Balkans


The Balkans, corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the northwest, the Ionian Sea in the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south, the Turkish straits in the east, and the Black Sea in the northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Musala,, in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria.
The concept of the Balkan Peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of southeastern Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. In the 19th century the term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for Rumelia, the parts of Europe that were provinces of the Ottoman Empire at the time. It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, which was further promoted during the creation of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan Peninsula's natural borders does not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula; hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan Peninsula, while historical scholars usually discuss the Balkans as a region. The term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization. The region may alternatively be referred to as Southeast Europe.
The borders of the Balkans are, due to many contrasting definitions, widely disputed, with no universal agreement on its components. By most definitions, the term fully encompasses Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, mainland Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Northern Dobruja in Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and East Thrace in Turkey. However, some definitions also include the remaining territories of Romania and Serbia. Additionally, some definitions include Hungary and Moldova due to cultural and historical factors. The province of Trieste in northeastern Italy, whilst by some definitions on the geographical peninsula, is generally excluded from the Balkans in a regional context.

Name

Etymology

The origin of the word Balkan is obscure; it may be related to Turkish bālk 'mud', and the Turkish suffix -an 'swampy forest' or Persian bālā-khāna 'big high house'. It was used mainly during the time of the Ottoman Empire. In both Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish, balkan means 'chain of wooded mountains'.

Historical names and meaning

From antiquity to the early Middle Ages

The region that is presently known as the Balkans is largely the ancient Danube civilisation, also referred to as the Old Europe civilization, and which peaked between 5000 and 3500 BC.
From classical antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains were called by the local Thracian name Haemus.
According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. A reverse name scheme has also been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, 'mountain ridge'. A third possibility is that "Haemus" derives from the Greek word haima meaning 'blood'. The myth relates to a fight between Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon. Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains, giving them their name.

Late Middle Ages and Ottoman period

The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the Haemus Mountains are referred to as Balkan. The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Filippo Buonaccorsi, an Italian humanist, writer and diplomat. The Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, although other Turkic tribes had already settled in or were passing through the region. There is also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊, but it was especially applied to the Haemus mountain. The name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Region of Turkmenistan. The English traveler John Bacon Sawrey Morritt introduced this term into English literature at the end of the 18th century, and other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. The concept of the "Balkans" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered it as the dominant central mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. During the 1820s, "Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers... Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term". In European books printed until late 1800s it was also known as Illyrian Peninsula or Illyrische Halbinsel in German.

Evolution of meaning in the 19th and 20th centuries

The term was not commonly used in geographical literature until the mid-19th century because, already then, scientists like Carl Ritter warned that only the part south of the Balkan Mountains could be considered as a peninsula and considered it to be renamed as "Greek peninsula". Other prominent geographers who did not agree with Zeune were Hermann Wagner, Theobald Fischer, Marion Newbigin, and Albrecht Penck, while Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn, in 1869, for the same territory, used the term Südosteuropäische Halbinsel. Another reason it was not commonly accepted as the definition of then European Turkey had a similar land extent. However, after the Congress of Berlin there was a political need for a new term and gradually "the Balkans" was revitalized, but in many maps, the northern border was in Serbia and Montenegro and Greece was not included, while Yugoslavian maps also included Croatia and Bosnia. At the time, the Balkan Peninsula was also understood as a synonym for Rumelia or European Turkey, and, in its broadest sense, encompassed the borders of all former Ottoman provinces in Europe.
The usage of the term changed in the very end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, when it was embraced by Serbian geographers, most prominently by Jovan Cvijić. It was done with political reasoning as affirmation for Serbian nationalism on the whole territory of the South Slavs, and also included anthropological and ethnological studies of the South Slavs through which were claimed various nationalistic and racialist theories. Through such policies and Yugoslavian maps the term was elevated to the modern status of a geographical region. The term acquired political nationalistic connotations far from its initial geographic meaning, arising from political changes from the late 19th century to the creation of post–World War I Yugoslavia. After the dissolution of Yugoslavia beginning in June 1991, the term Balkans acquired a negative political meaning, especially in Croatia and Slovenia, as well in worldwide casual usage for war conflicts and fragmentation of territory.

Southeast Europe

In part due to the historical and political connotations of the term Balkans, especially since the military conflicts of the 1990s in Yugoslavia in the western half of the region, the term Southeast Europe is becoming increasingly popular. A European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe. The online newspaper Balkan Times renamed itself Southeast European Times in 2003.

Current

In other languages of the Balkans, the region or peninsula are known as:
  • Slavic languages:
  • * Bulgarian and, transliterated: Balkanski Poluostrov
  • * Bosnian, Montenegrin and / Балканско полуострво
  • * Bosnian and
  • *
  • Romance languages:
  • * or Balcani
  • * or Balcani
  • * or Balcani
  • Other languages:
  • * and Siujdhesa e Ballkanit
  • *, transliterated: Valkaniki chersonisos
  • * or Balkán
  • * or ''Balkanlar''

    Definitions and boundaries

Balkan Peninsula

The Balkan Peninsula is bounded by the Adriatic Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Marmara to the south and the Black Sea to the east. Its northern boundary is subject to varying interpretations, but is often given as the Danube, Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has a combined area of about. The peninsula is generally encompassed in the region known as Southeast Europe.
Italy currently holds a small area around Trieste that is by some older definitions considered a part of the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the peninsula by Italian geographers, due to their definition limiting its western border to the Kupa River.

Balkans

The borders of the Balkans region are, due to a multitude of contrasting definitions, widely disputed, with no universal agreement on its components. By most definitions, it fully encompasses Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, mainland Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Northern Dobruja in Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and East Thrace in Turkey. However, some definitions also include the remaining territories of Romania and Serbia. Additionally, some definitions include Hungary and Moldova due to cultural and historical factors. The Province of Trieste in northeastern Italy, whilst by some definitions on the geographical peninsula, is generally excluded from the Balkans in a regional context.
The term Southeast Europe may also be applied to the region, with various interpretations, although Balkan countries may alternatively be placed in Southern, Central or Eastern Europe. Turkey, including East Thrace, is generally placed in West Asia or the Middle East.