss any of these issues. I wish he had.2) Yugoslavia came together as a country right after WWI. I was looking forward to an explanation of how this happened, and what forces and rationales were laid out pro and con. But he had no discussion whatsoever. Suddenly there was Yugoslavia. Probably one of the most significant events in those 200 years, and he left it blank.3) On the last page before the Epilogue (which was written for the second edition), he wrote “There is an unassailable case for political and economic restitution in the Balkans.” And yet after 662 pages of reading his narrative, I completely disagree. His case is far from compelling. My impression throughout the entire book was that most of the travails of the Balkans, once they got free of the Ottomans, was almost completely of their own doing. Yes, the big powers made decisions in their own interest and not in those of the Balkans. This is how history has played out everywhere and always. It isn’t as if the Balkans were treated as slaves by the large powers, as has been the case in some places and periods. And even Glenny agrees that during the destruction of Yugoslavia that the great powers acted idealistically, unlike in all the other periods. Thus the period when the Balkans saw the most pain and destruction, the great powers did their best to minimize that pain. Perhaps they weren’t very successful, but that seemed mostly because the Balkanites themselves were so determined to destroy themselves. I doubt that anyone could have done much better. The people of the Balkans have had many difficulties for the last 200 years, but my reading of this book tells me that this wasn’t the fault of outsiders.I gave the book three stars because it provided a lot of important information. But not more stars because good interpretation was lacking.

Glenny does an excellent job providing the intricate details of the balkans region over two centuries of turbulence, albeit to exhaustion. Often reading the book I find the level of detail detracting from the significance of the historical event. There is nearly 100 pages that could honestly be summarized as every balkans nation seeing the downfall of the ottoman empire decided to fight for independence spaced out over a 30 year period. I believe this book could take a lesson in brevity, providing the reader the necessary historical context for the outbreak of the 1990s Balkans wars, without requiring the reader to push through over 600 pages.

Only read some of it, looking very good and hoping for a great read from this famous correspondent, more anon.Anon... May 2016, read the whole book, and I was fascinated from beginning to end. A well researched, absorbing,authoritative, intelligent and informed volume. Gave a tremendous insight into a part of the world hardly anyone seems to know anything about. I really don't know how better this could have been and recommend it wholeheartedly. Well done Mr Glenny

Brought this to get through my a level history.Book arrived in good condition.Very good read as well as most books like this bore me to tears but this one actually made the reading enjoyable instead of painful.

The previous review suggests that this is not an easy book to read. I found the syle easy and informative. It is balkans themselves - and the pace of change in the region over the last 200 year - which I suspect is the real problem.Stick with this and you will find a new insight into the region. And at the end? Well Gleny is not an optimist. What we seem to have is a traditional balkan fudge and truce - we've consolidated the powers of local barans and warlords and failed - yet again - to develop a proper economic development strategy for the region, which Gleny sees as a constant failure over his time frame.

Really, a good account of the history of the Balkans

Perfect book which gives you an insight in the history of the Balkans and how ancient hatreds and tribal rivalries have been used by diplomats and politicians to main and ruin countries and their ethnic people. A real eye opener