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UF Professor Explains How Balkans Got Their Reputation Following is an interview with Maria Todorova, professor of history, who has been researching the history of the Balkans for the past 20 years. Your primary area of interest has been the history of the Balkans and how they have been perceived in a negative sense since World War I. Could you give a brief history of how the countries in southeast Europe became known as the Balkans? First of all, what one understands by the Balkans nowadays is usually a synonym for southeastern Europe and it covers several countries: Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, part of Turkey and all of the lands of the former Yugoslavia. This is quite apart from the fact that many of those countries claim they are not Balkan. Historically, the word Balkan is a Turkish word which simply means "mountain." It was a neutral term and was not used pejoratively in any sense until the end of the 19th century when those countries began to reappear from within the Ottoman Empire as independent entities. When an empire disintegrates, this is not a tranquil process. It's usually accompanied with bloody conflicts as was the case in this instance as well. Well, during the time the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating into those small, poor units, bickering and quarreling with each other, the rest of Europe was experiencing probably the most peaceful century in its history. And here all of a sudden, when the Balkan Wars erupted in 1912, Europe was disgusted with the bloodshed. As a result, these conflicts were seen as being characteristic of the Balkan countries which were thought of as uncivilized and brutal. True, the Balkan Wars preceded World War I only by two years, but at the time the consensus was that the civilized world was immune from war. Even after the most uncivilized violence was perpetrated by the Germans during the Holocaust, Europe continues to view the Balkans as barbaric and always warring. This is something I'm reacting to and trying to analyze and expose: what is the mechanism which leads people to forget conveniently and externalize their frustrations onto the Balkans. You contend that the Balkan situation is not simply a case of racial or religious prejudice. What, in your opinion, makes it unique? It is because unlike those differences which follow usually racial or religious lines - you think of the Moslem as a threat from without; you think of the Jew as a threat to Christianity or the Blacks as a racial threat - here you don't have these lines: the Balkans are "white;" they are part of Europe; they are mostly Christian. It is an externalization from within. They are part of the European world and of the Western world but somehow they are considered to be the "bad" side of oneself. This is the interesting nuance that I found of how the Balkans are being thought of in Europe and the U.S.: that it is not a complete "other" but an incomplete, dark side of the "self." Despite the false perception many people have towards the Balkans, you argue that this negative perpetuation of the Balkans is predictable. What do you mean by that? Western Europe and the U.S. would naturally like to preserve their status of the privileged club of rich, wealthy nations. They are creating a fence around themselves and this is being legitimized by intellectuals with all those kinds of discourses about insufficient historical development, about archaic traits, about primordial cultural features. What I'm trying to show is that one should be very careful. First of all, what I have termed "Balkanism" is a discourse which was only recently coined 60 or 70 years ago around World War I. Secondly, the Balkans are a historical formation - they are part of the Ottoman legacy, and therefore, one should not essentialize these stereotypes but really see them in a historical context. What do you think will be the reaction to your forthcoming book, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford University Press), once it is published? The reaction from Balkan intellectuals who have seen a part of it feel I have articulated their feelings and their fears. The Turks and the Bulgarians are already translating it. Excerpts have been published in Greece, in Serbia and in Croatia, so it apparently resonates among Balkan intellectuals. Still, I could tell you how it could be controversial. There would be probably people who won't be ready to accept the argument or who would consider it an uncritical defense of the Balkans, which it is not. I can also imagine objections to the form in which the argument is articulated, not merely to the contents. I am really looking forward to a variety of reactions.