Description

This book considers the position and historiography of the western Balkans in modern Europe. It challenges the linear narrative that the region was 'Europeanised' in the twentieth century - that is, brought into a wider fold of European countries through political, social and cultural exchanges. Instead, it develops the concept of a 'European Orient' to highlight how the position of the western Balkans shifted in the European imagination during this period. It investigates specific examples of cultural encounters involving travellers and migrants between South-east Europe and the West, and situates these developments in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century geopolitics. In doing so, it shows how European scholars as well as US-migrants from South-east Europe constructed a historiography of the region, and will be of interest to historians interested in the Balkans in particular and south-eastern Europe in general.