The history of the Balkan Peninsula, from the earliest times to the present day

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

I. The Epochs of Balkan History i

^ n. The Geography of the Balkan Peninsula 23

Chapter I The Epochs Of Balkan History

This book is concerned with the story of man on the south- The evolu- «stem projection of Europe, known as the Balkan peninsula. ^^ ^J^ For practical purposes the story begins with the Greeks, because the Balkan the Greeks, though not the original inhabitants of the peninsula, ^S^^' * were the first to leave a clear record of themselves and their about three neighbors. From the Hellenic period, when the mists hiding ^^"^^^ the land from view begin to lift, to the twentieth century of the Christian era is a span of about three thousand years. During that long stretch of time what migrations, wars, settlements, worships, and civilizations make their appearance in the deep perspective of Balkan history! What peoples march across the soil, fair-haired, strong-limbed warriors clothed in skins, succeeded by dark, bronzed men, curved over the backs of horses and alert for plunder I What empires come and go, one moment mounting resistlessly like a wave of the sea, the next dissolving in a cloud of spray I An epic tale is about to engage our attention calling for infinite patience with the intricacies of a deliberately moving plot and demanding an unswerving attachment to pilgrim man as well as a constantly renewed interest in the riddle of his destiny.

In order to give the reader a swift preliminary view of the The domina* material to be brought to his attention, it is proposed to devote ^^^ this chapter to a recital of the leading phases of the Balkan story. Mediter- If history, like Time itself, is a continuous stream, it falls, under [h^^reeks. the scrutiny of the ordering mind, into periods more or less distinct and possessed of well-marked characteristics. The epoch with which the story of the Balkan peninsula begins is dominated, as already said, by the famous name of the Greeks. Their mainland home, Greece or Hellas, embraced, it is true, only the southern extremity of the peninsula, but the political influence and, above all, the civilization of this small area penetrated so far northward that it gradually brought into some sort of dependence on itself a not inconsiderable section of the Balkan interior. But Greece, or rather its cities, and chief among them, immortal Athens, became in the course of a memorable movement of expansion not only Balkan but also Mediterranean powers, and linked with the peninsula, or at least with its southern Hellenic tip, the adjacent shores of Asia Minor, SicUy, and southem Italy. True, the political bonds joining these scattered areas were tenuous, since the Greek cities constituted an almost countless number of free states and were held together principally by ties of religion, language, customs, and commerce. However, in spite of incurable political dissension, their brilliant achievements along all lines of human effort gave them a sense of interdq>endence sufficient to move them to present a more or less imited front to any alien power inclined to threaten their indqpendence. rhe Greeks It was in the sixth century B.C., in the days of King Cyrus ^SmS?^^ (d. 528), that Persia rose over the eastern horizon of the Greek dng of world, and it was chiefly under Cyrus's successors, Darius and

Persia. Xerxes, that the program was adopted and vigorously pursued

of bringing the whole eastern Mediterranean under Persian control. Such a policy, nursed by an absolute monarch of the orient, meant conflict, an irrepressible conflict with the Greeks and their civilization, devoted to free, creative egression in general and not least to political freedom. Threatened in their dearest possessions, the Hellenes undertook to defend themselves by means of alliances and leagues which, organized among jealous, independent city-states, never achieved other than a loose character and inclined on little or no provocation to go to pieces. None-the-Iess the loosely knit Greek states met and defeated the invading Persian hosts in successive campaigns radiant with such names as Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. Brilliant victories in point of fact, they signify much more than military triumphs to our imagination by affirming the superiority of free political institutions over the capricious might of a despotic king.

The Greco-Persian crisis in east-Mediterranean affairs be- The Greeks

longs in the main to the fifth century before Christ. When, in ^^|J ^"

the following century, Alexander the Great, supporting himself Macedonia

on the power of the newly risen state of Macedonia, came upon Pe^^^^d

the scene, Greece was already well free of the Persian peril. But, in the

second.

resolved to dispel the danger from the East once and for all, century Alexander, commanding the massed power of the Greek city- before states which Macedonia had subdued, marched across Asia Minor themselves into the Euphrates valley and with a few shattering blows laid conquered Persia prostrate. The conquests of the Macedonian king for the ^ ^°** first time bound together all the r^ons of the eastern Mediterranean into a genuine political fabric. Unfortunately this rested, in spite of the prevalence of Greek speech and culture, on insufficient political foundations, and on Alexander's death fell into prompt decay. To be sure, a Greco-Macedonian state of purely Balkan dimensions survived to remind men of the great conqueror, but its vigor gradually oozed away and when, in the second century before Christ, it fell before the advance of Rome, the first or Greek phase of Balkan history came to a close.

It was left to Rome to achieve the political fusion of the Med- Rome iterranean peoples which the Greeks had attempted in vain. We J^t** Mnu- ^ usually think of the Romans as conquerors, and conquerors they ine poliwere, but happily they were also magnificent organizers and ad- ^j the^^^ole ministrators, or they would never have succeeded in gathering the Meditermany diverse Mediterranean peoples under their sway. A new ^^ *'^- territory was no sooner taken with the sword than it was endowed with an effective civil administration, providing for such essential matters as roads, police, and justice. Steadily pushing its way both eastward and westward along the Mediterranean, the Roman state in the second century b. c. subdued not only Greece, but also Macedonia, properly the northernmost extension of Greece, and fitted them into the Roman system. „ .

Rome for

With the advent of Rome in the peninsula there came a de- the first

velopment which makes the Roman phase peculiarly memorable ^^ hT'*^

in Balkan history. The Greeks, a commercial and sea-faring, Balkan

even largely an island people, had been content to move by peni^^a

boat along the Balkan shores, planting colonies and spreading scope of

the light of civilization as they went. To a certain limited extent ^*«diter-

ranean

their merchants had also struck out along the land routes leading civilization.

Under Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century ad., the main seat of the empire is transferred to the Balkan peninsula.

Constantinople a strategic site of permanent importance.

northward, and so had carried a faint Hellenic mfluence into the interior plateau. Never, however, had the Greeks succeeded in reducing the rugged, barbarous people living on the slopes of the Rhodope and Balkan mountains to political dq>endence. This the Romans undertook to do and withdtheir persistent and regulated daring finally achieved in the reign of the Emperor Augustus. To him belongs the honor of having for the first time brought the whole of the Balkan peninsula as far north as the lower Danube within the scc^e of Mediterranean civilization.

The Balkan peninsula, once conquered and brought in its full geographical extent into the Roman S3rstem, soon acquired a peculiar significance. In fact the time came when it in:q>osed itself on the attention of its Roman masters as the very keystone of the arch, the logical center of their far-flung empire. To understand what happened let the reader, map in hand, follow the Aegean coast of Greece northward until he comes to the narrows which the Greeks called the Hellespont and we name the Dardanelles. After the passage has widened to the Sea of Marmora it contracts again to the famous strait of the Bosporus, gateway to the Black sea, or Euxine according to the nomenclature of the Greeks. At the Dardanelles and Bosporus the shores of Europe and Asia face each other with just a dividing silver thread between, and here very plainly is the ordained seat of an east-Mediterranean empire, planned to link together in a single political S3rstem European and Asiatic lands. The natural prestige of the city on the Tiber, from which the Latin conquest had radiated over the world, delayed the recognition of the importance of the straits, and it was not till the fourth century after Christ that a Roman emperor, Constantine by name, had the courage and imagination to break with the western tradition and boldly to enthrone himself along the Bosporus. He chose as the site of his capital the ancient Greek trading-post of Byzantium, which presently reared its head above all the cities of the East imder the name of Constantinople.

From the day of its foundation (328 a.d.) Constantinc^le amply justified its choice as the administrative center of the east-Mediterranean world. It grew in numbers and waxed exceeding prosperous, fed by the commerce of the Black sea and of the great caravan routes from Asia. Occasionally, owing to some grave political disaster, it was threatened with eclipse, but no sooner had the disturbed conditions reassumed a normal aspect than it emerged from obscurity and again shone forth over the eastern world. From the reign of the Emperor Constantine to the present day, that is, for a period of almost two thousand years, Constantinople will be foimd to be playing a variable but always eminent role in the affairs of the eastern Mediterranean, for a reason as simple as it is abiding: the city occupies, from the point of view of both commerce and politics, one of those rare strategic sites which geographers call control-positions. ^ And because we who are alive today exhibit an amazing energy, and pursue with an intensity greater than at any time of the world's history a policy of political and commercial advantages, it is certain that its location on the Bosporus must secure to Constantinople in the future as large and perhaps even a larger importance than it has enjoyed in the past.

Not long after the founding of Constantinople the Roman The decay of epoch of Balkan history came to a close and the medieval or ^^ ^oman Byzantine epoch began to take shape. Even before the Em- vited the

peror Constantine reared his new capital, the vast Roman empire J^^^^ .^^ *hc

f » r- barbarians.

was threatened by a movement on its borders which, in connection with a slow and fatal process of internal decay, proved its undoing as a world-power and ushered in a new age. I refer, of course, to the Great Migrations. Numerous tribes of barbarous peoples, Germans and Slavs, dwelling in the inhospitable north and east of Europe, set themselves in motion toward the warm south and began to beat at the gates of the empire for admission. It was then that the importance in Balkan affairs of a hitherto imnoticed factor, the Danube river, rose into view. With characteristic military insight the Romans had organized the Danube as a natural line of defense against the tribal plunderers. But while semng as a strategic barrier, the Danube was also the route traced by Nature herself for all prospective invaders hailing from the frozen north. As early as the third century a.d. the barbarians appeared in numbers on the Danube, and, though often beaten off, renewed the attack with sudi persistence that their unrelenting pressure soon became the one absorbing problem of the Government at Constantinople.

The Roman Turning for a moment from Constantinople to the Roman ^S*1ucc^ west, let us remind ourselves that the barbarians, by pushing fully defends resolutely, not only southward over the Danube but aldo west- ^^^'^Lilf ^ ward over the Rhine, succeeded in the course of many generations around in undermining the authority of the empire and in occupying in

^ Aj)., as ^ casual, unsystematic way all its western provinces, Gaul, Italy, tine empire. Britain, Spain, and Africa. Considering the small number of the

invaders and the immense though disorganized mass of the conquered, the triimiph won must alwa3rs remain imintelligible except on the assumption of an internal disease consuming the Roman vitality. However, in its eastern provinces, undermined by the same disease and attacked by the same forces, the empire succeeded, in spite of occasional defeats and considerable losses of territory, in keeping itself afloat. This is the outstanding fact of the fifth and sixth centuries and proves the superior power of resistance of the Roman East, which will have to be examined in detail in its proper place. Suffice it at this point to indicate that the eastern empire, notably diminished in authority and battling for its very life with enemies crowding in from all sides, gradually underwent a number of fundamental changes in structure and civilization. By the sixth century it already presents to view so different an appearance from the #mperium romanum of Augustus, and even of the Emperor Constantine, that historians have indicated their sense of its transformation by conferrmg on it the new name of the Byzantine empire.

The Byzan- For many centuries after its transformation, in fact through-

kSTg^toigfe ^"^ ^^^ ^^ familiarly call the Middle Age (500-1500 aj).),

for existence the east Roman or Byzantine empire fou^t for its existence

^^^ *"" against its civilized neighbors, the Persians, but, more particu-

chiefly larly, against the onset of ever new hordes of barbarian enemies.

IfengoUwis. '^ *^ "^'^ *^y belonged to two great racial groups, very different in appearance and character, Slavs and Mongolians, though a third group, the Semitic Arabs, hailing from the deserts of Arabia, for a time dwarfed every other peril suspended over the Byzantine state. None-the-less the Slavs, white men of Caucasian race, having their home-land in the plains and swamps of eastern Europe, and the Mongolians with their many congeners, substantially yellow nomads roaming the plateau of western

Asia, stand forth as the leading and untiring enemies of the empire seated on the Bosporus. Beginning with the fifth and more particularly with the sixth centiuy, successive tribes of Slavs and Mongolians, sometimes compactly organized as fighting armies, sometimes more loosely associated as daring raiders, swept over the peninsula like waves of an inrushing sea and battled with the Byzantine empire for supremacy. Occasionally the harassed state gained a breathing-spell through a group of Slavs turning upon the Mongolians or even upon other Slavs. Another not infrequent feature of the situation was that imder the guidance and inspiration of some capable leader a Slav or Mongolian state took shape and ambitiously lifted its head above the political and racial welter of the region. Usually it did not last long and, on breaking to bits, fell back into the simmering Balkan crucible. Over and over again it seemed as if the Byzantine empire, in spite of its magnificent strategic position on the Bosporus, would have finis written to its story. Then by a siq>reme effort it would somehow save itself from the ultimate consequences of defeat. Thus with few interruptions the struggle went on until in the fifteenth century it was brought to a tragic conclusion by the fall of Constantinople before the irresistible advance of the last of the medieval invaders, the Ottoman Turks.

It was in the year 1453 that the Turks, hailing originally, like The Ottoman so many of their predecessors among the Balkan invaders, from ^^^ ^. the central tablelands of Asia, took the city of Constantinople and control from therewith overthrew the Byzantine empire, itself the legitimate J^^^i^^*^^ descendant of the Roman empire of the Caesars. In the course of teenth the next few decades the whole peninsula with its strange as- century. sortment of peoples who had succeeded in gaining a Balkan foothold in the long struggle for peninsular supremacy, Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, and Rumanians, was brought under the Turkish yoke. Therewith was inaugurated the Tiu-kish or Ottoman phase of Balkan history. From the time of the conquest to the early nineteenth century the rule of the Turks was strong enough to be substantially imdi^uted, with the result that the older inhabitants of the peninsula were closely shut in the harsh prison of an alien servitude. An added suffering resulted from the fact that the oppressed nations were passionate and intolerant Christians,

The nineteenth century inaugurates the liberation of the subject peoples from the Ottoman yoke.

The five epochs of Balkan history.

History ultimately concerned with living problems and issues.

while the arrogant oppressors were equally intolerant adherents of the teachings of Mohammed. The four centuries during which the Christian natives were subjected to a ruthless exploitation by a band of Asiatic and Mohammedan victors constitute as terrible and grinding an experience as is anywhere recorded in history. Even its material scars are still discoverable today in town and country. But worse, far worse than the material injuries were the spiritual wounds, the traces of which it will require generations of educational effort and moral reconstruction to obliterate.

At last, with the coming of the nineteenth century, a new day dawned bringing the newest phase of Balkan history, the phase of the rebirth and liberation of the subject peoples. The Christian nations, Greeks, Slavs, and Rumanians, awakening from an age-long sleep, reasserted themselves, and in a desperate and heroic struggle won their freedom. Slowly the flood of the Ottoman conquest began to recede; slowly it flowed back from the interior of the Bosporus, until, in the second decade of the twentieth century, came that total breakdown of the Ottoman power of which the living generation has been the astonished witness.

Such is the succession of the main periods of Balkan history: an Hellenic period, a Roman period, a Medieval or Byzantine period, an Ottoman period, and a Liberation period, which has just been brought to a close. In this book the Hellenic and Roman periods will receive only superficial treatment in order that space may be saved for the later epochs. With the Byzantine period our story will grow more detailed, and, proceeding cumulatively, will reach its amplest phase with the nineteenth century, that is, with the age of Liberation.

Such a plan, more or less arbitrary, calls for an explanation, which however, since it involves the purely theoretic question of the purpose and scope of history, cannot with propriety be fully developed in this place. In lieu of a reasoned exposition, a simple statement will have to suffice and may throw a not unwelcome light on the author's understanding of his task. To him as to most modem historians history is a division of the social sciences dedicated to the study of certain phases in the evolution of man primarily of a political order, to the end of

THE EPOCHS OF BALKAN HISTORY n

setting forth man's present status and of helping to provide intelligent norms for his future guidance. In other words^ history pursues an intensely practical aim and ultimately is always concerned with living problems and issues, for the elucidation of which it assembles data calculated to promote their solution. The solutions, of course, the historian does not himself formulate, for that is the work of law-makers, administrators, and other specialists concerned with government; but while bringing together invaluable material for the use of rulers and builders of states, he at the same time spreads light and information among the general public in the courageous, though perhaps delusive, hope that society may be decreasingly exposed to the operations of chance and increasingly brought under an intelligent control.

Applied to the Balkan field, this theory lays down as the This book main purpose of the book the communication to the reader of the f^J^»|i?i !u. leading present-day issues of the Balkan peninsula. These, with- Balkan out pretending to solve, it hopes to clarify by disclosing their ^^^jj^^ly historical background. While the whole of this vast background, but to ex- ' the product of centuries of development, is embraced within the h^hit them scope of our inquiry, the more recent phases are manifestly more historical devital and therefore more significant than the more distant past, vdopment It is by reason of this consideration that the author is content merely to summarize the earlier periods of the Balkan story in order to gain space for the Byzantine and Ottoman epochs, and above all, for the recent phase of Liberation. The numerous Balkan problems, with which the living generation of men must reckon, and which are admittedly a weighty factor in the troubled international situation of today, should, when the reader has finished this book, be not indeed " solved " in the sense of a problem in mathematics nor even theoretically formulated like the " laws " of the natural sciences, but they should have become visible in their historical perspective and have been grasped in their successive vital stages. It may seem to some that these problems, representing the goal of our long journey, should be enumerated and defined at the outset, but as it is the purpose of this book not to reduce them to a theoretical form, but to show them, as it were, on the march, in practical historical operation, the writer prefers to follow the established procedure of his profession. That means that he deliberately adheres to the method of the pragmatic and chronological narrative.

It iSy then, a record of events^ a story of human activities, which is to be here unfolded, and as such a story demands familiarity with the physical environment which obviously at all times must have directed and controlled the human agents, we shall by way of introduction to our tale examine the outstanding geographical features of the Balkan area.

Chapter II The Geography Of The Balkan Peninsula

The Balkan peninsula, or, if I am permitted to coin a use- Relation of ful word, Balkania, is the easternmost of the three European ^^jj^j^ peninsulas belonging to the Mediterranean area. But while the to Europe, other twOy Italy and Spain, are shut oS from the European continent, Italy by the Alps and Spain by the Pyrenees, Balkania can boast of no such well-defined barrier. On the contrary, if, as is usually done, we accept the Danube river as the northern boundary of the peninsula, we are forced to the conclusion that Balkania, instead of being walled off from its European hinterland, is closely linked up with it, since rivers alwa3rs present the easiest and most natural avenues of communication.

But this accessibility from the continent turns out, on close Its relative inq)ection, to be more apparent than real. The Danube is indeed ^jj^jf^" a magnificent highway, but intricate moimtains to the south of it, covering pretty much the whole surface of the peninsula, make interior communication so difficult that Balkania is in effect a much less accessible land than either Italy or Spain. A historical consequence of this physical peculiarity deserves to be noted at the outset. Whereas Italy and Spain, protected against invasion from Europe and enjoying more or less easy internal communications, have been urged by the forces of geography toward racial, economic, and political unification, Balkania is split into so many geographic divisions separated from one another by natural barriers, that the different peoples settled on the soil have been greatly aided in an instinctive desire to maintain their separate individualities, and. down to this day have successfully resisted all efforts made to bring about their political unification.

The usual practice of geographers, as already said, is to accept The inland the Danube river as the inland boundary of Balkania, that is, the boundary of Danube from its mouth upstream to Belgrad. At Belgrad the Save, coming from the southeastern Alps, flows into the Danube, and the Save River^ continued by a short air-line drawn from its upland sources to the head of the Adriatic, completes, according to common agreement, the northern line of demarcation. To the north of the lower Danube lies the fertile Rumanian plain which, from a strictly physiographical view-point, can hardly be reckoned as an integral part of Balkania. But the fact remains that this plain has been so closely tied up with the human destiny of the peninsula that for practical reasons the Balkan historian is obliged to include it in his narrative. On the other hand, the extreme northwestern section, inhabited chiefly by a Slav people, called Croats or Croatians, and embracing the districts of Croatia, Slavonia, and Istria, has politically been so closely associated with central Europe that, in spite of its physical union with Balkania, it will receive only cursory treatment in this book. The moun- Apart from the occasional lowlands marking the course of its

^^ ^f ^ many rivers, Balkania may be said to be uniformly mountainous. The Balkans. The geographer, drawing on his next-of-kin, the geologist, is able

to recount the interesting story of how the mountains came into being, but such a tale is outside the range of the historian, who is privileged to take the physical world as he finds it. Let us therefore proceed to describe the more important ranges. South of the Danube river and running parallel to its course is the Balkan range, from which the peninsula has received its name.^ The Balkan mountains fall into three nearly equal sections, of which the central section reaches the greatest elevation, boasting peaks of a height of about 8000 feet. The eastern section — often called the Lesser Balkans — is composed of roimded and richly wooded peaks which gradually decrease in height until at the shore of the Black sea they fall away to insignificant hills. It follows that the eastern section is the region of the easiest northand-south commimication and has the greatest number of depressions or passes. But, though the contrary view is often voiced, even the higher central and western sections of the Balkans are provided with not infrequent passes, among which the Shipka pass, the Baba Konak pass, and the Isker valley pass are the most important. By falling away rather gradually to the

^ As Balkan is a Turkish word, meaning mountain, the current name of the peninsula is of relatively recent origin. In classical times the Balkans were known as the Haemus range.

north, but often in very steep escarpments toward the south, the Balkan range constitutes a better military barrier against an army coming from the south than from the direction of the Danube.

South of the Balkans and separated from them by the broad The valley of the Maritsa lies the Rhodope range. In its eastern ^^e^^ section, where it touches the Aegean shore, it is composed of low foot-hills; these become steadily higher, as the range pursues its northwesterly course, until at the junction with the Balkans, in the great knot aroimd Sofia, they reach the considerable elevation of 7500 feet. It is significant of the central location of the Sofia region that four rivers flow thence to every point of the compass: the north river, the Isker, makes for the Danube; the west river, the Nishava, reaches Serbia and the Morava basin, while the east and south rivers, the Maritsa and Stnmia, carry their waters into the Aegean sea. Sofia is without doubt one of the important points of peninsular control.

West of the Balkan and Rhodope ranges we come upon the The Seibvery difficult highlands of Serbia and Macedonia. They con- ^^^ stitute a region of transverse valleys which have the effect of heavily handicapping communications. The numerous short ranges with their wooded foldings reach their highest altitude in the Shar Dagh, which therefore to a considerable extent dominates the Macedonian interior. In the Shar Dagh, as in the Sofian knot, four rivers — the Ibar, the Morava, the Drin, and the Vardar — take their rise to carry their waters to such widely separated areas as the Danube, the Adriatic and the Aegean. In spite of great irregularities of direction in the Macedonian chains there is noticeable, none-the-less, a prevailing north-south course which becomes particularly marked in the southern area where the Pindus range projects into northern Greece. Southward extensions of the Pindus practically overspread the whole of ancient Hellas as far as Cape Matapan, the rocky southern promontory of the Peloponnesus.

West of the Macedonian plateau are the coastal ranges of The cx>astal Albania and Montenegro. These are limestone chains, whose J^^^ ^^ soft surfaces have been deeply cut by rushing streams and Adriatic, which, in the course of time, have been all but denuded of vegetation. They are continued northward in the Dinaric Alps.

whichy limestone formations like the mountains to the south of

them, have little timber and a very sparse population. They

lift their frowning battlements, marked by peaks of the most

fantastic shape, along the whole length of the Adriatic coast as

far north as the gulf of Triest.

Rivers the Xo this rugged peninsula, criss-crossed with innumerable

line of mountain barriers, the rivers afford the natural avenues of

penetration, penetration. They can best be classified by the sea to

which they are tributary, and if we will now take note that the Black sea washes the eastern shore of Balkania, the Aegean sea the southeastern, the Ionian sea the southwestern, and the Adriatic sea the western shore, we arrive at four groups of rivers corresponding to these four coastal waters. The Black Beginning with the Black sea rivers we are informed by a