The term ‘South-Eastern European Peninsula’ was proposed in 1863 by the Austrian diplomat and Albanologist Johann Georg von Hahn (1811–1869) in 1863 as an alternative to the ‘Balkan Peninsula’, as this geographical term, introduced in 1808 by the German geographer August Zeune (1778–1853) in 1808 was based on the erroneous assumption that the Balkan Mountains (Bulgarian: Stara Planina), situated in present-day Bulgaria, stretched from the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea. In 1893, the German geographer Theobald Fischer (1846–1910) proposed that the peninsula in south-eastern Europe be referred to as “South-Eastern Europe”.^[1] It was not until the interwar period that ‘South-Eastern Europe’ became established in German-speaking countries as a supposedly neutral alternative to the compound terms containing ‘Balkan’, which carried negative connotations.^[2] During the Nazi era, however, the term ‘South-Eastern Europe’ also took on a normative connotation, becoming a code for Nazi strategies of domination (‘South-Eastern Europe as a supplementary space’). The Nazi intellectual and expert on South-Eastern Europe, Franz Ronneberger (1913–1999), therefore described “South-Eastern European studies” not as an “objective science”, but as a “highly political field of scholarship”.^[3]

After the Second World War, due to the Nazi discrediting of the term ‘South-Eastern Europe’, the term ‘Balkans’ once again came to dominate as the designation for South-Eastern Europe in non-German-language research and journalism; English-language overviews of the region’s history usually feature ‘the Balkans’ in their titles. In German-speaking countries, however, ‘South-Eastern Europe’ remained the predominant name for the region, as evidenced by the institutions dedicated to it (e.g. the South-Eastern Europe Society, professorships in South-Eastern European history). One reason for this was the definitional distinction between South-Eastern Europe and the Balkans: in German-speaking discourse, the latter is usually defined in more limited geographical terms than South-Eastern Europe. Whilst South-Eastern Europe encompasses the areas from the Carpathian Arc to the Adriatic, the Aegean and the Black Sea (thus also including Hungary and Slovakia in the north), the Balkans, as a historical region, is defined as the area of long-standing direct Ottoman rule, and is thus bounded in the north by the Sava and Danube rivers.^[4] A similar distinction had already been proposed in 1942 by Fritz Valjavec (1909–1960) as early as 1942, who defined South-Eastern Europe ‘primarily’ as a ‘working concept’, whilst the geographically narrower Balkan region exhibited ‘cultural-morphological’ similarities and correspondences.^[5]

It is not possible to provide a clear-cut definition of ‘South-Eastern Europe’ beyond the history of the term itself. There has never been a territorial entity by that name with its own institutions, and the populations of the region so designated have never defined themselves primarily in terms of belonging to ‘South-Eastern Europe’. Rather, the institutionalisation of the term ‘South-Eastern Europe’ took place in academic and political contexts outside the region itself (primarily in Germany and Austria). It was based on the assumption that this region shares common features that justify treating it as a single entity. The institutionalisation of expertise on South-Eastern Europe is reflected in the existence of specialised departments at universities and academic institutions, as well as professional associations that include ‘South-Eastern Europe’ or ‘South-Eastern European’ in their names. A formalised political structure named ‘South-East Europe’ and comprising those countries generally considered to belong to the region (but excluding Hungary) came into being in 1996 with the ‘South-East European Co-operation Process’, which aims to promote co-operation amongst the states of the region with a view to their integration into the EU, but which has no supranational bodies or sovereign powers.

The difficulty in defining ‘South-East Europe’ stems from the absence of clear geographical boundaries. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that ‘South-Eastern Europe’ is not (merely) intended as a cartographic designation, but as a region defined by specific historical, political and cultural contexts, which defies clear spatial demarcation and has taken on different forms over time. The northern and southern boundaries of South-Eastern Europe are disputed. Consequently, in different contexts, the territories of the present-day states of Slovakia, Slovenia, Moldova and Hungary are sometimes counted as part of South-Eastern Europe and at other times not; The same applies to the Anatolian parts of Turkey, to parts of Ukraine (Carpathian Ukraine, Northern Bukovina, Southern Bessarabia) and to Cyprus. The classification of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia as part of South-Eastern Europe is generally uncontroversial. In the case of Croatia, there are voices, particularly within the country itself, which object to such a classification and place Croatia in Central Europe.

Broad classification of Europe, proposal by the
Standing Committee on Geographical
Names (StAGN).

[Wikimedia Commons]. Map: CC BY-SA 3.0/
NordNordWest

In view of these ambiguities, the specific reference frameworks of organisations and initiatives relating to South-Eastern Europe differ. The South-Eastern Europe Society, for example, includes Moldova, Slovakia, Cyprus, Turkey and Ukraine within the scope of its activities. The scope of the Südost-Institute was similarly broad, with the caveat that it referred to ‘parts of Turkey and Ukraine’. The body responsible for the standardisation of geographical names in German-speaking countries (the Standing Committee on Geographical Names), on the other hand, proposes a narrower definition of South-Eastern Europe. In its ‘Broad Classification of Europe according to Cultural Criteria and Political Boundaries’, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Turkey are not included in South-Eastern Europe, whereas Moldova and Cyprus are. In view of such demarcation issues, a pragmatic use of the term ‘South-Eastern Europe’ has become established in historical research as a designation for a historical region characterised by broad and shifting transitional zones.

Debates surrounding the term ‘South-Eastern Europe’ have centred primarily on the question of its suitability as a designation for a broad geographical region. Among other things, these debates have focused on the relationship between the two terms ‘South-Eastern Europe’ and ‘the Balkans’. Whilst ‘South-Eastern Europe’ was originally proposed in the 19th century as a term offering greater plausibility and neutrality for the broad region in the south-east of Europe (see above), the problem of its definitional boundaries was repeatedly highlighted throughout the 20th century. After 1945, ‘South-Eastern Europe’ came under criticism, partly due to the Nazi exploitation of this term as part of the Third Reich’s plans to dominate and exploit South-Eastern Europe; in this context, the involvement of South-Eastern European studies in Nazi politics was also examined – albeit with considerable delay.^[6]

In the 1990s, the book *Imagining the Balkans* by the historian Maria Todorova sparked fierce controversy over the terminology. In this study, the author demonstrates how the Balkans were ‘invented’ by Western and Central European discourses and, in the process, how the geographical term ‘Balkans’ became laden with a series of stereotypical, mostly pejorative value judgements. Todorova’s monograph inspired a series of further works dealing with the emergence of clichés about the Balkans and South-Eastern Europe. The deconstruction of the term ‘the Balkans’ prompted an intensive reflection within South-Eastern European studies on how the region should be designated. In a debate with Maria Todorova, for example, the German historian of South-Eastern Europe, Holm Sundhaussen, argued for a clear terminological distinction between South-Eastern Europe and the Balkans, understanding the Balkans as a historical region constituted by shared historical legacies.^[7] The Austrian historian of South-Eastern Europe, Karl Kaser, proposed replacing ‘South-Eastern Europe’ with ‘south-eastern Europe’ in order to prevent the impression of a clear demarcation of the region from arising in the first place, even in terminological terms.^[8]

The definitional problems described above imply similar difficulties in deciding at what point a history of South-Eastern Europe should begin and which geographical areas it should cover.^[9] A sensible starting point for a regional history would be the administrative division of the Roman Empire (395) and the resulting emergence of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was to outlive the Western Empire by almost a millennium (until 1453). A key feature of the history of South-Eastern Europe since then has been the formative influence of various, sometimes competing, empires whose centres were located on the periphery of or outside the region. Until the formation of nation states, which began in the early 19th century, the Byzantine, Ottoman and Habsburg Empires – and, in the north-eastern part of the region, the Russian Empire as well – shaped the region’s political integration. Added to this was Venice, which, over time and to varying degrees, controlled areas along the eastern coast of the Adriatic and parts of the Greek archipelago. The significance of external actors was also evident in the ‘long’ 19th century, when South-Eastern Europe became part of the sphere of influence of the major European powers in the wake of the ‘Eastern Question’, and in the 20th century, when the region fell victim to the war policies of Germany and Italy and, after the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the USA gained decisive influence. Even after the end of the Cold War, parts of the region remain subject to external control to an extent that is unusual for Europe, as manifested, for example, in the UN Administration for Kosovo (1999–2008) or the Office of the High Representative of the International Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is vested with extensive powers of intervention.

Despite the region’s heterogeneity and the diversity of its histories, a number of defining long-term social factors can be identified, such as the long tradition of imperial rule, the Byzantine and Ottoman legacies, and the coexistence of different religious communities. Another long-term shaping factor is migratory movements of various kinds, which have made South-Eastern Europe a migration region par excellence.^[10] Early medieval land-grabbing (such as by the Slavs and Hungarians), colonisation (initiated by imperial and nation-state governments), nomadic and seasonal migrations, population displacements in the wake of war and crisis, labour migration, forced migration and flight have brought about frequent changes to the linguistic, religious and ethnographic landscape of South-Eastern Europe. They gave rise to the ethnic, linguistic and religious heterogeneity of South-Eastern Europe that persists to this day, despite the processes of national homogenisation and ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the 19th and 20th centuries.

As part of these migratory movements, Germans also came to South-Eastern Europe, initially in the 12th and 13th centuries, summoned by Hungarian and Serbian rulers, primarily to develop mining in Hungary (Banat, Transylvania) and Serbia; from there, colonies of German miners also made their way to Bosnia and Bulgaria. The term ‘Saxons’ became established in the languages of South-Eastern Europe to refer to these settlers. A smaller group of settlers settled in the Gottschee region in what is now Slovenia in the 14th century. A renewed wave of German immigration occurred as a result of the Habsburg re-Catholicisation of the Austrian heartlands and the simultaneous ‘depopulation’ of the territories lost to the Ottomans in the late 17th/early 18th centuries, when immigrants from Habsburg lands and allied German territorial states were recruited and settled in the Banat, in Transdanubia (‘Swabian Turkey’), in the territory of present-day Vojvodina and in other regions of Hungary, which had come under Habsburg rule (‘Danube Swabians’).^[11] Some Protestants from Austria were deported to Transylvania (“Landler”). After Bessarabia came under Russian rule in 1812, Germans were also settled there. From there, secondary settlements took place in Dobruja.^[12] A renewed wave of significant immigration led Germans to Croatia and Slavonia, as well as to Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the 19th century. In the 20th century, in turn, Germans – like other minority groups in South-Eastern Europe – became victims of collective reprisals (expulsion from Hungary, deportation in Romania, expulsion and, in some cases, murder in Yugoslavia).

Another social characteristic essential to understanding the modern history of South-Eastern Europe is the region’s predominantly agrarian nature, which persisted into the second half of the 20th century. With the exception of a few pockets of industrialisation and mining, the countries of South-Eastern Europe remained predominantly agricultural until the communist industrialisation policies following the Second World War. Well into the late 19th century, agriculture in the vast mountainous regions of South-Eastern Europe was based primarily on livestock farming (mostly sheep and goats), which was generally practised on a nomadic basis (‘transhumance’). Even in the first half of the 20th century, a large proportion of agriculture was geared towards subsistence. The importance of agriculture was reflected in a low level of urbanisation. It is only since the mid-1980s that more people in South-Eastern Europe have been living in towns than in villages (with significant regional variations). South-Eastern Europe thus experienced a widespread breakthrough in modernisation – albeit of a communist nature – only in the decades following the Second World War, as neither the late-imperial nor the nation-state modernisation efforts of the ‘long’ 19th century and the interwar period had been able to overcome the manifold obstacles to modernisation.

The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, which at times comprised large parts of south-eastern Europe (and other regions beyond) as a political entity, exerted an enormous cultural influence. The Byzantine period saw significant turning points and changes which, on the one hand, broke with the traditions of antiquity and, on the other, laid the foundations for differences from Western Europe that continue to have an impact to this day. These include the migration of Slavs (from the 6th century onwards), which was a prerequisite for the formation of Slavic states in the Middle Ages (Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia). A key Byzantine legacy is the Christianisation of the Balkans, which originated in Constantinople; following the Great Schism of 1054, this meant that most Christians in south-eastern Europe became part of the Orthodox (Eastern Church) world. As part of the Christianisation of the Slavs by Byzantium, the Bible was translated into Slavic in the 9th century and a distinct Slavic writing system was developed, the Cyrillic variant of which survives to this day.

In the north of south-eastern Europe, Byzantium competed with the Kingdom of Hungary, which had emerged around the turn of the millennium, and thus also with the Papacy; Hungary, for example, succeeded in annexing Croatia in 1102, whilst the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which emerged in the 14th century, aligned themselves with Byzantium in matters of church policy. The lands of the Hungarian Crown (the Kingdom of Hungary including Transylvania, Croatia and Dalmatia) in many respects followed a different path of development to the Byzantine territories of south-eastern Europe, although these continuities were to extend beyond the Ottoman conquest. These include affiliation with the Western Christian world, the development of feudal agrarian systems, and the existence of independent municipal law systems (based on German or Italian models).

The era of the Byzantine Empire can therefore be regarded as a significant period in the history of South-Eastern Europe, spanning from the fifth century to 1453, although the final century of this period was already marked by the onset of the next era, which left a lasting legacy for the region: the Ottoman conquest. In 1354, the Ottomans, coming from western Anatolia, established their first bridgehead beyond the Dardanelles. From here, by the mid-16th century, they had succeeded in conquering most of south-eastern Europe (including large parts of the Kingdom of Hungary). The Ottoman conquest brought about the end not only of the Byzantine Empire (which, by the time of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, comprised little more than the hinterland of the severely depopulated city), but also for the medieval states that had emerged on the northern edge of the Byzantine sphere of influence. For South-Eastern Europe, Ottoman rule meant integration into an Islamic state that extended far beyond Europe and which had a lasting impact on the region’s social relations and cultural practices. One of the most significant legacies of the Ottoman Empire is the presence of Muslim population groups in South-Eastern Europe, resulting from conversion and colonisation.

A distinctive feature of Ottoman rule was its ability to adapt to and integrate local diversity, which is why the societies of the region remained characterised by great heterogeneity despite the unifying political framework. The Ottomans did not seek to homogenise the region. Administratively, this diversity was reflected in varying degrees of central state penetration; some areas (the principalities of Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia, and the Republic of Ragusa) were not directly integrated into the empire but, as vassals, enjoyed extensive internal autonomy, whilst in other regions (Northern Albania, Montenegro) the Sublime Porte contented itself with a largely nominal rule, whilst specific population groups (e.g. passport guards) enjoyed extensive privileges. Central to the region’s development was the Ottomans’ approach to religious diversity: Although Muslims held a legally privileged status until the legal equality of all subjects was established in 1856, adherents of the ‘People of the Book’ (in South-Eastern Europe, Christians of various denominations and Jews) enjoyed the Sultan’s protection and were able to continue practising their religion. They were, however, subject to certain restrictions and had to pay higher taxes. This policy of recognising religious diversity was one of the reasons why a large proportion of Iberian Jews (Sephardim) emigrated to the Ottoman Empire following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal in 1492.

Ottoman society was organised primarily along religious lines, with the individual recognised religious communities (millet) enjoying a high degree of autonomy in the management of their day-to-day affairs. As the Ottomans did not classify society according to ethnic or linguistic criteria, Muslims of any language formed a single group from which the empire’s elite was also drawn. The Orthodox were generally subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople. Social diversity was also characterised by the coexistence of different legal systems. Urban-rural differences were less significant in legal terms, but were certainly significant in socio-cultural and economic terms. Another distinctive feature of the Ottoman Empire was the absence of a landowning aristocracy and, consequently, of manorial control over the peasant population, although, as the Sultan’s domestic power waned in the 18th century, forms of personal dependency developed between peasants and local notables, who were able to accumulate land. In large parts of the Empire’s directly administered territories, however, the peasantry remained effectively free, with small-scale farming structures predominating.

An important turning point in the region’s history was the end of Ottoman expansion in the 17th century and the beginning of the empire’s territorial contraction. With the defeat of the Ottoman troops by the army of the Habsburgs and their allies following the Second Siege of Vienna (1683), a process began in which the Ottomans withdrew from Europe; this came to an end with the Balkan Wars (1912/13), when the Ottoman Empire was left with only the hinterland of Istanbul (Eastern Thrace) on European soil. Conversely, after 1683, the Habsburgs were able to gradually expand their holdings in south-eastern Europe and incorporate the entire territories of the Hungarian Crown. The Adriatic regions (Istria, Dalmatia) finally came under Austrian rule in 1815 (Congress of Vienna). In keeping with the heterogeneous nature of the internal structures of the Habsburg Empire, the south-eastern European territories were also administered in different ways. One region with a special status was the Military Frontier, which was controlled directly from Vienna; it had been established in the 16th century and, from the early 18th century onwards, stretched from the Adriatic in the west to the Banat and Transylvania in the east, providing protection against the Ottomans. The Southern Military Frontier was finally abolished in 1881 and integrated into the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia, which in turn enjoyed autonomous status within the Kingdom of Hungary. In many respects, the south-eastern European provinces of the Habsburg Empire differed from its core territories; for instance, non-Catholics (Protestants, Orthodox) were granted freedom of religious practice and recognition of their respective church hierarchies even before the Patent of Toleration of 1781. Austria became the centre of Serbian Orthodoxy (with the establishment of an archdiocese in Karlowitz/Sremski Karlovci in 1713) after the Serbian Patriarchate on Ottoman soil had been permanently abolished by the Sultan (1766). The Principality of Transylvania, which came under Austrian control in 1690 and in which, among other things, the ‘Leopoldine Diplom’ , in turn became a place of refuge for Protestants deported from the heartlands of Austria (e.g. the Salzkammergut and the Land ob der Enns) during the 18th century.

Alongside the Habsburgs, the Ottomans faced another powerful adversary in the 18th century in the form of the expanding Russian Empire, which repeatedly occupied the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia and brought an end to the Ottoman presence on the northern shore of the Black Sea (1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca). With this peace treaty, Russia also secured the right to act as the protecting power for the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire, a right which the Russian government repeatedly used as a pretext for intervention. The Habsburgs claimed a similar role for themselves with regard to the Catholics. In the 19th century, Russia waged war against the Ottomans on several occasions, thereby conquering Bessarabia (1812) and the Danube Delta (1829). Russia’s interventions were essential for the de facto separation of the Romanian principalities from Ottoman control, for the granting of autonomy to Serbia by the Sultan (1830), and for the creation of the Principality of Bulgaria (1878).

Eastern Europe in 1878.
[R. H. Labberton, E. Elaxton & Co., 1884,
Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries]

The military weakness of the Ottoman Empire, together with the interventionist policies of the major European powers, were key factors in the growing intensity of national movements in South-Eastern Europe during the 19th century and the creation of autonomous and, ultimately, independent nation states. Without international support, the (de facto) independence of the new states would scarcely have been achieved at that time, as the social reach of the national movements and their military potential were limited. The Serbian uprising of 1804 (which lasted until 1813) is regarded as the first ‘national’ uprising; it ultimately led to the establishment of the autonomous Principality of Serbia (1830). In 1821, the Greek uprising against Ottoman rule began, which, thanks to military support from Europe, was followed by the establishment of the independent Greek state (1830). Montenegro was, in fact, also largely independent at that time. The two Danube principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, thanks to Russian support, increasingly freed themselves from Ottoman influence and united in 1861 to form Romania. Bulgaria was established as an autonomous principality in 1878; in the same year, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania were recognised as independent states at the Congress of Berlin. Albania followed in 1913. The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed in 1923 as the last successor state to the Ottoman Empire. The nation states of South-Eastern Europe saw themselves as the political expression of a nation generally defined in ethnic terms and, from the outset, laid claim to territories beyond their borders inhabited by supposed fellow nationals. They therefore pursued a policy of territorial expansion, primarily at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, but sometimes also against one another (e.g. the Second Balkan War, 1913). Domestically, the new nation-states sought to establish a centralised state structure, based on Western European models and constitutions, and to consolidate national identity amongst the predominantly rural population.

In the Habsburg territories of South-Eastern Europe, the emergence of national identities and the political movements built upon them could also be observed in the 19th century. However, the formation of nation states here was not to take place until after the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918. As in the Ottoman Balkans, nation-building in the Habsburg Monarchy was not a uniform or unidirectional process. Two political factors gave rise to distinctive features in the history of national movements within the Habsburg Empire: Firstly, following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, these movements operated within two very differently structured political contexts. In the Hungarian half of the empire, the non-Magyar nationalities were confronted with a centralising state that pursued a policy of Magyarisation. By contrast, the Crown Lands in the Austrian half of the empire had greater scope for shaping policy, and the government in Vienna tended to seek a balance between the nationalities; it therefore acceded to many of their demands (e.g. regarding language use), although fierce conflicts repeatedly arose at local level (e.g. between Germans and Slovenes in Lower Styria and Carniola, or between Italians and Croats in Istria). Secondly, with Serbia and Romania, there were already nation states to which the Serbian (or, more broadly, the South Slavic) and Romanian populations of Austria-Hungary could look for guidance. The cross-border dynamics of national mobilisation were particularly evident in the province of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was occupied by Austria-Hungary in 1878 and annexed in 1908; the largest population group in relative terms at that time were Orthodox Serbs, which is why Serbian nationalists demanded the annexation of Bosnia to Serbia.

The German-speaking population in the south-eastern parts of the empire also took part in national mobilisation at both local and state level, as evidenced by the numerous newly established associations and press outlets. In the Hungarian parts of the empire, activism was directed against efforts at Magyarisation and centralisation; in the Austrian parts, it often took the form of an anti-Slavic ‘defensive struggle’ (particularly in the context of the German-Slovenian conflict). Beyond the rhetoric of activism, however, local conditions were often characterised by multilingualism and ethnic coexistence.

Territorial changes in the Balkan region
– the London Conference (1913)
and the Treaty of Bucharest
(1913). [In: Report of the International
Commission on the Causes and Consequences
of the Balkan Wars, 1914, Courtesy of the
University of Texas Libraries]

The Balkan Wars (1912–13) and the First World War marked the definitive triumph of the nation-state model in South-Eastern Europe, resulting in the entire region being integrated into various nation-states. However, these wars also highlighted the disunity amongst the countries of South-Eastern Europe. During the First World War, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, whilst Serbia, Greece and Romania were allies of the Entente. The underlying motivation for the governments (with the exception, of course, of Serbia, which had been attacked by Austria-Hungary ) was their respective plans for territorial expansion and the corresponding promises made by the belligerent powers. For the post-war order, this meant that one part of the region belonged to the victorious powers and the other to the defeated powers, which made a region-wide policy of cooperation immensely difficult. The population groups associated with the defunct empires (Germans and Hungarians in the former Habsburg territories, Muslims in the territories that had been part of the Ottoman Empire until 1913) experienced a reversal of status that was both ideological and, in many cases, material. Many civil servants from the defunct empires left the territories that now belonged to nation states; German and Hungarian landowners in the north, as well as Muslim landowners in the south of South-Eastern Europe, lost a great deal of land as a result of land reforms – which, whilst in principle long overdue, were also motivated by ethno-nationalist considerations.

After 1918, it was the people of the Siegerland region in south-eastern Europe in particular who faced significant integration challenges. The Kingdom of Romania, which had been expanded to include Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia (and thus also significant German populations), and the newly founded Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (from 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), which, in addition to Serbia and Montenegro, also comprised Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, parts of Dalmatia, Slovenia and Vojvodina (and thus also home to a large German minority ), had to integrate territories with historically diverse affiliations and a highly ethnically heterogeneous population; Greece was faced with around 1.5 million Greek refugees from Asia Minor, who had been forced to flee their homeland in the wake of the Greek defeat by Turkey (1922–23).

Both in Yugoslavia, which saw itself as the nation-state of the so-called ‘tri-namous’ Yugoslav nation, and in Romania, there was a striking divergence between the political elite’s ethno-nationalist conception of the state and the country’s actual multi-ethnicity. Similarly, a centralist state structure (modelled on the French system) clashed with the existence of self-assured regional elites who had been socialised within the Habsburg Monarchy. Both states pursued a policy of national homogenisation and integration which, in one case, relied on and favoured the South Slavs, and in the other, the Romanians. Nevertheless, minority rights were granted (to varying degrees) to the non-dominant nationalities (as prescribed by the Paris Peace Treaties); thus, the Germans in both countries enjoyed a well-developed education system and press (the Germans, however, were not regarded by the government as a particularly problematic minority in either Romania or Yugoslavia; rather, it was the Hungarians and Jews in Romania, and the Hungarians and Albanians in Yugoslavia, who played the involuntary role of the ‘significant other’ in their own countries). There were neither any significant processes of assimilation nor mass emigration of minority members (with the exception of the immediate post-war period). Nevertheless, tensions between the majority population and minorities, as well as those between groups with radically different conceptions of the state, were among the key factors contributing to the instability that characterised domestic political developments, particularly due to the ruling elites’ profound fears of territorial loss in the centre. Serious institutional shortcomings, economic underdevelopment and the difficult international environment did nothing to make the task of integration any easier. Rather, they created a breeding ground for extreme nationalism, which in Romania was linked to widespread anti-Semitism. Among the large German minorities in both countries, radical activists—supported by the National Socialist regime—also gained increasing prominence in the 1930s, which is why the representatives of the German minority increasingly aligned themselves with Nazi Germany, even though the German minority was under significantly less pressure than other large minorities in Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia.^[13]

Overall, the interwar period in the countries of South-Eastern Europe, much like in most European states, was characterised by great instability. In this context, the consequences of the First World War must be borne in mind, some of which had been devastating (Serbia was the belligerent country with the highest number of casualties per capita). Large flows of refugees resulting from the war, particularly in Bulgaria and Greece, exacerbated social hardship and political difficulties. The new borders created by the peace treaties could not possibly resolve national conflicts in a region with such a complex ethno-confessional mix, unless radical measures were taken, such as the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923. In all the countries of South-Eastern Europe, fair elections remained the exception during the interwar period; the democratic legitimacy of most governments was correspondingly low. Communist parties were banned shortly after 1918 (with the exception of Greece). Despite the continuing predominance of a peasant-based social structure, genuine peasant parties succeeded in forming a government or appointing a prime minister only briefly in Bulgaria (1919–1923) and Romania (1928–1930, 1932–1933) to briefly form a government or appoint a prime minister. In Bulgaria, the Peasants’ Party government was overthrown in a bloody coup in 1923 and its leader, Aleksandăr Stambolijski, was assassinated. The urban elites of the countries of South-Eastern Europe, concentrated in the capital cities, succeeded in manipulating the political process and maintaining their dominant position, if necessary in coalition with the monarchs, who held a strong position under the constitution.

Amid mounting political instability, often accompanied by political violence, all the countries of South-Eastern Europe saw the establishment of authoritarian regimes in the late 1920s and early 1930s (in Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Romania in the form of monarchical dictatorships). On the basis of a fundamental nationalist consensus, and influenced by the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, the political landscape of South-Eastern Europe shifted towards the right during the interwar period; at its extreme fringe, genuine fascist groups formed, which grew into mass movements in Romania (Legion of the Archangel Michael/Iron Guard) and in Hungary (Arrow Cross Party) grew into mass movements. The global economic crisis from 1929 onwards, which hit the agrarian economies of South-Eastern Europe particularly hard, was a factor that accelerated this trend. As a result of the Great Depression and the Nazi seizure of power, Germany emerged as the most important trading partner of the countries of South-Eastern Europe, a development that went hand in hand with Germany’s growing political influence in the region. Between November 1940 and March 1941, the Nazi regime succeeded in persuading Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania and Hungary to join the Tripartite Pact. Albania was already under Italian occupation at that time (since 1939).

The Second World War also marked a profound turning point for South-Eastern Europe in many respects. During the war, the states of the region were integrated in various ways into the German and (until September 1943) Italian spheres of influence until their liberation, with the exception of the Republic of Turkey, which remained neutral. Yugoslavia and Greece were occupied by Germany, Italy and Bulgaria in 1941, whilst on Yugoslav soil the ‘Independent State of Croatia’ (NDH) under the rule of the fascist Ustaša, which systematically murdered Jews, Roma, Serbs and opponents of the regime. Powerful armed resistance movements soon emerged in the occupied Yugoslav territories and the NDH, as well as in Greece; in both cases, these were divided into communist and royalist-nationalist or conservative-oriented groups, which at times fought one another (‘civil war within the war’). The partisans succeeded in liberating large parts of the occupied territories (particularly following the Italian surrender). Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, on the other hand, were allies of the Axis powers, with Romania and Hungary taking part in Germany’s war against the Soviet Union in the hope of territorial gains (for Hungary, these had already been partially realised in 1938 and 1940, when, in the so-called First Vienna Award, Czechoslovakia, and in the Second Vienna Award, Romania, were compelled by Germany to cede territories with Hungarian populations to Hungary; Romania occupied Bessarabia and the northern Black Sea region around the city of Odessa/Odesa). In South-Eastern Europe, too, the Jewish population was among the groups that suffered the most during the Second World War: in the areas controlled by Germany, they fell victim to Nazi mass murder; in Croatia, the Ustaše regime murdered the majority of the Jews living in the country, and in Romania, 280,000–300,000 Jews were killed by the anti-Semitic Antonescu regime. In Hungary, following the German occupation in 1944–45, hundreds of thousands fell victim to the Holocaust.

The advance of the Red Army following the repulsion of the German attack marked a decisive turning point for the post-war order in South-Eastern Europe: in the summer of 1944, the Red Army marched into Romania and then into Bulgaria; both countries had switched sides during the war and declared war on the German Reich. Yugoslavia was largely liberated by the communist partisans under Tito’s leadership, whilst Hungary was liberated by the Soviet Union and its allies after fierce fighting, by early April 1945. From the liberated or Red Army-occupied countries (particularly Romania), tens of thousands of German labourers were deported to the USSR for forced labour in late 1944 and early 1945.^[14] In Greece, too, it was essentially local resistance groups which, with British support, liberated the country. Albania was liberated by communist-led partisans, who received massive support from the Yugoslav partisans. The nature of the liberation had a decisive influence on the post-war order: in Yugoslavia and Albania, communists effectively took power at the end of the war. In the wake of the communist seizure of power in Yugoslavia, most Germans (around 300,000 people) were expelled from the country (primarily from Vojvodina) and a large number of – actual and supposed – opponents of the communists were killed. In the countries occupied by Soviet troops – Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, it took until 1947–48 for communist one-party regimes to be established, whilst in Greece, anti-communist forces were able to prevail in a civil war that lasted until 1949, largely thanks to support from the United Kingdom and the USA. The Republic of Turkey also joined the Western bloc (joining NATO in 1952, at the same time as Greece). Thus, the Iron Curtain also divided South-Eastern Europe.

The early years of communist rule were characterised by Stalinist repressive practices and periods of terror. The subsequent political and social development of the countries of South-Eastern Europe did not follow a uniform pattern on either side of the Iron Curtain. A first significant turning point came in 1948, when Yugoslavia was expelled from the communist bloc by the Soviet Union. This marked the beginning of Yugoslavia’s own path to socialism, which manifested itself, amongst other things, in increasing decentralisation (culminating in the 1974 Constitution, which guaranteed extensive rights to Yugoslavia’s six constituent republics and two autonomous provinces). Another characteristic of Yugoslav socialism was the significantly higher degree of liberalism in politics, the economy, culture and society compared with other state-socialist countries. In terms of foreign policy, the country, under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito, who died in 1980, distinguished itself as a leading figure in the Non-Aligned Movement (founded in 1961) and maintained reasonably good relations both with the West and (after Stalin’s death in 1953) with the Soviet Union.

A second turning point for the communist bloc was the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which was crushed by Soviet troops. In Hungary, a wave of repression was followed by a more conciliatory policy on the part of the regime, which resulted in greater freedoms and consumer opportunities for the population (so-called ‘goulash communism’). In Romania and Bulgaria, too, the level of repression decreased after the Stalinist era (though it was to rise again in the 1970s), but no fundamental reform of the political and economic structures took place. The extensive network of informers within the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, monitored and harassed the country’s large minority groups in particular (Hungarians and Germans). From the early 1960s onwards, the party leaderships in Romania and Bulgaria sought to compensate for a lack of legitimacy through increasingly nationalistic rhetoric and policies. In Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu (1918–1989), this included a foreign policy that sought to break away from the Soviet Union, whilst Bulgaria under Todor Zhivkov (1911–1998) remained a loyal ally of the USSR. In both countries, members of certain national minorities were permitted to emigrate; a distinctive feature of Romanian national communism was that the government had the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel, respectively, pay for every German and Jewish emigrant. Albania remained, at its core, a Stalinist regime until after Enver Hoxha’s death (1985); the country was also characterised by an isolationist foreign policy, gradually breaking ties with its patrons, which changed over time (Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China).

Greece and Turkey, both of which were integrated into the Western alliance system, did not follow a straightforward path either. The political liberalisation in Greece during the 1950s and 1960s came to an abrupt end with the colonels’ seizure of power and the establishment of a military dictatorship in 1967. It was only after the dictatorship’s overthrow in 1974 that Greece was to become a lasting democracy, with the country’s membership of the European Community (from 1981) acting as an important stabilising factor. In Turkey, the democratic development that began after the Second World War was interrupted or reversed by repeated military interventions (1960, 1971, 1980, 1997). Since the turn of the millennium, the democratic process has finally been able to consolidate. One factor that had a destabilising effect on domestic politics in both countries and brought them to the brink of war with one another was the Cyprus issue. The former British Crown Colony, which gained independence in 1959, was effectively divided into a Greek-controlled and a Turkish-controlled part following a Turkish military intervention in 1974; the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’, proclaimed in the north of the island, is recognised only by Turkey and is, de jure, part of the Republic of Cyprus and has therefore also been EU territory since 2004.

1989 also marked a turning point for South-Eastern Europe, as the communist dictatorships collapsed in Bulgaria (November) and Romania (December) the communist dictatorships collapsed; in Romania, this took the form of a revolution violently suppressed by part of the security forces, in which Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife Elena also lost their lives. In 1990, the first multi-party elections since the communist takeover took place in both countries as well as in Hungary; in Albania, they took place in 1991. In Yugoslavia, all constituent republics held multi-party elections in the course of 1990, in which newly formed anti-communist opposition parties pursuing a national programme triumphed in Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, newly formed anti-communist opposition parties pursuing a national agenda emerged victorious, whilst in Serbia and Montenegro the post-communists prevailed. No elections were to take place at federal level in Yugoslavia, as the centrifugal forces – which had become increasingly apparent in the preceding years – had intensified in parallel with democratisation and the economic crisis. Nationalist forces were gaining support; plans for reforming the federal state diverged between the Serbian leadership’s ideas for centralisation and the Slovenian and Croatian leaderships’ plans for confederalisation. In 1991–92, four constituent republics declared their independence (Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina).

Developments following the end of state socialism varied greatly across the countries of South-Eastern Europe. The former Yugoslavia did not dissolve peacefully, but rather in bloodshed: the wars in Croatia (1991–1995), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995) and Kosovo (1999), as well as the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, claimed the lives of approximately 130,000 people. Several million people fled or were displaced. The largest massacre during these wars was perpetrated by Bosnian Serb troops in July 1995 in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, when they murdered around 8,000 Bosniak men. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague ruled in several judgements that this massacre constituted genocide. The political consequences of the wars include, amongst other things, the international protectorate in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which remains in place to this day, as well as the UN administration (UNMIK) for the Serbian province of Kosovo, which declared its independence in 2008 (as of March 2012, Kosovo had been recognised by 89 states, including 22 EU member states). The overthrow of Slobodan Milošević, President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in October 2000 and the subsequent rapid democratisation of Serbia were crucial to the stabilisation of the region of the former Yugoslavia and the improvement of relations between the former warring parties. In 2006, the union of Serbia and Montenegro finally collapsed after Montenegro declared its independence. A brief separatist war also broke out in the Republic of Moldova from March to August 1992, following its declaration of independence (1991), when Transnistria (the region on the left bank of the Dniester) effectively seceded and established itself as the ‘Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic’ (PMR). No country in the world has yet recognised this ‘state’.

The countries of South-Eastern Europe not directly affected by the hostilities succeeded, at varying speeds, in consolidating the new political and economic order. The reforms were hampered by the deep economic crisis into which the transition economies plunged following the end of state socialism. The economic hardship in Romania was a key factor in prompting most of the remaining members of the German minority to emigrate to Germany in the early 1990s. By the end of the 1990s at the latest, however, the countries in the region were on a path of economic growth (interrupted, to a greater or lesser extent, by the financial crisis of 2008–09). One indicator of the success of these reforms was the accession of Hungary and Slovenia to the European Union in 2004, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. The accession treaty with Croatia was signed in 2011 (planned accession: 2013). As of March 2012, the European Council had also granted EU candidate status to Macedonia, Turkey and Serbia. In parallel with the ongoing EU integration of South-Eastern Europe, Greece found itself on the brink of national bankruptcy in 2010–11 in the wake of the financial crisis, thereby destabilising the eurozone. Despite this crisis, however, all states in the region that are not yet members of the EU regard accession to the EU as a top political priority.

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• rspcsee.org/en/pages/read/about-seecp
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[1] Todorova: *Imagining the Balkans*, pp. 27–30.

[2] Fritz Valjavec: South-Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In: Südost-Forschungen 7 (1942), pp. 1–9, here p. 1.

[3] Quoted from: Peer Heinelt: Portrait of a Desk-bound Perpetrator. Franz Ronneberger (1913–1999). In: Wolfgang Duchkowitsch, Fritz Hausjell, Bernd Semrad (eds.): The Spiral of Silence. On Dealing with Nazi-era Newspaper Studies. 2nd ed. Vienna 2004, pp. 193–218, here p. 202.

[4] Cf. Kaser: South-Eastern European History and Historiography. 2nd ed., pp. 19–22; Sundhaussen: Europa balkanica; Müller: Southeastern Europe as a Historical Meso-Region.

[5] Valjavec: South-Eastern Europe and the Balkans (note 2), pp. 5ff.

[6] Beer, Seewann (eds.): South-Eastern European Studies in the Shadow of the Third Reich. Berlin et al. 2004.

[7] Sundhaussen: *Europa balkanica*; Maria Todorova: *The Balkans as a Category of Analysis*, pp. 470–492.

[8] Kaser: South-Eastern European History and Historiography, 6.

[9] The following outline is based largely on the following overviews: Stavrianos: *The Balkans since 1453*; Lampe, Jackson: *Balkan Economic History*; Jelavich: *History of the Balkans*; Mazower: *The Balkans*; Lampe: *Balkans into Southeastern Europe*; Clewing, Schmitt (eds.): History of South-Eastern Europe.

[10] Cf. Beer, Dahlmann (eds.): Migration to Eastern and South-Eastern Europe; Katsiardi-Hering: Migrations, pp. 125–148; Sundhaussen: The History of South-Eastern Europe as a History of Migration, pp. 422–477; Sundhaussen: South-Eastern Europe, pp. 288–313; Ulf Brunnbauer: Emigration from South-Eastern Europe, 19th–21st Centuries. Continuities, Discontinuities, Perspectives. In: Emil Brix, Arnold Suppan, Elisabeth Vyslonzil (eds.): South-Eastern Europe. Traditions as Power. Vienna, Munich 2007 (Publications of the Austrian Institute for Eastern and South-Eastern Europe 31), pp. 119–142.

[11] Seewann, Krauss, Spannenberger (eds.): The Settlement of Germans in Hungary.

[12] Brandes: Adopted by the Tsars.

[13] Cf. Hausleiter, Roth (eds.): The Influence of Fascism and National Socialism; Bethke: German and Hungarian Minorities.

[14] Mathias Beer: German deportees from East-Central and South-Eastern Europe in the USSR since the end of the Second World War. In: Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer, Leo Lucassen, Jochen Oltmer (eds.): Encyclopaedia of Migration in Europe. From the 17th Century to the Present Day. Paderborn et al. 2007, pp. 465–470. Where they survived, the majority of those forcibly deported were repatriated in the late 1940s.

Ulf Brunnbauer: South-Eastern Europe. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32758 (accessed 5 November 2021).