The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999

Glenny's The Balkans is easily the best work on the subject in print to date. While managing to stay above the fray of inter-ethnic rivalries, Glenny provides a clear picture of modern Balkan history, arguing that the troubles the region suffers from is not the result of years of mutual ethnic hatereds, but rather the result of constant interference by the Great Powers (whomever that may be at the time.) The book is just short of encyclopedic - its depth and scope can be overwhelming at times. Nonetheless, I found it a fascinating read. Glenny looks beyond "Yugoslavia" in his study of the Balkans, giving attention to Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania as players (and victims) in the "Eastern Quesiton." This is as it should be. His argument about "outside forces" interfereing with the nationalistic development of the Balkan peoples is convinving. Yet there are flaws. The Slovenes are hardly addressed at all; one would think they warrant at least some consideration in any discussion of the area. Comparitively little time is spent on Romania and Bulgaria after the Second World War, and even less is devoted to the sticky issues of the Vojvodina, Banat and Backa - all of which face similar issues with Serbia as Kossovo does. My final criticism is his all too brief treatment and hasty analysis of the "disintegration" of Yugoslavia in the early 90's. With that said, I recommend this book to the serious reader or student of the region only. The information is dense, the history is complicated, and the major players (within and without the Balkans) can confuse the uninitiated. I am confident you will enjoy The Balkans as much as I did.

This a fantastic primer for those who wish to delve into the confusing and turbulent world of Balkan History. It deals with the Great Powers interference in the affairs of these countries. This inference had a deep and profound influence in the various state-building exercises of the region. Although, far from advocating an ethnic nationalism, Glenny illustrates the tragic consequences of the failure of medievel universalism, liberalism, nationalism and communism in uniting this poor and backward region of Europe. Glenny's biggest weakness is to deal with Slovenia, Volodina as not part of the Balkan conglomerate. While it is true that Austrian subjection made these particular countries more "Central European" they are not entirely at home there either. This separation adds to the rather false dictomy of Austrian = progressive, Ottoman = declining. Each empire was deeply conservative and fairly hostile to their Slav subjects as so long as they were divided they posed no threat. A stunning piece of investigative journalism fed this inquiry, it will be up to a new generation of Historians to heed Glenny's call to fill in the details of Balkan history without particularisms. A warning the language is dense as is the subject matter.

Misha Glenny is a good reporter and an even better writer, but it takes more than that to make a good historian. This is particularly true for such an ambitious history, which covers events in the Balkans for an almost 200-year period. Indeed, much of the time this book reads like an extended newspaper feature for the Sunday edition rather than a work of in-depth, intelligent analysis. Not much more can be expected, since Glenny depended primarily on (generally very good) secondary sources and a number of travelogues, memoirs and similarly "light" primary literature. Even here, though, it's obvious that Glenny found the vastness of the material daunting, so he often fails to integrate the findings and conclusions of the many authors who came before him and neglects many major themes in Balkan history. The result is a summary of wars, crisis, etc. and even here the coverage is rather episodic: countries and peoples emerge, disappear and then abruptly reappear throughout the text. Thus, Romania is dealt with until its provinces were first unified and its independence was recognized during the 1860s, then fades out only to reappear for a brief cameo in the Balkan Wars over 40 years later. History in Bulgaria apparently ended after communist dictator Zhivkov assumed power in the mid-1950s, while Greek history peters out somewhere during the 1970s. By the 1990s, only the republics of the former Yugoslavia receive any attention at all, and this is rather piecemeal at that. There is also a rather odd section devoted to post-WW2 Turkey, which, if one can still consider it a Balkan country after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, leaves one to question why Glenny neglected telling us something about the crucial interwar period, when Kemal Ataturk initiated the efforts to transform Turkey into a modern, secular state. This is truly a journalist's approach to history: always focusing on major, often violent and traumatic events and the movers and shakers like kings, dictators, generals and major politicians, while almost completely ignoring the less noticeable people (writers, scholars, intellectuals) and often confusing (hence the need for illumination) economic, social and cultural trends and changes so crucial to a true comprehension of the region's history. There is therefore never any meaningful discussion of nationalism - part of the book's subtitle! - which has had such an inestimable impact on Balkan history. Instead, nationalism is just treated as some sort of amorphous force that emerges to make matters even worse during times of trouble. The local manifestations of other ideologies that have had and still do exercise a great influence on events in the region (socialism, communism, fascism, peasant populism) are similarly neglected. Glenny instead frequently resorts to the simpler (and much more readable) device of using anecdotal evidence to illustrate larger points. This is at times interesting and informative - particularly the section that deals with the memories of Holocaust survivors from several Balkan countries - but falls short of providing an understanding of the causes or motives behind specific events. Perhaps this failed effort best illustrates the fact that there are few if any living Balkan historians in the English-speaking world who are willing to take on the task of writing a well-researched, well-argued and well-written integrative contemporary history of the Balkans for both students and lay readers alike. This leaves the field open to talented and well-meaning, but nonetheless unqualified publicists like Glenny.

In one splendid volume which reads with the pace and interest of a well-written thriller, Mr.Glenny does the near impossible, conveying the complexities of two centuries of Balkan history with clarity and grace. The scope is breathtaking and no important themes - and few lesser ones - are left uncovered, with explanations not provided not only of their internal Balkan context but of their relationships to the greater European picture. Notwithstanding the fact that the overall story is a depressing one, with hatred, greed and massacre as defining features of almost every decade covered, and with not a single ethnic group or nationality emerging with credit, the power of the writing is such as to carry the reader along and to enjoy - if the word can ever be appropriate in this connection - the sweep of the narrative. Having read this book once straight through however, the reader interested in the area will find themselves returning to it repeatedly to check specific facts. Its particular value is the extent to which it takes events that are peripheral to the wider course of European History, and which are treated in isolation in so many other works, and dropped once their relevance to the larger picture fades, and instead follows them through in detail and explores their significance to the sweep of Balkan history. This is one of the few books of its type that one would have desired to have been longer, rather than shorter, and one would have wished for a yet more extended treatment of major events such as the First and Second Balkan Wars. On only one point would the present reviewer take issue with the writer. This is in relation to the thesis stated in the introduction that the role of the Western Powers had been a greater factor than hitherto recognised in the hopeless cycle of revenge and atrocity that characterises modern Balkan history. Mr.Glenny's masterful account of the greed, intolerance and self-destructive blindness of the societies he portrays is its own refutation of this contention. This observation aside, this is a superb piece of accessible narrative history.

Glenny presents a very refreshing, well-planned, and very readable general survery of modern Balkan history. Starting out with a discussion of the "West's" Orientalist outlook on the Balkans, Glenny sets out to discuss the region's history with a view to correct many of the misconceptions developed in the popular foreign discourse on the region.

Glenny's extensive discussion of the history of the non-Yugoslav nations is also appreciated, as the history of these nations has often been forgotten, despite their historical involvement with the Yugoslav state.

Having lived and travelled in the Balkans, I can say from personal experiences and encounters that Glenny conveys an accurate, and relatively unbiased account of the region's rich history. This book is a MUST for anyone interested in understanding the past, present, and future of this most interesting region. It is a shame that most of the policy makers, and journalists involved with the region have not read this book -- a fact made plain by their often skewed coverage.