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The ‘Balkans’ in Western Thought
Analysis of the stereotypical constructions referring to the term
The ‘Balkans’ as a unity in the European Imaginary
Images of the Balkans
Second Lesson
Lecturer: Petros Marazopoulos
petrosmarazopoulos@gmail.gr
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Stereotypical constructions regarding the Balkans
• Who created those stereotypes? Why?
• Are some of those constructions referring also to Greece?
• Period of interest: From the 17th century until the modern times
• Main historical phases- Independence from the Ottoman Empire, Balkan Wars, Socialist Balkans,
The Fall of Communism
• Each of these periods brought corresponding images and stereotypes
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Travel Literature- The
search for new and
interesting landscapes
The narration as a
construction and the
reader’s interesting
Narrations emphasizing
danger
The Balkans and the
connection with
violence- A
construction or a
reality?
The ‘Balkans’ in the 17th and 18th Centuries
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The Balkans in the Western culture (17th-18th century)
➢ Intense ethnic diversity
➢ Isolation/ deep ethnic differences
➢ Violence, ignorance and superstitions
➢ The gradual creation of the ‘Balkan myth’- an ideologically charged discourse
➢ The Balkans as ‘terra incognita’ in the 17th century
➢ The discovery of the Balkans and the emergence of stereotypic discourses
➢ These constructions led to the separation of the Balkans from Western Europe (at an
imaginary and not only level)
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The Balkans in the Western culture (17th-18th century)
➢ The Balkan myth was associated with specific constructions, such as hostility and intrigue
➢ Negative connotations of the Term- primitivism, brutality, belief in superstitions, religiosity, harsh
Nationalism, savagery
➢ Which was the results of such stereotypical constructions?
➢ These connotations formed a specific frame of reference to the South-Eastern Europe
➢ They also created the picture of the ‘European Other’ (inside the European territory, but confused
elements of identity)
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The Balkans in the Western culture (17th-18th century)
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The Balkans in the Western culture (17th-18th century)
• The depictions of the Balkans in the Western description of the Balkans in Western culture has
not been only negative
• Vital elements: the romantic depiction of the irredentist movements of the 19th century (the
Western traveler enters a world of ''romantic and patriotic heroes‘’)
• The Western travelers' curiosity about exotic tribes with unusual costumes led to the idealization
of the bandit and poor way of life in the Balkans
• The admiration for heroism and the need for freedom are familiar literary themes in European
literary or travel texts of the period.
• Within these, movements such as philhellenism arose
• These representations might have a similar result to the European phantasy as the negative
ones–Why?
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The Balkans in the Western culture (17th-18th century)
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The Balkan Wars and Europe
• Balkans and the notion of ‘de facto’ violence
• The Balkan Wars as ‘the first step of War World I’
• Connecting the Peninsula with instability and fragmentation
• The term ‘Balkanization’
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The modern era- The communist Balkans
• The establishment of the communist regimes
• The isolationism from the West and the image of the ‘Dark Other’
• The European periphery and Communism
• Constructing the ‘Communist Other’
• Old stereotypes re-emerge in contemporary forms
• Balkans, barbarism, Western intervention, need for modernization and the ‘bridge linking East
and West’
• The Balkans have gradually, over the last two centuries at least, been discovered and
established as the 'Other' within European borders
• At the same time they have often served as the mirror of civilized Europe
• The image of the Balkans as the ‘younger self of the West’
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The modern era- The communist Balkans
• The establishment in the Western imagination as the periphery of the European space, which
without the sincere interest of the West 'can achieve nothing’.
• The region became synonymous with backwardness
• These neologisms (such as balkanization) were steps towards a further isolation of the Balkans
• How did Communism act?: the creation of the Communism Other
• The image of Greece as ‘the only western country in the West’
• The creation of a new East (Poland, Soviet Union and the Communist Balkans)
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The communist regimes
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The post-communist Balkans
• Former Yugoslavia and the emerged states
• The Civil War between the Serbs and the Croats
• The seek for modernization in Romania, Albania and Bulgaria
• The role of the European Union
• The international community and the ‘different’ Balkans: violence, war, primitivism, nationalism,
political and economic instability
• The Balkans once again in the historical scene
• The readers’ interesting
• Journalistic descriptions, articles, memoirs, travel literature, novels, academic and historical
researches
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The post-communist Balkans
• Stereotypes about the Balkans in the contemporary era
• Are the Balkans European states?
• European integration as the only solution towards democratization
• Political stability, economic stability and the E.U.- A pattern to analyze
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The West Word over the Balkans
It is only when they go abroad for their education, don black coats
and a thin veneer of progress, that they invite criticism. They are not
ripe for the blessings of democracy (such as they are), and much
painful experience will be necessary to prepare them. I do not say
they cannot undergo the preparation, but I do not wish to see them
in the process. I prefer to remember them as I have known them—
admirable survivors of the age of chivalry
Herbert Vivian
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The West Word over the Balkans: savagery, ethnic
diversity and racial purity
It is an intolerable affront to human and political nature that these wretched and
unhappy little countries in the Balkan peninsula can, and do, have quarrels that
cause world wars. Some hundred and fifty thousand young Americans died
because of an event in 1914 in a mud-caked primitive village, Sarajevo.
Loathsome and almost obscene snarls in Balkan politics, hardly intelligible to a
Western reader, are still vital to the peace of Europe, and perhaps the world
John Gunther, Inside Europe
Being essentially cross-bred, the Macedonian is hardly distinguished for his physique. . . . The
Turks are perhaps the best physical specimens of the various Macedonian types, probably
because they have indulged in less cross-breeding. . . . Turkish women, when not interbred to
any pronounced extent, are generally attractive, but those of Bulgar or Greek extraction
usually have broad and very coarse features of the Slav type. Such features, comprising thick
lips, broad flat noses and high cheek-bones, scarcely conduce to beauty in a woman.
Darkish hair with yellowish brown complexions cause them to resemble the Greek type, which
is invariably sallow, with jet black hair and luminous eyes.
Text of British Travelers through the Balkan Peninsula, 1921
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Petros Marazopoulos
petrosmarazopoulos@gmail.com
October 2022