Balkan peninsula

The Balkan Peninsula or Balkan Peninsula is one of the three great peninsulas of southern Europe, a continent to which it is linked by the Balkan Mountains to the east (mountains which have given the peninsula its name) and the Dinaric Alps to the west.

General characteristics

It is surrounded by seas on three sides: the Adriatic and the Ionian to the west; the Aegean to the south; and the Marmara and the Negro to the east. To the north, the peninsula is generally delimited by the course of the Danube rivers —the main one in the area—, Sava and Kupa. It is separated from Asia by the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. To the west, the Dinaric Alps separate the inland from the Adriatic Sea. In the south, various rivers —among them the Vardar and the Struma— that flow into the Aegean, facilitate access to the center of the peninsula. To the south it is made up of the Morava and Vardar rivers, which together almost cross the entire peninsula.

This region covers a total area of more than 550,000 km² and has a population of almost 53 million. Its name comes from the homonymous mountain range in Turkish, located in central Bulgaria.

The peninsula, administratively, belongs to the following States: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and the Turkish region of Eastern Thrace. Various cities serve as a commercial channel with the interior of the peninsula: in the west, Dubrovnik, Split; in the east Constanta, Burgas and Varna; and in the south, the main one, Thessaloniki.

A mountain range of about 650 m s. no. m. it crosses this peninsula, separating Bulgaria from Romania, between the basins of the Danube, the Marmara, the archipelago of the Sporades and the Dardanelles, to which the Yumkusal mountain (2,380 m) corresponds.

The southern slope is much steeper than the northern one. Coniferous and deciduous forests. The Iskar Valley and the Sipka and Trojan Passes are the most important passes.

In ancient times, the place name Hemo referred to the mountainous massif of the Balkans, in Bulgaria, which extends from west to east from Serbia to the Black Sea.

Political composition

The countries and entities included in the region are the following:

• Albania (in its entirety);
• Bosnia and Herzegovina (in its entirety);
• Bulgaria (in its entirety);
• Croatia (part: Dalmatia, Istria and the territories south of the Save River: 50%);
• Slovenia (south-west part);
• Greece (Mainland Greece);
• Italy (Trieste and Monfalcone);
• North Macedonia (in its entirety);
• Montenegro (in its entirety);
• Romania (Dobruja: 6 %);
• Serbia (except Voivodina);
• Turkey (Eastern Trade: 3 %)

Although Hungary, Moldova and Ukraine are not strictly within the Balkan Peninsula, they are usually included in the Balkan region (Balkan countries) for historical and cultural reasons. The complicated history of this region, characterized by frequent divisions and subdivisions of states since at least the second half of the 19th century, has given rise to the concept of "balkanization" that is applied, even, to territories very distant from the Balkans. "Balkanization" means the generally violent and artificial division by extra-regional powers of the territories of the countries that make up a region.

Languages

In the Balkans, Indo-European languages are spoken, some from different subfamilies of this family of languages: among the majority, a group of Slavs (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian, among others), Greek, Albanian and a group of Neo-Latin languages (Romanian, Moldovan –identified with Romanian– and Aromuna –or Vlaca–, among others). There are small areas where Hungarian, German, Turkish and Italian are spoken; and in communities scattered throughout the peninsula, Romany (Gypsy communities) and languages linked to Jewish communities (Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish).

Urbanization

Most of the Balkan States are predominantly urbanized, with the lowest number of urban population in % of total population found in Kosovo with less than 40%, Bosnia and Herzegovina with 40%, and Slovenia, with 50%.

Panoramic view of Istanbul

List of largest cities

(b) Only the European part of Istanbul is part of the Balkans. Two-thirds of the city's 15,519,267 inhabitants live there.

Time zones

The time zones of the Balkans are defined as follows:

• UTC+01:00: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia.
• UTC+02:00: Bulgaria, Greece and Romania
• UTC+03:00 time zones: Turkey

Additional bibliography

• Gray, Colin S. (1999). Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-8053-8.
• Banac, Ivo (October 1992). "Historiography of the Countries of Eastern Europe: Yugoslavia". American Historical Review 97 (4): 1084-1104. JSTOR 2165494. doi:10.2307/2165494.
• Banac, Ivo (1984). The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-9493-2. (requires registration).
• Goldstein, Ivo (1999). Croatia: A History. Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0-7735-2017-2. (requires registration).
• Carter, Francis W., ed. (1977). An Historical Geography of the Balkans Academic Press.
• Dvornik, Francis (1962). The Slavs in European History and Civilization Rutgers University Press.
• Fine, John V.A., Jr.]] The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century [1983]; The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, [1987].
• Forbes, Nevill (1915). The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Romania, Turkey Clarendon Press, online
• Jelavich, Barbara (1983a). History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521274586.
• Jelavich, Barbara (1983b). History of the Balkans: Twentieth Century 2. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521274593.
• Jelavich, Charles; Jelavich, Barbara, eds. (1963). The Balkans in Transition: Essays on the Development of Balkan Life and Politics Since the Eighteenth Century. University of California Press. (requires registration).
• Kitsikis, Dimitri (2008). La montée du national-bolchevisme dans les Balkans. Le retour à la Serbie de 1830. Paris: Avatar.
• Lampe, John R., and Marvin R. Jackson (1982). Balkan Economic History, 1550–1950: From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations Indiana University Press.
• Király, Béla K., ed. (1984). East Central European Society in the Era of Revolutions, 1775–1856.
• Komlos, John (1990). Economic Development in the Habsburg Monarchy and in the Successor States. East European Monographs No. 28. East European Monographs. ISBN 978-0-88033-177-7.
• Mazower, Mark (2000). The Balkans: A Short History. Modern Library Chronicles. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-679-64087-5.
• Schreiber, Gerhard; Stegemann, Bernd; Vogel, Detlef (1995). The Mediterranean, south-east Europe, and north Africa, 1939–1941. Germany and the 2nd World War III. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-822884-4.
• Stavrianos, L. S. (2000, 1958). The Balkans since 1453. with Traian Stoianovich. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-9766-2. online free to borrow
• Stoianovich, Traian (1994). Balkan Worlds: The First and Last Europe. Sources and Studies in World History. New York: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-1-56324-032-4.
• Ware, Bishop Kallistos (Timothy) (29 April 1993). The Orthodox Church (new edition). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-014656-1.
• Zametica, John (2017). Folly and malice: the Habsburg empire, the Balkans and the start of World War One London: Shepheard–Walwyn. 416 pp.