The Balkans in world history / Andrew Baruch Wachtel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wachtel, Andrew.

Series:

New Oxford world history

The new Oxford world history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Balkan Peninsula--History.

Balkan Peninsula.

History.

Europe, Eastern--History.

Europe, Eastern.

Eastern Europe.

Physical Description:

ix, 147 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Summary:

In the historical and literary imagination, the Balkans loom large as a somewhat frightening and ill-defined space, often seen negatively as a region of small and spiteful peoples, wracked by racial and ethnic hatred, always ready to burst into violent conflict.

The Balkans in World History redefines this space in positive terms, taking as a starting point the cultural, historical, and social threads that allow us to see this region as a coherent if complex whole. Eminent historian Andrew Wachtel here depicts the Balkans as that borderland geographical space in which four of the world's greatest civiilizations have overlapped in a sustained and meaningful way to produce a complex, dynamic, sometimes combustible, multilayered local civilization. It is the space in which the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, of Byzantium, of Ottoman Turkey, and of Roman Catholic Europe met, clashed, and sometimes combined. The history of the Balkans is thus a history of creative borrowing by local people from the various civilizations that have nominally conquered the region. Encompassing Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey, the Balkans have absorbed many voices and traditions, resulting in one of the most complex and interesting regions on earth.

Contents:

The Balkans as borderland and melting pot

Beginnings: from prehistory to the Byzantine Empire

The medieval Balkans

The Balkans under Ottoman rule

The long nineteenth century (1775-1922)

The twentieth century from the Balkans to southeast Europe.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (page [131-137]) and index.

ISBN:

9780195338010

0195338014

9780195158496

0195158490

OCLC:

221960984