No One Watching The Back Door


   Many of the Victorian Era had thought that if a large war were to erupt in Europe, then it would have to most certainly start in the Balkans. Even Otto Von Bismarck, the crafty arbiter of peace, did not feel that all of his skills were up to containing the Balkans. That was probably why, by 1900, people were scratching their heads and wondering how all of Europe could be at war, except for the Balkans.
While no one truly has an answer for this, it is most likely because the area was already burned out from a series of wars that were fought just prior to 1898. Of course, each nation probably had it’s own specific reasons but, in general, I believe that was the overriding factor. Nothing else seems to make sense when you consider that the region was filled small, resource poor nations, who were just freeing themselves from centuries of occupation, and all of them had a list of grievances that that they took very personally.
One only need to look at a map of the Balkans to see what the basic problem was. The simple fact is, no matter which map you find, the map will be wrong. This was because the legal borders of the region, the kind of thing mapmakers usually pay attention too, in no way reflected the reality of who was in control, where, when, and why. During the latter half of the 19th century, this also frequently changed.
The main cause for this was the slow death of the Ottoman Empire. During most of the fifty years, leading up to the war, legally, the Turks owned the entire region. This was recognized by most nations of Europe but, it began to change and, at the Congress of Berlin, an international treaty redrew the map of Europe. It included several new independent states in the region. The diplomats did not do this arbitrarily. The reality was that these states had already, really, existed for years. These states were not the exception in the region and, in fact, they were the rule.
At the time, Bulgaria was not just one but, two separate nations that were legally Turkish principalities. Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, and a host of smaller regions also ruled themselves and were legally, still, subjects of the Ottoman Sultan. Area’s like Bosnia, now completely cut off from the rest of Turkey, was even occupied by Turkey’s main foe in the region, Austria-Hungary. Greece had fought and gained it’s complete and recognized independence. Both Serbia and Romania were eventually recognized as their own states and they promptly became kingdoms with established dynasties of their own. There were places like Albania that were, again, legally Turkish soil but, in reality, had no government at all.
The region was also racked with ethnic problems that were little more than a sham but, very important to the people who lived there. It basically broke down along religious lines. When the Turks first arrived they offered tax breaks to anyone who would convert to Islam. The people who did were initially seen by their neighbors as traitors and, after a few centuries, as foreigners that had never been anything else. If that was not bad enough, even the Christians of the region were divided into two separate and very antagonistic camps as both Catholics and Orthodox competed. All of these people lived in close proximity to each other and, from one village to the next, you never could tell which group would be dominate. It was a patchwork quilt without rhyme or reason.
It is not amazing that the region eventually became involved in the war. What is amazing is that they stayed out of it for so long. I personally believe that is testimony to the ferocity of the small wars they had fought amongst themselves in the years leading up to the big show. Greece had fought Turkey less than a year before the war. The result was that Greece conquered the island of Crete. The Greeks even went so far as to complain that the European blockade had nothing to do with the Armenians and was really there to safe guard the Turkish fleet from being destroyed by the Greek navy. There might be some truth to that.
Serbia had fought nearly every single neighbor they had, and multiple times. Serbia was ripe with discontent and expansionist fever, although, in all fairness, they did not start all of the wars. There were enough of them to let everyone get the blame. Serbia had yet to fulfill the borders they sought. I say ‘they’ because this was a wildly popular idea with the Serbian people and, in reverse of many nations, their monarchy was not as quick to resort to military adventures or, at least, not quick enough to satisfy their own people.
The only exception to all of the instability in the region seems to have been Romania. While the Romanians did fight some wars in this time period, and did gain some territory (mostly at the expense of Bulgaria), the kingdom was relatively stable. A powerful dynasty had established itself on the throne and, in 1900, King Carol the First had been ruling the nation for several decades. Romania had prospered in this time period and were the least likely to enter the larger war. Ironically, Romanian strength is what would become her undoing.