the.com/balkans history
more history than geography can comfortably hold.
means the tangled, empire-crossed past of southeastern europe, where every border argument has receipts going back a thousand years.
from from ottoman turkish balkan meaning wooded mountains, the region became shorthand for fragmentation after the 1912-13 balkan wars carved up the ottomans leftovers.
empires collided hereroman, byzantine, ottoman, austro-hungarian all ruled pieces
wwi triggerone assassination in sarajevo, 1914, lit europe
balkanization coinedword now means any messy political fragmentation
yugoslavia unraveledone country became seven in fifty years