Balkans

"Balkan" redirects here. For other uses, see Balkan (disambiguation).

Balkans
The Balkan region according to Prof. R. J. Crampton
Geographical map of the Balkans
Map
Geography
LocationSoutheastern Europe
Highest elevation2,925 m (9596 ft)
Highest pointMusala (Bulgaria)
Administration

The Balkans (/ˈbɔːlkənz/ BAWL-kənz, /ˈbɒlkənz/ BOL-kənz[1]), corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula (Peninsula of Haemus, Haemaic Peninsula), is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions.[2][3][4] The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains (Haemus Mountains) that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria.[5] The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the northwest, the Ionian Sea in the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south, the Turkish straits in the east, and the Black Sea in the northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined.[6] The highest point of the Balkans is Musala, 2,925 metres (9,596 ft), in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria.

The concept of the Balkan Peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808,[7] who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. The term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for Rumelia in the 19th century, the parts of Europe that were provinces of the Ottoman Empire at the time. It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, which was further promoted during the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan Peninsula's natural borders does not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula; hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan Peninsula, while historical scholars usually discuss the Balkans as a region. The term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization.[6][8] The alternative term used for the region is Southeast Europe.

The borders of the Balkans are, due to many contrasting definitions, disputed. There exists no universal agreement on the region's components. The term by most definitions fully encompasses Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, European Turkey, the Romanian coast, most of Serbia and large parts of Croatia. The term sometimes includes all of Romania, Serbia and Croatia, and southern parts of Slovenia. The Province of Trieste in northeastern Italy, although by some definitions considered part of the peninsula, is generally excluded. Although they have no territory on the peninsula, Hungary and Moldova are occasionally incorporated into discussions of the Balkans due to cultural and historical affiliations.

  1. ^ Wells, John C. (2000). "Balkan". Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (2nd ed.). Longman. ISBN 0-582-36467-1.
  2. ^ Gray, Colin S.; Sloan, Geoffrey (2014). Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy. Routledge. ISBN 9781135265021. Retrieved 10 November 2014.
  3. ^ "Balkans". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  4. ^ Richard T. Schaefer (2008). Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Sage. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-4129-2694-2.
  5. ^ Niktalab, Poopak (2024). Over the Alps: History of Children and Youth Literature in Europe (in Persian) (1st ed.). Tehran, Iran: Faradid Publisher. p. 6. ISBN 9786225740457.
  6. ^ a b Alexander Vezenkov (2017). "Entangled Geographies of the Balkans: The Boundaries of the Region and the Limits of the Discipline". In Roumen Dontchev Daskalov, Tchavdar Marinov (ed.). Entangled Histories of the Balkans – Volume Four: Concepts, Approaches, and (Self-) Representations. Brill. pp. 115–256. ISBN 978-90-04-33782-4.
  7. ^ Olga M. Tomic (2006). Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 35. ISBN 978-1-4020-4488-5.
  8. ^ Robert Bideleux; Ian Jeffries (2007). The Balkans: A Post-Communist History. Routledge. pp. 1–3. ISBN 978-1-134-58328-7.