Encompassing the period from the Neolithic era to the troubled present, this book studies the peoples, societies and cultures of the area situated between the Adriatic Sea in the west and the Black Sea in the east, between the Alpine region and Danube basin in the north and the Aegean Sea in the south. This is not a conventional history of the Balkans. Drawing upon archaeology, anthropology, economics, psychology and linguistics as well as history, the author has attempted a "total history" that integrates as many as possible of the avenues and categories of the Balkan experience.

Encompassing the period from the Neolithic era to the present, this book studies the peoples, societies, and cultures of the area situated between the Adriatic Sea in the west and the Black Sea in the east, between the Alpine region and Danube basin in the north and the Aegean Sea in the south. This is not a conventional history of the Balkans; rather, drawing upon archaeology, anthropology, economics, psychology, and linguistics as well as history, the author has attempted a total history that integrates many areas of the Balkan experience.

Encompassing the period from the Neolithic era to the troubled present, this book studies the peoples, societies and cultures of the area situated between the Adriatic Sea in the west and the Black Sea in the east, between the Alpine region and Danube basin in the north and the Aegean Sea in the south. This is not a conventional history of the Balkans. Drawing upon archaeology, anthropology, economics, psychology and linguistics as well as history, the author has attempted a "total history" that integrates as many as possible of the avenues and categories of the Balkan experience.

Since the collapse of Eastern European communism, the Balkans have been more prominent in world affairs than at any time since before the First World War. Crises in the area have led NATO to fire its first ever shots in anger, whilst international forces have been deployed on a scale and in a manner unprecedented in Europe since World War Two.An understanding of why this happened is impossible without some knowledge of the history of the area before the fall of communism, of how the communists came to power and how they used their authority thereafter. Covering the communist states of Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia, and including Greece, Richard Crampton provides a highly readable introduction to that history, one that will be read by journalists, diplomats and anyone interested in the region and its impact on world politics today.

Since the early 1990s, Southeast European studies have undergone profound changes, being shaped by the wars of Yugoslav succession and the ramifications of post-socialism, coupled with democratic deficiencies, which characterize most of Southeast Europe. The countries which it encompasses rest uneasily on the periphery of the developed variant of Western capitalism, but they have nonetheless to contend with the challenges of adjusting to a market economy. The imprint of these contexts on academic research has led to a discussion of the role of Southeast European studies. It is the task of this volume to summarize and raise awareness of this discussion. (Series: Studies on South East Europe - Vol. 16) [Subject: European Studies, Sociology, Politics]

This book explores the historial role of the Balkan Wars. In Eastern Europe, the two Balkan Wars of 1912/13 had greater importance than the First World War for the construction of nations and states. This volume shows how these “short” wars profoundly changed the sociopolitical situation in the Balkans, with consequences that are still felt today. More than one hundred years later, the successors of the belligerent states in Southeastern Europe memorialize the wars as heroic highlights of their respective pasts. Furthermore, the metaphor that the Balkans were Europe’s “powder keg”, perpetuated at the beginning of the twentieth century in the face of these wars, was reactivated in both the West and the East up through the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The authors entangle the hitherto exclusive national master narratives and analyse them cogently and trenchantly for an international readership. They make an indispensable contribution to the proper integration of the Balkan Wars into the European historical memory of twentieth-century warfare.

Bosnia enjoyed a special status within the Ottoman Empire. Many of the empire's 'janissaries', an elite military stratum of soldiers and nobleman, hailed from this Balkan region. So when Sultan Mehmet II abolished this warrior class in 1826, and this curtailed the regions access to influence in Constantinople, Bosnia rebelled. Under the leadership of Husein Gradascevic, the 'dragon of Bosnia', the kingdom declared independence and waged war with the Ottoman Empire. For the first time, Fatma Sel Turhan illuminates a period of crucial importance to the Balkan regions. She argues convincingly that the uprising was a response to Ottoman moves towards modernization designed to save the Ottoman Empire from decline, but which eventually led to its demise. She assesses how far the uprising can be considered a nationalist movement, who the rebels were, and how the central authorities dealt with and punished the perpetrators. "The Ottoman Empire and the Bosnian Uprising" is a major fresh contribution to our understanding of the late Ottoman world and the history of the Balkans.