The geopolitics of the Balkans in the 19th and 20th centuries: Between national emancipation movements and geostrategic games of the great powers

Abstract

The paper analyses the geopolitical processes in the Balkans in the 19th and 20th centuries within the theoretical and methodological approach offered by historical sociology and from the perspective of contemporary geopolitics. It first problematizes the question of the production of historical events in the dialectics of history, pointing thereby to Brodel's and Marx's research of history as a complex, structural and contradictory process. Then it presents a sociological analysis of the geopolitical position of the Balkans and its bloody fate - as a cross, a crucifix, a crossroads at which different cultures and civilizations intersect and produce a 'surplus of history', which makes the Balkans a 'powder keg' and a region of the culture of death and incomplete peace. It especially focuses on the bloody Balkan geopolitics in the 19th and 20th centuries, solving the Eastern Question, the national liberation movements, the rise of the old and the new imperialism in the Balkans and the implications of the given processes for peace, stability and development of the Balkans. It also analyses the geopolitical transition of the Balkans at the beginning of the new millennium, as well as the possibility of the renewal of the movement whose guiding idea was 'the Balkans to the Balkan nations' in the era of globalization. The paper makes the point that the future of the Balkans does not lie in rewriting the past but in the culture of peace, in democratic integration and cooperation of the Balkan nations.