Balkan Peninsula

Balkan Peninsula is a usual name for the peninsula in South-eastern Europe running southwards between the Adriatic and the Ægean. The most convenient northern boundary is the Save and the Lower Danube; though historically and politically Roumania and some parts of the Austrian dominions are closely associated with the regions south of the Danube. Greece is a peninsula upon a peninsula, but is not usually accounted one of the Balkan States. In a general way the Balkan Peninsula and Balkan States cover the area of Turkey in Europe and the non-Turkish States either now or lately under Turkish suzerainty, with the exception of Roumania and Greece. By its physical relief and general slope, the peninsula may be said to turn its back upon Europe. Its greatest elevations are found in the west and north-west, and all its waters, flowing north, east, and south, finally empty into the Black Sea or into the Ægean. The mountain chains and masses of the peninsula in no place form a regular system; spreading out from an apparent nucleus in the Etropol Balkans south-east of Sofia, in every direction, they are notable for their great variety of shape and richness of contour. The Balkans proper (ancient Hæmus) form the boundary between Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia. They are highest in the west, where the mean height is 6500 feet. The ridge is crossed by some 30 passes, of which the Shipka, between Kezanlik and Tirnova, and 4290 feet high, is the most noted in history—especially as the scene of severe fighting in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78. The mountain-chains in the west of the peninsula have a trend parallel to the shores of the Adriatic and

Ionian seas, whilst in the east, the chief ranges run at right angles to the Black Sea. The small though well-defined chain of the Rhodope (Despoto-Dagh) has a mean elevation of 5500 feet, and forms the water-parting between the Maritza Valley on the north and the Ægean on the south. Muss-alla (9500 feet), in the northern extremity of this range, is the culminating point of the northern portion of the peninsula, but the highest peak is Mount Olympus (9750 feet), north-east of the plain of Thessaly. There are several other ranges—the Dinaric Alps in the north-west, Pindus, between Albania and Thessaly, and the Little Balkans in Bulgaria, running north-east from the main chain; and peaks of from 5000 to 9000 feet occur in nearly every part of the peninsula.

The first place in the hydrographic systems of the peninsula must of course be given to the Danube. The Sea of Marmora receives only a few mountain-torrents, but the drainage area of the Ægean, or Archipelago, comprises the most important river-system of Turkey. The chief rivers—the Maritza, the Kara Su, the Vardar, the Indje—flow from the southern slopes of the Balkans and the crystalline masses of the Rhodope system. Lake Scutari and Lake Ochrida (the latter 2300 feet above sea-level) are the only ones of any size in the peninsula.

Ethnography.—The great highway of western emigration, the Balkan Peninsula still retains a great diversity of races. The oldest inhabitants of the peninsula—the Illyrians—have their representatives in the modern Albanians (Skipetar); the Greeks are there, and have kept their language; the Dacians, who adopted the Roman tongue, are the Rumans or Roumanians of to-day. The Slavonic peoples are of course a large and important section of the population. Of the Turanian settlers, the Bulgars have become a thoroughly Slavonised people; and the Ottoman Turks, who first gained a footing in 1355, conquered nearly the whole of the peninsula before the close of the same century, reduced Greece to subjection between 1455 and 1473, and remained masters to the present century.

According to Reclus, the present territory of the peninsula may be divided into four ethnological zones: (1) Crete and the islands of the Archipelago, the seaboard of the Ægean, the eastern slope of Pindus and of Olympus, are peopled by Greeks; (2) the space comprised between the Adriatic and Pindus is the country of the Albanians (Skipetar); (3) on the NW. the region of the Illyrian Alps is occupied by Slavs, known under the different names of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Herzegovinans, and Chernagorans (Montenegrin); and (4) the two slopes of the Balkans proper, the Despoto-Dagh, and the plains of Eastern Turkey, belong to the Bulgarians—a Slavonised Turanian people, now practically Slavs. The Turks themselves are scattered here and there in more or less considerable groups, chiefly round the cities and strongholds; but the only extensive tract of country of which they are, ethnologically speaking, the possessors, is the south-eastern angle of the peninsula. As to the relative numbers of these varied elements, there is considerable diversity of statement—each stock trying to prove its ethnical predominance in debatable ground. In 1885 the statistical bureau in Belgrade reckoned that in European Turkey (without Roumania, Servia, or Montenegro) there were 1,362,000 Turks—not pure Osmanli, but largely descended from renegade Greeks and Bulgarians; 1,137,000 Greeks; 1,011,000 Albanians, of whom 723,000 are Mohammedans; 200,000 Walachians; 1,388,000 Serbs; 2,877,000 Bulgarians, of whom 860,000 are Mohammedans; 100,000 Armenians; 70,000 Jews; 104,000 Gipsies; and 144,000 Circassian immigrants.

The home of so many diverse races, the peninsula has long been a hotbed of warring interests, intertribal jealousy and intrigue, political tyranny and disturbance, and mutual maltreatment. The Turk's hand may summarily be said to be against every man's hand, and every other against the Turk. Greeks and Bulgarians intrigue each against the other with Russia, and look on the inheritance of the peninsula as exclusively theirs by right. Bulgarian and Serb, though cherishing the Slavonic name, met in the bloody campaign of 1885-86. Macedonia in especial is demanded alike by Greek, Bulgar and Serb. And the case is further complicated by the hostile faiths—Latin Christianity, Greek Church both Orthodox and United, and Mohammedanism. Hence it is easy to infer the last degree of unstable equilibrium in the political sphere, and to understand why the peninsula is a perpetual focus of the insoluble 'Eastern Question,' and a cause of disquietude to all the powers of Europe. Russia wars with Turkey; Austria and Russia have diametrically opposed interests as regards the Lower Danube, and in Austria itself, Hungarian and Slav take opposite sides as to the Southern Slavs; France and Britain are frequently in rivalry at the Porte; and the mutual suspicions of Russia and Britain are constant and notorious (see EASTERN QUESTION.) A recent feature is the determination of Bulgaria not to become the dependant of Russia (see Dicey's The Peasant State, 1894). The area and population of the Balkan States are as follows:

Greece, with the aid of the Great Powers, obtained her independence in 1836, as also did Servia in 1830-67. Walachia and Moldavia (now united in the kingdom of Roumania) were made tributary principalities by the Peace of Paris, 1856. Roumania and Servia obtained their complete independence by the Berlin Treaty of 1878—the former receiving the Dobrudja in exchange for a portion of Bessarabia, which was restored to Russia; the latter having its area enlarged. The same treaty handed over to Austro-Hungary the administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and established the principalities of Montenegro and Bulgaria, and the self-governing province of Eastern Roumelia (now practically part of Bulgaria).

See TURKEY, GREECE, BULGARIA, SERVIA, &c., and books there cited; EASTERN QUESTION; SLAVS; Laveleye, The Balkan Peninsula (1887); and W. Miller, The Balkans: Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro ('Story of the Nations' series, 1896).