Course Overview

In this course we study the emergence and vicissitudes of the five twentieth-century countries that make up the area known as "the Balkans": Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Yugoslavia. This corner of Europe is ethnically complex and relatively impoverished, with a history of invasion and rule by outside powers; it has been off the main trade routes of modern times, but not off the paths of modern conquerors. However, the Balkan peoples have not simply been the passive victims of history: while trying to carve out their own spheres in the world, they have had a big hand in provoking major international crises in the last two centuries, most recently the Bosnia and Kosovo crises of the 1990s. Westerners, fascinated and sometimes horrified by the Balkans (and generally not well informed about them), have projected onto the region an image of picturesque backwardness and bloody unruliness.

In 1800 most of the area was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from Constantinople, and the rest by the Austrian Empire from Vienna. Beginning with the Serb rising against Ottoman rule in 1804, the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a long struggle by Balkan peoples to form independent countries that would afford their citizens liberty and a reasonably good life. Independence, coming at different times to different countries, often did not mean liberty or prosperity, nor even freedom from the tutelage of larger powers. In the past century hopes for better times have sometimes been high, for instance in the officially democratic Europe of the 1920s; at other times they have been very low, as when the 1930s and 1940s saw a decline into dictatorship, renewed invasions, and then (except for Greece) imposed Communist rule. The struggle goes on today, in greatly changed external circumstances, but with the burden of all the history we study in the course.

Books

The following paperbacks have been ordered for the course through Atticus bookstore. You may of course obtain them from some other source if you like.

Literature and Books by First-Hand Observers

Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina (Univ. of Chicago Press)
Milovan Djilas, Land without Justice (HarcourtBrace)
Isabel Fonseca, Bury Me Standing (Vintage)
Peter Maass, Love Thy Neighbor (Vintage)
Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Penguin)

Works by Historians

Dennis P. Hupchick and Harold E. Cox, The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the Balkans
    (Palgrave)
Stevan K. Pavlowitch, A History of the Balkans 1804-1945 (Longman)
Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford)

A number of charts, tables, maps and other materials are posted on the course website for your use. There is also a guide to how to pronounce the unfamiliar names and technical terms in the Balkan languages. You can reach all this through links from this page, or through the Materials link in the index to the left of this page.

Course Work

Short papers:  A two-page paper is due at each of six discussion sessions marked on the syllabus. These are discussion papers on the reading to be discussed that day. The topic to write on will be handed out in advance. These papers should be at least two typed pages long, but not over three pages. They don't require a cover sheet. (Each of the six papers counts for 8% of the course grade.)

Map quiz:  There is a short map quiz at the start of class on Wednesday, Oct. 2. Well in advance of the quiz you'll receive a list of the geographical features, regions and cities you need to know, along with outline maps. You can also find the list and the blank map on the course website, and print them out from there – see the Materials link. (The map quiz counts for 8% of the course grade.)

Hour exam:  An in-class hour exam on Monday, Oct. 7 will cover what has been discussed in the regular weekly readings and the lectures to that point. (The hour exam counts for 16% of the course grade.)

Final:  The final exam on Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 9:00 a.m. will emphasize the material covered after the hour exam, as well as overall issues of interpretation of the Balkan experience. (The final counts for 28% of the course grade.)

Syllabus
Asterisks (**) mark xeroxed handouts or Reserve reading.

Week of Sept. 4 – Introduction to the Balkans

Stevan K. Pavlowitch, A History of the Balkans, 1804-1945, ch. 1 (Introduction)
Dennis P. Hupchick and Harold E. Cox, The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the Balkans
    (2001), maps 1 - 5 (with text). Also skim maps 6 - 18 to get an idea of the extent of the
    great Balkan states of the Middle Ages, esp. the Byzantine, Bulgarian and Serbian Empires.

Website resources:
          Map:  Balkan Geographical Features

Week of Sept. 9 – The Ottoman Empire and the Balkan Peoples

Pavlowitch, ch. 2
Hupchick and Cox, Atlas, maps 21 and 24 (with text)

Website resources:
          Map:  The Balkans in 1648, at the peak of Ottoman power

Fri., Sept. 13 – Discussion and Paper

Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina (1945):  Andrić (1892-1975) won a Nobel Prize largely for this episodic fictional “chronicle” of the history of the Bosnian town of Višegrad (where he grew up) over three and a half centuries leading up to the First World War. – To read: the whole book. See the handout Guide to The Bridge on the Drina (also on the course website).