Balkans, The by Mazower, Mark ISBN 0297643991
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[edit] Balkans, The
A dazzling short history of the Balkans from the Romans to the present, which provides vital historical and cultural background to contemporary Balkan politics.
At the end of the twentieth century people spoke as if the Balkans had plagued Europe forever. But two hundred years earlier, the Balkans did not exist. It was not the Balkans but the 'Rumeli' that the Ottomans ruled, the formerly Roman lands that they had conquered from Byzantium, together with its Christian inhabitants. To westerners, too, familiar with classical regional terms such as Macedonia, Epiros and Dacia, the term 'Balkan' conveyed little. 'My expectations were raised', wrote one traveller in 1854, 'by hearing that we were about to cross a Balkan; but I discovered ere long that this high-sounding title denotes only a ridge which divides the waters, or a mountain pass.' In this dazzlingly original account of the region Mark Mazower dispels current Western cliches and replaces stereotypes with a vivid account of how mountains, empires and religions have shaped its inhabitants' lives. As a bridge between Europe and Asia it has been exposed to a constant incursion of nomadi c peoples across the centuries. Mountain ranges made farming hard and political control almost impossible, and allowed small communities to live side by side through to the end of the twentieth century. Empires based on religion not ethnicity shaped customs and beliefs in ways that did not entirely vanish with the coming of modernity. Mazower's narrative ranges broadly both in time - from the Romans to the present, including the Byzantine and Ottoman experiences - and in space, treating the former Turkish domains in Europe as part of a common if complex historical inheritance. One of our outstanding historians of modern Europe, he has written a book of extraordinary richness and concision, which provides not only a vital historical and cultural background to contemporary Balkan politics but also offers the reader a fresh view of the region's relationship with Europe as a whole.
[edit] Book Details
[edit] Title
Balkans, The
[edit] Author
Mazower, Mark
[edit] ISBN
0297643991
[edit] Published
31/08/2000
[edit] Publisher
George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd
[edit] Binding
HARDBACK
[edit] Retail Price
14.99 (GBP)
[edit] Typical Price Online
14.99 (GBP)
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