I will try to keep this short. That’s code for, ‘prepare yourself for a long story.’
I like history. I think it’s important to be able to look back and identify a few key moments in ones past that have been instrumental in defining a persons (or, in this case, a regions) current state. Since this blog is about the Balkans, let’s look at its history, and a few of its turning points. The majority of what follows is copied / pasted directly from Wikipedia. There, credit given.
However, if you’d rather not read this brief history, take a look at the video at the end of this blog. It shows a recent round-table discussion held in Sarajevo between various politicians, leaders and artisans. The issues are complex, and from a political standpoint, they seem nearly impossible to solve. But there is also a grassroots movement underway; whose battle cry is: ‘love covers a multitude of sins’. And that is what Natascha and I are praying for; to see that movement grow.
Most of us Americans know the former Yugoslavia lies in southeast Europe. The countries that lie in this region are (from north to south): Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, the southern edge of Romania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece and the far western tip of Turkey (‘European side of Istanbul). So you can see that the region is quite diverse in language and culture, but bound together by its geographical importance.
The Balkan peninsula is that region that lies to the east of the Adriatic Sea in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Historically the area was known as a crossroads of various cultures. It has been a juncture between the Latin and Greek bodies of the Roman Empire, the destination of a massive influx of pagan Slavs, an area where Orthodox and Catholic Christianity met, as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity.
As the Roman Empire declined in power and reach, so too the infrastructure and the population; leaving room for other groups to assert themselves and organize. The Slavic people, known as nomadic farmers, began settling the region in the 6th century....the late 500’s.
During the Middle Ages, for the next 1000 years, from 500 - 1500, the Balkans became the stage for a series of wars between the Byzantine Roman, Bulgarian and Serbian Empires.
By the end of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire had become the controlling force in the region.
In the past several centuries, because of the frequent Ottoman wars in Europe fought in and around the Balkans, and the comparative Ottoman isolation from the mainstream of economic advance (reflecting the shift of Europe's commercial and political centre of gravity towards the Atlantic), the Balkans has been the least developed part of Europe. According to Suraiya Faroqhi and Donald Quataert, "The population of the Balkans, according to one estimate, fell from a high of 8 million in the late 16th century to only 3 million by the mid-eighteenth. This estimate is in harmony with the first findings based on Ottoman documentary evidence."[25]
Most of the Balkan nation-states emerged during the 19th and early 20th centuries as they gained independence either from the Ottoman Empire or the Austro-Hungarian empire. Greece in 1829, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro in 1878, Romania in 1878, Albania in 1912, Croatia and Slovenia in 1991.
In 1912–1913 the First Balkan War broke out when the nation-states of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro united in an alliance against the Ottoman Empire. As a result of the war, almost all remaining European territories of the Ottoman Empire were captured and partitioned among the allies. Ensuing events also led to the creation of an independent Albanian state. Despite its success, Bulgaria was dissatisfied over the division of the spoils in Macedonia, and provoked the Second Balkan War when it attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece. The Serbs and the Greeks repelled them and after the Greek army invaded Bulgaria followed by a Romanian intervention, Bulgaria collapsed. The Ottoman Empire used the opportunity to recapture Eastern Thrace, establishing its new western borders that still stand today.
The nation of Yugoslavia was created in the aftermath of World War I, and was composed mostly of South Slavic Christians, but the nation also had a substantial Muslim minority. This nation lasted from 1918 to 1941, when it was invaded by Axis powers during World War II. In 1943, a new government called the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was established under Josip Broz Tito, who maintained a strongly authoritarian leadership that was non-aligned with either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
In the 1980s, relations among the six republics of the SFRY deteriorated. Slovenia and Croatia desired greater autonomy within the Yugoslav confederation, while Serbia sought to strengthen federal authority. As it became clearer that there was no solution agreeable to all parties, Slovenia and Croatia moved toward secession.
Although tensions in Yugoslavia had been mounting since the early 1980s, it was 1990 that proved decisive. In the midst of economic hardship, Yugoslavia was facing rising nationalism amongst its various ethnic groups.
The wars in the former Yugoslavia were fought in the 1990s between the republics that sought sovereignty on one side and the government in Belgrade on the other side that wanted to either prevent their independence or keep large parts of that territory under its control. The wars were complex: characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts among the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, mostly between Serbs (and to a lesser extent, Montenegrins) on the one side and Croats and Bosniaks (and to a lesser degree, Slovenes) on the other; but also between Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia (in addition to a separate conflict fought between rival Bosniak factions in Bosnia). The wars ended in various stages and mostly resulted in full international recognition of new sovereign territories, but with massive economic disruption to the successor states.
