A History of East Central Europe VOLUMES IN THE SERIES I. Historical Atlas of East Central Europe by Paul Robert Magocsi II. The Early Middle Ages in East Central Europe* by Charles E. Bowlus III. East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500 by Jean Sedlar IV. The Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386-1795* by Daniel Z. Stone V. Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804 by Peter F. Sugar VI. The Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526-1918 by Robert A. Kann and Zdenek V. David VII. The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 by Piotr S. Wandycz VIII. The Establishment of the Balkan'National States, 1804-1920 by Charles and Barbara Jelavich IX. East Central Europe between the Two World Wars by Joseph Rothschild X. East Central Europe since 1939* by Ivo Banac * Forthcoming VOLUME VIII The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920 A HISTORY OF EAST CENTRAL EUROPE VOLUME VIII EDITORS Peter F. Sugar University of Washington Donald W. T readgold University of Washington The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920 CHARLES and BARBARA JELAVICH UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS Seattle and London Copyright © 1977 by the University of Washington Press First paperback edition, 1986 Fourth printing, 2000 Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jelavich, Charles The establishment of the Balkan national states, 1804-1920. (A history of East Central Europe ; v.8) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Balkan Peninsula—Politics and government. 2. Eastern question (Balkan). I. Jelavich, Barbara Brightfield, joint author. II. Title. III. Series: Sugar, Peter F. A history of East Central Europe ; v. 8. DJK4.S93 vol. 8 [DR43] 949s [949.6] 76-49162 ISBN 0-295-96413-8 (pbk.) The paper used in this publication is acid-free and recycled from 10 percent post-consumer and at least 50 percent pre-consumer waste. It meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. © @ Foreword to the 1993 Printing The systematic study of the history of East Central Europe outside the region itself began only in the last generation or two. For the most part historians in the region have preferred to write about the past of only their own countries. Hitherto no comprehensive history of the area as a whole has appeared in any language. This series was conceived as a means of providing the scholar who does not specialize in East Central European history and the student who is considering such specialization with an introduction to the subject and a survey of knowledge deriving from previous publications. In some cases it has been necessary to carry out new research simply to be able to survey certain topics and periods. Common objectives and the procedures appro­ priate to attain them have been discussed by the authors of the individual volumes and by the coeditors. It is hoped that a certain commensurability will be the result, so that the ten volumes will constitute a unit and not merely an assemblage of writings. However, matters of interpretation and point of view have remained entirely the responsibility of the individual authors. No volume deals with a single country. The aim has been to identify geographical or political units that were significant during the period in question, rather than to interpret the past in accordance with latter-day sentiments or aspirations. The limits of “East Central Europe,” for the purposes of this series, are the eastern linguistic frontier of German- and Italian-speaking peoples on the west, and the political borders of Russia/the former USSR on the east. Those limits are not precise, even within the period covered by any given volume of the series. The appropriateness of including the Finns, Esto­ nians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians was considered, and it was decided not to attempt to cover them systematically, though they appear in these books. Treated in depth are the Poles, Czechs, vii viii Foreword Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Yugoslav peoples, Albanians, Bulgarians, and Greeks. There has been an effort to apportion attention equitably among the regions and periods. Three volumes deal with the area north of the Danube-Sava line, three with the area south of it, and three with both areas. Three treat premodern history, six modern times. Volume I consists of an historical atlas. Each volume is supplied with a bibliographical essay of its own, but we all have attempted to keep the scholarly apparatus at a minimum in order to make the text of the volumes more readable and accessible to the broader audience sought. The coeditors wish to express their thanks to the Ford Foundation for the financial support it gave this venture, and to the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies (formerly Far Eastern and Russian Insti­ tute) and its five successive directors, George E. Taylor, George M. Beckmann, Herbert J. Ellison, Kenneth Pyle, and Nicholas Lardy, under whose encouragement the project has moved close to being realized. The whole undertaking has been longer in the making than originally planned. Two of the original list of projected authors died before they could finish their volumes and have been replaced. Volumes of the series are being published as the manuscripts are received. We hope that the usefulness of the series justifies the long agony of its conception and birth, that it will increase knowledge of and interest in the rich past and the many-sided present of East Central Europe among those everywhere who read English, and that it will serve to stimulate further study and research on the numerous aspects of this area’s history that still await scholarly investigators. Peter F. Sugar Donald W. Treadgold Preface This narrative deals primarily with the modern history of seven Balkan peoples—the Albanians, Bulgarians, Croatians, Greeks, Romanians, Serbians, and Slovenes—all of whom have a historical base of equal or greater antiquity than that of the western European states. The oldest are the Greeks, who claim an unbroken historical and cultural tradition of over four thousand years. Next come the Illyrians, the ancestors of the Albanians, who migrated into the peninsula at approximately the same time, the second millennium b. c. Third are the Romanians, de­ scribed by their historians as the descendants of the Dacians and of Romans who controlled the province from a. d. 106 to 271. At the end of the sixteenth century a medieval Romanian kingdom under Michael the Brave embraced territories roughly equivalent to those of the mod­ ern state. The other four peoples, the Slavic population, settled in the penin­ sula after the sixth century. The Bulgarians, whose name comes from a group of Finno-Tartar invaders who first conquered and then were ab­ sorbed by the Slavic inhabitants, experienced two periods of medieval grandeur. The First Bulgarian Empire reached its peak in the reign of Simeon from 893 to 927; the Second Empire, in that of John Asen II from 1218 to 1241. The Serbs can look back to a similar period of greatness and power, which reached its height during the reign of Stevan Dusan from 1331 to 1355. During the Middle Ages the Serbs, Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, and some Albanians also shared the experience of conversion to Christianity from the same Byzantine cen­ ter. Thus, in modern times they all were, like Russia, members of the Orthodox church. In contrast, the Croats and Slovenes became Catholic and henceforth were to remain culturally linked with the West. Like the other Balkan peoples described, Croatia too had an independent kingdom which