The Balkans by Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
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Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth >> The Balkans
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28 THE BALKANS
A HISTORY OF BULGARIA--SERBIA--GREECE--RUMANIA--TURKEY
THE BALKANS
A HISTORY OF BULGARIA--SERBIA--GREECE--RUMANIA--TURKEY
BY NEVILL FORBES, ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE, D. MITRANY, D.G. HOGARTH
PREFACE
The authors of this volume have not worked in conjunction. Widely
separated, engaged on other duties, and pressed for time, we have had no
opportunity for interchange of views. Each must be held responsible,
therefore, for his own section alone. If there be any discrepancies in our
writings (it is not unlikely in so disputed a field of history) we can
only regret an unfortunate result of the circumstances. Owing to rapid
change in the relations of our country to the several Balkan peoples, the
tone of a section written earlier may differ from that of another written
later. It may be well to state that the sections on Serbia and Bulgaria
were finished before the decisive Balkan developments of the past two
months. Those on Greece and Rumania represent only a little later stage of
the evolution. That on Turkey, compiled between one mission abroad and
another, was the latest to be finished.
If our sympathies are not all the same, or given equally to friends and
foes, none of us would find it possible to indite a Hymn of Hate about any
Balkan people. Every one of these peoples, on whatever side he be fighting
to-day, has a past worthy of more than our respect and interwoven in some
intimate way with our history. That any one of them is arrayed against us
to-day is not to be laid entirely or chiefly at its own door. They are all
fine peoples who have not obtained their proper places in the sun. The
best of the Osmanli nation, the Anatolian peasantry, has yet to make its
physical and moral qualities felt under civilized conditions. As for the
rest--the Serbs and the Bulgars, who have enjoyed brief moments of
barbaric glory in their past, have still to find themselves in that future
which shall be to the Slav. The Greeks, who were old when we were not as
yet, are younger now than we. They are as incalculable a factor in a
political forecast as another Chosen Race, the Jews. Their past is the
world's glory: the present in the Near East is theirs more than any
people's: the future--despite the laws of corporate being and decline,
dare we say they will have no part in it? Of Rumania what are we to think?
Her mixed people has had the start of the Balkan Slavs in modern
civilization, and evidently her boundaries must grow wider yet. But the
limits of her possible expansion are easier to set than those of the rest.
We hope we have dealt fairly with all these peoples. Mediaeval history,
whether of the East or the West, is mostly a record of bloodshedding and
cruelty; and the Middle Age has been prolonged to our own time in most
parts of the Balkans, and is not yet over in some parts. There are certain
things salutary to bear in mind when we think or speak of any part of that
country to-day. First, that less than two hundred years ago, England had
its highwaymen on all roads, and its smuggler dens and caravans, Scotland
its caterans, and Ireland its moonlighters. Second, that religious fervour
has rarely mitigated and generally increased our own savagery. Thirdly,
that our own policy in Balkan matters has been none too wise, especially
of late. In permitting the Treaty of Bucarest three years ago, we were
parties to making much of the trouble that has ensued, and will ensue
again. If we have not been able to write about the Near East under
existing circumstances altogether _sine ira et studio_, we have tried to
remember that each of its peoples has a case.
D.G. HOGARTH.
_November_, 1915.
CONTENTS
BULGARIA AND SERBIA. By NEVILL FORBES.
1. Introductory
2. The Balkan Peninsula in Classical Times 400 B.C. - A.D. 500
3. The Arrival of the Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula, A.D. 500-650
BULGARIA.
4. The Arrival of the Bulgars in the Balkan Peninsula,
600-700
5. The Early Years of Bulgaria and the Introduction of
Christianity, 700-893
6. The Rise and Fall of the First Bulgarian Empire, 893-972
7. The Rise and Fall of 'Western Bulgaria' and the Greek
Supremacy, 963-1186
8. The Rise and Fall of the Second Bulgarian Empire, 1186-1258
9. The Serbian Supremacy and the Final Collapse, 1258-1393
10. The Turkish Dominion and the Emancipation, 1393-1878
11. The Aftermath, and Prince Alexander of Battenberg, 1878-86
12. The Regeneration under Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, 1886-1908
13. The Kingdom, 1908-13
SERBIA.
14. The Serbs under Foreign Supremacy, 650-1168
15. The Rise and Fall of the Serbian Empire and the Extinction
of Serbian Independence, 1168-1496
16. The Turkish Dominion, 1496-1796
17. The Liberation of Serbia under Kara-George (1804-13) and
Milo[)s] Obrenovi['c] (1815-30): 1796-1830
18. The Throes of Regeneration: Independent Serbia, 1830-1903
19. Serbia, Montenegro, and the Serbo-Croats in Austria-Hungary,
1903-8
20. Serbia and Montenegro, and the two Balkan Wars, 1908-13
GREECE. By ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE.
1. From Ancient to Modern Greece
2. The Awakening of the Nation
3. The Consolidation of the State
RUMANIA: HER HISTORY AND POLITICS. By D. MITRANY
1. Introduction
2. Formation of the Rumanian Nation
3. The Foundation and Development of the Rumanian Principalities
4. The Phanariote Rule
5. Modern Period to 1866
6. Contemporary Period: Internal Development
7. Contemporary Period: Foreign Affairs
8. Rumania and the Present War
TURKEY. By D. G. HOGARTH
1. Origin of the Osmanlis
2. Expansion of the Osmanli Kingdom
3. Heritage and Expansion of the Byzantine Empire
4. Shrinkage and Retreat
5. Revival
6. Relapse
7. Revolution
8. The Balkan War
9. The Future
INDEX
MAPS
The Balkan Peninsula: Ethnological
The Balkan Peninsula
The Ottoman Empire
BULGARIA AND SERBIA
1
_Introductory_
The whole of what may be called the trunk or _massif_ of the Balkan
peninsula, bounded on the north by the rivers Save and Danube, on the west
by the Adriatic, on the east by the Black Sea, and on the south by a very
irregular line running from Antivari (on the coast of the Adriatic) and
the lake of Scutari in the west, through lakes Okhrida and Prespa (in
Macedonia) to the outskirts of Salonika and thence to Midia on the shores
of the Black Sea, following the coast of the Aegean Sea some miles inland,
is preponderatingly inhabited by Slavs. These Slavs are the Bulgarians in
the east and centre, the Serbs and Croats (or Serbians and Croatians or
Serbo-Croats) in the west, and the Slovenes in the extreme north-west,
between Trieste and the Save; these nationalities compose the southern
branch of the Slavonic race. The other inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula
are, to the south of the Slavs, the Albanians in the west, the Greeks in
the centre and south, and the Turks in the south-east, and, to the north,
the Rumanians. All four of these nationalities are to be found in varying
quantities within the limits of the Slav territory roughly outlined above,
but greater numbers of them are outside it; on the other hand, there are a
considerable number of Serbs living north of the rivers Save and Danube,
in southern Hungary. Details of the ethnic distribution and boundaries
will of course be gone into more fully later; meanwhile attention may be
called to the significant fact that the name of Macedonia, the heart of
the Balkan peninsula, has been long used by the French gastronomers to
denote a dish, the principal characteristic of which is that its component
parts are mixed up into quite inextricable confusion.
Of the three Slavonic nationalities already mentioned, the two first, the
Bulgarians and the Serbo-Croats, occupy a much greater space,
geographically and historically, than the third. The Slovenes, barely one
and a half million in number, inhabiting the Austrian provinces of
Carinthia and Carniola, have never been able to form a political state,
though, with the growth of Trieste as a great port and the persistent
efforts of Germany to make her influence if not her flag supreme on the
shores of the Adriatic, this small people has from its geographical
position and from its anti-German (and anti-Italian) attitude achieved
considerable notoriety and some importance.
Of the Bulgars and Serbs it may be said that at the present moment the
former control the eastern, and the latter, in alliance with the Greeks,
the western half of the peninsula. It has always been the ambition of each
of these three nationalities to dominate the whole, an ambition which has
caused endless waste of blood and money and untold misery. If the question
were to be settled purely on ethnical considerations, Bulgaria would
acquire the greater part of the interior of Macedonia, the most numerous
of the dozen nationalities of which is Bulgarian in sentiment if not in
origin, and would thus undoubtedly attain the hegemony of the peninsula,
while the centre of gravity of the Serbian nation would, as is ethnically
just, move north-westwards. Political considerations, however, have until
now always been against this solution of the difficulty, and, even if it
solved in this sense, there would still remain the problem of the Greek
nationality, whose distribution along all the coasts of the Aegean, both
European and Asiatic, makes a delimitation of the Greek state on purely
ethnical lines virtually impossible. It is curious that the Slavs, though
masters of the interior of the peninsula and of parts of its eastern and
western coasts, have never made the shores of the Aegean (the White Sea,
as they call it) or the cities on them their own. The Adriatic is the only
sea on the shore of which any Slavonic race has ever made its home. In
view of this difficulty, namely, the interior of the peninsula being
Slavonic while the coastal fringe is Greek, and of the approximately equal
numerical strength of all three nations, it is almost inevitable that the
ultimate solution of the problem and delimitation of political boundaries
will have to be effected by means of territorial compromise. It can only
be hoped that this ultimate compromise will be agreed upon by the three
countries concerned, and will be more equitable than that which was forced
on them by Rumania in 1913 and laid down in the Treaty of Bucarest of that
year.
If no arrangement on a principle of give and take is made between them,
the road to the East, which from the point of view of the Germanic powers
lies through Serbia, will sooner or later inevitably be forced open, and
the independence, first of Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania, and later of
Bulgaria and Greece, will disappear, _de facto_ if not in appearance, and
both materially and morally they will become the slaves of the central
empires. If the Balkan League could be reconstituted, Germany and Austria
would never reach Salonika or Constantinople.
2
_The Balkan Peninsula in Classical Times_
400 B.C. - A.D. 500.
In the earlier historical times the whole of the eastern part of the
Balkan peninsula between the Danube and the Aegean was known as Thracia,
while the western part (north of the forty-first degree of latitude) was
termed Illyricum; the lower basin of the river Vardar (the classical
Axius) was called Macedonia. A number of the tribal and personal names of
the early Illyrians and Thracians have been preserved. Philip of Macedonia
subdued Thrace in the fourth century B.C. and in 342 founded the city of
Philippopolis. Alexander's first campaign was devoted to securing control
of the peninsula, but during the Third century B.C. Thrace was invaded
from the north and laid waste by the Celts, who had already visited
Illyria. The Celts vanished by the end of that century, leaving a few
place-names to mark their passage. The city of Belgrade was known until
the seventh century A.D. by its Celtic name of Singidunum. Naissus, the
modern Nish, is also possibly of Celtic origin. It was towards 230 B.C.
that Rome came into contact with Illyricum, owing to the piratical
proclivities of its inhabitants, but for a long time it only controlled
the Dalmatian coast, so called after the Delmati or Dalmati, an Illyrian
tribe. The reason for this was the formidable character of the mountains
of Illyria, which run in several parallel and almost unbroken lines the
whole length of the shore of the Adriatic and have always formed an
effective barrier to invasion from the west. The interior was only very
gradually subdued by the Romans after Macedonia had been occupied by them
in 146 B.C. Throughout the first century B.C. conflicts raged with varying
fortune between the invaders and all the native races living between the
Adriatic and the Danube. They were attacked both from Aquileia in the
north and from Macedonia in the south, but it was not till the early years
of our era that the Danube became the frontier of the Roman Empire.
In the year A.D. 6 Moesia, which included a large part of the modern
kingdom of Serbia and the northern half of that of Bulgaria between the
Danube and the Balkan range (the classical Haemus), became an imperial
province, and twenty years later Thrace, the country between the Balkan
range and the Aegean, was incorporated in the empire, and was made a
province by the Emperor Claudius in A.D. 46. The province of Illyricum or
Dalmatia stretched between the Save and the Adriatic, and Pannonia lay
between the Danube and the Save. In 107 A.D. the Emperor Trajan conquered
the Dacians beyond the lower Danube, and organized a province of Dacia out
of territory roughly equivalent to the modern Wallachia and Transylvania,
This trans-Danubian territory did not remain attached to the empire for
more than a hundred and fifty years; but within the river line a vast belt
of country, stretching from the head of the Adriatic to the mouths of the
Danube on the Black Sea, was Romanized through and through. The Emperor
Trajan has been called the Charlemagne of the Balkan peninsula; all
remains are attributed to him (he was nicknamed the Wallflower by
Constantine the Great), and his reign marked the zenith of Roman power in
this part of the world. The Balkan peninsula enjoyed the benefits of Roman
civilization for three centuries, from the first to the fourth, but from
the second century onwards the attitude of the Romans was defensive rather
than offensive. The war against the Marcomanni under the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, in the second half of this century, was the turning-point. Rome
was still victorious, but no territory was added to the empire. The third
century saw the southward movement of the Germanic peoples, who took the
place of the Celts. The Goths invaded the peninsula, and in 251 the
Emperor Decius was killed in battle against them near Odessus on the Black
Sea (the modern Varna). The Goths reached the outskirts of Thessalonica
(Salonika), but were defeated by the Emperor Claudius at Naissus (Nish) in
269; shortly afterwards, however, the Emperor Aurelian had definitively to
relinquish Dacia to them. The Emperor Diocletian, a native of Dalmatia,
who reigned from 284 to 305, carried out a redistribution of the imperial
provinces. Pannonia and western Illyria, or Dalmatia, were assigned to the
prefecture of Italy, Thrace to that of the Orient, while the whole centre
of the peninsula, from the Danube to the Peloponnese, constituted the
prefecture of Illyria, with Thessalonica as capital. The territory to the
north of the Danube having been lost, what is now western Bulgaria was
renamed Dacia, while Moesia, the modern kingdom of Serbia, was made very
much smaller. Praevalis, or the southern part of Dalmatia, approximately
the modern Montenegro and Albania, was detached from that province and
added to the prefecture of Illyria. In this way the boundary between the
province of Dalmatia and the Balkan peninsula proper ran from near the
lake of Scutari in the south to the river Drinus (the modern Drina), whose
course it followed till the Save was reached in the north.
An event of far-reaching importance in the following century was the
elevation by Constantine the Great of the Greek colony of Byzantium into
the imperial city of Constantinople in 325. This century also witnessed
the arrival of the Huns in Europe from Asia. They overwhelmed the
Ostrogoths, between the Dnieper and the Dniester, in 375, and the
Visigoths, settled in Transylvania and the modern Rumania, moved
southwards in sympathy with this event. The Emperor Valens lost his life
fighting against these Goths in 378 at the great battle of Adrianople (a
city established in Thrace by the Emperor Hadrian in the second century).
His successor, the Emperor Theodosius, placated them with gifts and made
them guardians of the northern frontier, but at his death, in 395, they
overran and devastated the entire peninsula, after which they proceeded to
Italy. After the death of the Emperor Theodosius the empire was divided,
never to be joined into one whole again. The dividing line followed that,
already mentioned, which separated the prefecture of Italy from those of
Illyria and the Orient, that is to say, it began in the south, on the
shore of the Adriatic near the Bocche di Cattaro, and went due north along
the valley of the Drina till the confluence of that river with the Save.
It will be seen that this division had consequences which have lasted to
the present day. Generally speaking, the Western Empire was Latin in
language and character, while the Eastern was Greek, though owing to the
importance of the Danubian provinces to Rome from the military point of
view, and the lively intercourse maintained between them, Latin influence
in them was for a long time stronger than Greek. Its extent is proved by
the fact that the people of modern Rumania are partly, and their language
very largely, defended from those of the legions and colonies of the
Emperor Trajan.
Latin influence, shipping, colonization, and art were always supreme on
the eastern shores of the Adriatic, just as were those of Greece on the
shores of the Black Sea. The Albanians even, descendants of the ancient
Illyrians, were affected by the supremacy of the Latin language, from
which no less than a quarter of their own meagre vocabulary is derived;
though driven southwards by the Romans and northwards by the Greeks, they
have remained in their mountain fastnesses to this day, impervious to any
of the civilizations to which they have been exposed.
Christianity spread to the shores of the peninsula very early; Macedonia
and Dalmatia were the parts where it was first established, and it took
some time to penetrate into the interior. During the reign of Diocletian
numerous martyrs suffered for the faith in the Danubian provinces, but
with the accession of Constantine the Great persecution came to an end. As
soon, however, as the Christians were left alone, they started persecuting
each other, and during the fourth century the Arian controversy re-echoed
throughout the peninsula.
In the fifth century the Huns moved from the shores of the Black Sea to
the plains of the Danube and the Theiss; they devastated the Balkan
peninsula, in spite of the tribute which they had levied on Constantinople
in return for their promise of peace. After the death of Attila, in 453,
they again retreated to Asia, and during the second half of the century
the Goths were once more supreme in the peninsula. Theodoric occupied
Singidunum (Belgrade) in 471 and, after plundering Macedonia and Greece,
settled in Novae (the modern Svishtov), on the lower Danube, in 483, where
he remained till he transferred the sphere of his activities to Italy ten
years later. Towards the end of the fifth century Huns of various kinds
returned to the lower Danube and devastated the peninsula several times,
penetrating as far as Epirus and Thessaly.
3
_The Arrival of the Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula_, A.D. 500-650
The Balkan peninsula, which had been raised to a high level of security
and prosperity during the Roman dominion, gradually relapsed into
barbarism as a result of these endless invasions; the walled towns, such
as Salonika and Constantinople, were the only safe places, and the country
became waste and desolate. The process continued unabated throughout the
three following centuries, and one is driven to one of two conclusions,
either that these lands must have possessed very extraordinary powers of
recuperation to make it worth while for invaders to pillage them so
frequently, or, what is more probable, there can have been after some time
little left to plunder, and consequently the Byzantine historians'
accounts of enormous drives of prisoners and booty are much exaggerated.
It is impossible to count the number of times the tide of invasion and
devastation swept southwards over the unfortunate peninsula. The emperors
and their generals did what they could by means of defensive works on the
frontiers, of punitive expeditions, and of trying to set the various
hordes of barbarians at loggerheads with each other, but, as they had at
the same time to defend an empire which stretched from Armenia to Spain,
it is not surprising that they were not more successful. The growing
riches of Constantinople and Salonika had an irresistible attraction for
the wild men from the east and north, and unfortunately the Greek citizens
were more inclined to spend their energy in theological disputes and their
leisure in the circus than to devote either the one or the other to the
defence of their country. It was only by dint of paying them huge sums of
money that the invaders were kept away from the coast. The departure of
the Huns and the Goths had made the way for fresh series of unwelcome
visitors. In the sixth century the Slavs appear for the first time. From
their original homes which were immediately north of the Carpathians, in
Galicia and Poland, but may also have included parts of the modern
Hungary, they moved southwards and south-eastwards. They were presumably
in Dacia, north of the Danube, in the previous century, but they are first
mentioned as having crossed that river during the reign of the Emperor
Justin I (518-27). They were a loosely-knit congeries of tribes without
any single leader or central authority; some say they merely possessed the
instinct of anarchy, others that they were permeated with the ideals of
democracy. What is certain is that amongst them neither leadership nor
initiative was developed, and that they lacked both cohesion and
organisation. The Eastern Slavs, the ancestors of the Russians, were only
welded into anything approaching unity by the comparatively much smaller
number of Scandinavian (Varangian) adventurers who came and took charge of
their affairs at Kiev. Similarly the Southern Slavs were never of
themselves able to form a united community, conscious of its aim and
capable of persevering in its attainment.
The Slavs did not invade the Balkan peninsula alone but in the company of
the Avars, a terrible and justly dreaded nation, who, like the Huns, were
of Asiatic (Turkish or Mongol) origin. These invasions became more
frequent during the reign of the Emperor Justinian I (527-65), and
culminated in 559 in a great combined attack of all the invaders on
Constantinople under a certain Zabergan, which was brilliantly defeated by
the veteran Byzantine general Belisarius. The Avars were a nomad tribe,
and the horse was their natural means of locomotion. The Slavs, on the
other hand, moved about on foot, and seem to have been used as infantry by
the more masterful Asiatics in their warlike expeditions. Generally
speaking, the Avars, who must have been infinitely less numerous than the
Slavs, were settled in Hungary, where Attila and the Huns had been settled
a little more than a century previously; that is to say, they were north
of the Danube, though they were always overrunning into Upper Moesia, the
modern Serbia. The Slavs, whose numbers were without doubt very large,
gradually settled all over the country south of the Danube, the rural
parts of which, as a result of incessant invasion and retreat, had become
waste and empty. During the second half of the sixth century all the
military energies of Constantinople were diverted to Persia, so that the
invaders of the Balkan peninsula had the field very much to themselves. It
was during this time that the power of the Avars reached its height. They
were masters of all the country up to the walls of Adrianople and
Salonika, though they did not settle there. The peninsula seems to have
been colonized by Slavs, who penetrated right down into Greece; but the
Avars were throughout this time, both in politics and in war, the
directing and dominating force. During another Persian war, which broke
out in 622 and entailed the prolonged absence of the emperor from
Constantinople, the Avars, not satisfied with the tribute extorted from
the Greeks, made an alliance against them with the Persians, and in 626
collected a large army of Slavs and Asiatics and attacked Constantinople
both by land and sea from the European side, while the Persians threatened
it from Asia. But the walls of the city and the ships of the Greeks proved
invincible, and, quarrels breaking out between the Slavs and the Avars,
both had to save themselves in ignominious and precipitate retreat.
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