Praise for Dennis P. Hupchick's the Balkans
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Praise for Dennis P. Hupchick’s The Balkans “In The Balkans, Dennis Hupchick has produced a creative, balanced, objective, well-written, and at times even inspiring synthesis of the peninsula’s convulsive history. It is a masterful synthesis that covers the history of the individual Balkans peoples at the best moments of their history, while also giving due recognition to those external powers—the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and to a lesser degree the Habsburg Empire—that have had a controlling influence over the Balkans ever since the fifth century. It is a book that is a joy to read. Dennis Hupchick’s The Balkans will undoubtedly join the ranks of those time-honored volumes that stretch from Ferdinand Schevill’s The History of the Balkan Peninsula (1933), through Robert Lee Wolff’s The Balkans in Our Time (1956) and L.S. Stavrianos’s The Balkans since 1453 (1958), to Barbara Jelavich’s History of the Balkans (1983).” Steven Béla Várdy, Ph.D. McAnulty Distinguished Professor of European History Duquesne University “Dennis Hupchick’s history of the Balkans is an expertly researched and excellently written text that fills a vital need in historical scholarship. It is the first single volume English language comprehensive history of the Balkans covering the peninsula from the Middle Ages to the post Communist period. Hupchick gives us a readable look at the complexities of this crucial world crossroads for over fifteen centuries allowing us to understand the problems which are still making headlines in the contemporary world. He concludes with a valuable bibliography in each chapter for further exploration. This is a vital work for every student of history and political science and for those who are simply interested in understanding the crises of today.” Frederick B. Chary Professor of History at Indiana University Northwest This page intentionally left blank The Balkans This page intentionally left blank The Balkans from Constantinople to Communism DENNIS P. HUPCHICK THE BALKANS Copyright © Dennis P. Hupchick, 2002. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in hardcover in 2002 by Palgrave Macmillan First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ paperback edition: February 2004 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Mac- millan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-4039-6417-5 ISBN 978-0-312-29913-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780312299132 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hupchick, Dennis P. The Balkans: from Constantinople to communism / Dennis P. Hupchick. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Balkan peninsula-History. I. Title: From Constantinople to communism. II. Title. DR36 H87 2001 949.6-dc21 00-062590 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by planettheo.com First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN paperback edition: February 2004 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memory of my mentor, James F. Clarke (1906-1982) This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface. .xi Note on Spelling and Pronunciation . xvii Maps . .xviii Glossary . xxxi Introduction: Land, People, and Culture. 1 PART ONE Era of Byzantine Hegemony, 600–1355 1. East Romans, Slavs, and Bulgars . 21 2. The First Bulgarian Empire. 38 3. Byzantium Declines. 57 4. Serbia Preeminent . 75 Further Readings . 95 PART TWO Era of Ottoman Domination, 1355–1804 5. Ottoman Conquest . 101 6. The “Ottoman System”. 124 7. The Balkan Peoples under the Ottomans . 144 8. Ottoman Destabilization. 164 Further Readings . 184 PART THREE Era of Romantic Nationalism, 1804–1878 9. The Rise of Romantic Nationalism . 189 10. Revolutions and Resurrected States . 212 11. Ottoman “Reform” Efforts . 234 12. The “Eastern Question” . 247 Further Readings . 268 PART FOUR Era of Nation-State Nationalism, 1878–1945 13. Early Nation-States . 275 14. National Conflicts. 296 15. World War I and Versailles . 316 16. The Interwar Years and World War II. 338 Further Readings . 360 PART FIVE Era of Communist Domination, 1945–1991 17. Communist Takeover . 369 18. The Greek Exception . 388 19. Splits in Socialism . 403 20. Communist Decline and Collapse. 416 Further Readings . 445 Selected General Bibliography. 449 Index. 456 Preface On a late-September evening in 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Cham- berlain went on radio to address the nation regarding the growing international crisis surrounding events in Czechoslovakia. The Nazi-influenced Sudeten Ger- man minority in that state had precipitated a situation that threatened to result in a German invasion of the country. France had signed an alliance guaranteeing Czechoslovakia’s security, and Britain was closely allied with France in case of any future hostilities. An invasion by Hitler’s Germany would force both to live up to their treaty responsibilities. The frightening possibility of a costly and bloody European war loomed large, and naturally the British people were concerned. In the course of his address, Chamberlain, desperate to avoid a conflict, made the following comment: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.” The next day Hitler notified Chamberlain that he was willing to discuss a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The day after that, the British prime minister flew off to Munich, where he and French Premier Edward Daladier, under the delusion that peace thus would be assured, essentially caved in to Hitler’s demands to dismember France’s East European ally. Fear of spilling British blood to uphold Britain’s moral responsibilities and ignorance of East European realities led Chamberlain to the Munich appeasement. Far from preventing the war he feared, his actions ultimately guaranteed its outbreak a year later. One cannot help but be struck by similarities between Chamberlain’s reaction to the Sudeten crisis sixty-odd years ago and those of Western leaders to the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina that raged between 1992 and 1995. The same ignorance, befuddlement, and fear reflected in Chamberlain’s telling remark characterized their efforts to end the Bosnian debacle. Apparently lacking any concrete understanding of the situation on the ground, caught off guard by the rapid and violent disintegration of Yugoslavia, and afraid that the resulting regional instability would threaten relationships in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), the Western powers vacillated among inactivity, half measures, and appeasement of nationalist aggressors—anything to avoid costly, and potentially bloody, direct intervention—before finally manipulating the parties involved in the war into signing a tenuous agreement at Dayton, Ohio. xii THE BALKANS Later, in 1999, fear of casualties and, once again, a lack of understanding of Balkan realities led the West to resort to an airwar half measure against Serbia in an avowed effort to protect the Albanian minority in the Serbian province of Kosovo from Serbian ultranationalist “ethnic cleansing.” NATO’s bombing campaign did not spare the Kosovar Albanians from the atrocities that it supposedly sought to prevent. Ultimately Serbia’s leadership was bludgeoned into submission and most of the Kosovar Albanian refugees originally forced out of the region by the Serbs returned to their devastated homes, whereupon they began perpetrating their own round of atrocities on those Kosovar Serbs who did not flee when Serbian forces withdrew. The befuddlement and fear demonstrated by Western leaders during the Bosnian and Kosovo crises were a direct reflection of an ignorance of Balkan history. But the leaders merely mirrored the more widespread ignorance of their respective constituencies. The majority of westerners had little knowledge of, or interest in, Balkan affairs beyond a rudimentary, generalized, and frequently oversimplified awareness of assorted cold war-related situations: Yugoslavia was a “good” Commu- nist country ever since Marshal Josip Tito broke with Joseph Stalin in 1948 and mixed capitalism with socialism; Bulgaria was the blind puppet and lackey of the Soviet Union; Romania under Nicolae Ceaupescu was a “friendly” Communist state that frequently opposed Soviet imperialism; rarely noticed Albania was akin to Tibet, isolated in its mountains and in its affinities to Red China; Greece was part of NATO, a member of the West that was not considered part of the Balkans; and Turkey, another NATO ally, was Middle Eastern and not a part of Europe. When Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1992, unfamiliarity with pre-cold war Balkan history made it easy for Western politicians and journalists to blame the resulting warfare on “centuries-old” ethnic or religious conflicts—again, an oversimplification rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of Balkan history—and to tag the fighting inaccurately as the “Third” Balkan War (assuming, of course, that their Western audiences were aware that there once had been two others). Perhaps the unfamiliarity with Balkan history displayed by English speakers can be blamed partly on a certain lack of general education dealing with the region. Except for a few occurrences that have played important roles in determining the course of Western European developments (such as the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and the 1914 assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo), events in the Balkans rarely have found their way into English-language secondary education textbooks. At the level of higher education, the same often holds true for courses in general European and world history.