At the end of the twentieth century people spoke as if the Balkans had plagued Europe forever. But two hundred years earlier, the Balkans did not exist. It was not the Balkans but the 'Rumeli' that the Ottomans ruled, the formerly Roman lands that they had conquered from Byzantium, together with its Christian inhabitants. In this original account of the region Mark Mazower dispels current Western clichés and replaces stereotypes with a vivid account of how mountains, empires and religions have shaped its inhabitants' lives. As a bridge between Europe and Asia it has been exposed to a constant incursion of nomadic peoples across the centuries.
Mazower's narrative ranges broadly both in time - from the Romans to the present, including the Byzantine and Ottoman experiences - and in space, treating the former Turkish domains in Europe as part of a common if complex historical inheritance. One of our outstanding historians of modern Europe, he has written a book of extraordinary richness and concision, which provides not only a vital historical and cultural background to contemporary Balkan politics but also offers the reader a fresh view of the region's relationship with Europe as a whole.
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Mazower demonstrates how recent the concept of 'the Balkans' is, and how freighted with preconceptions. He traces the geographical, demographic and political pressures which carved out interdependent but antagonistic political units; in the process he suggestively redefines our ideas of 'Europe', especially regarding its Ottoman dimension.
The reflections on subjects as diverse as the continuity of Byzantine culture, the fate of 'post-peasant' societies in the age of tourism, the uses of ecumenism (and occultism), and the relationship of nationalism and globalisation make this book far larger than its narrow covers suggest; the epilogue alone, 'On Violence', should be required reading for all students of modern history.
It takes as its epigraph the remark made by an Ottoman official to a French priest in 1848. 'When I travelled in Europe, I saw everywhere things I did not particularly like. Fine - I did not say, "That is no good." I wanted to know why things were thus.' Mazower himself is faithful to this precept, and it is one of the reasons why he has written a modern classic.
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