Keywords
Balkans
Greece
Bulgaria
Macedonia
How to Cite
Abstract
A populist slogan, with a crusade like overtones: “to liberate our Christian brothers”, served as an unassailable alibi for the expansionist aspirations of the small Balkan states in order to mobilize their population during the First Balkan War. The different interpretations of the phrase “Christian brothers” could already be seen in the Balkan pacts and their hidden annexes. The Second Balkan War quite openly revealed the sole objective of the Balkan states for territorial expansion in those wars. To each his own: Greece longed for the wheat fields of Macedonia and Edirne; Bulgaria longed for the warm seas of Macedonia and Edirne; Serbia longed to be a coastal country at any cost- if they could not reach the Salonika Bay, then through the Durres port; Montenegro longed for the Skhodër (Skadar/Shkodra) port, etc. The Second Balkan War proved to be the quintessence of different interpretation of the word “to liberate”. Even though the Balkan Wars lasted for almost a year (between 1912 and 1913), they left the Balkan people with severe consequences. Namely, since the Balkan territory was ethnically diverse, especially in a period when not all of the nations were yet completely defined, it was not possible to draw the state lines which could please everybody and which would not dissatisfy the population later. Thus, the same actors would actively participate in both World Wars. Because of this, the discontentment originating in the period of the Balkan Wars still burdens the relations between the Balkan countries to this day. The unresolved political questions, such as the problem of Macedonia and Kosovo, may have lasted the whole century. This, however, does not mean that history repeats itself, because history can never be the same. Frozen conflicts and unresolved issues still burden the Balkans and contribute to the very slow and hard development of its political culture.
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