The Balkans in World History

Eminent historian Andrew Wachtel here depicts the Balkans as that borderland geographical space in which four of the world's greatest civilizations have overlapped in a sustained and meaningful way to produce a complex, dynamic, sometimes combustible, multi-layered local prvilization. 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 of the various civilizations that have nominally conquered the region.

Andrew Baruch Wachtel is Bertha and Max Dressler Professor of the Humanities, Dean, The Graduate School, and Director, Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies, Northwestern University.

Introduction: The Balkans as a Historical and Cultural Melting Pot
Chapter 1: The Balkans from Prehistory to the Byzantine Empire
Chapter 2: The Medieval Balkans
Chapter 3: The Balkans under Ottoman Rule
Chapter 4: The Long 19th Century (1775 -1922)
Chapter 5: The 20th Century-From the Balkans to Southeast Europe
Notes
Chronology
Further Reading
Websites
Index