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The very name of “The Balkans” may conjure up images of otherness, springing as it does from a colloquial Turkish word for “mountain”. The mystery and otherness inherent in that word may explain why the Balkans has long been a misunderstood region in the Western mind. Some have seen it as the spawning place of the Byzantine Empire, while others see it as one of the places where Islam took hold and flourished. The violent chaos and human tragedies in Bosnia and Kosovo brought the ongoing tragedies of the Balkans into the spotlight, allowing commentators to talk about “centuries-old religious and ethnic hatreds”, “the legacy of Islamic Ottoman domination”, “communist dictatorial traditions”, “’new’ nationalism”, and “economic inequalities” as sources of the conflict. In reality, how effective are any of these statements in determining the roots of the region’s problems?

In “The Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism”, Dennis P. Hupchick dispels these commentaries as either inaccurate or misleading as he takes the reader on a historical journey through the varied cultural evolutions on the Balkans from antiquity through the collapse of communism. Hupchick looks at the arrival of the Avars, Slavs, and Bulgars in the sixth and seventh centuries; the rise of Slavic Orthodox Serbia in the fourteenth century; the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks; the impact of the Crimean and World Wars; the rise and fall of Communist domination; and the uncertainties and tragedies of the post-Communist period. Throughout, Hupchick takes into account the cultural complexities of the region and clearly explains them for Western readers. For the way in which it demystifies history, “The Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism” is the new standard against which all other histories of the region will be judged.

Dennis P. Hupchick is Associate Professor of History at Wilkes University, Pennsylvania. He is a former Fulbright scholar to Bulgaria and the past president of the Bulgarian Studies Association. He is the co-author of The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of the Balkans and The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Eastern Europe, Revised and Updated.