BALKAN PENINSULA 552 



cause of the turbulent nature of its inhabitants 



; owder magazine of Europe." It is not, 



like the peninsula of Italy to the westward, one 



BALKAN WARS 



-../. 



TETXAS 



* / 



^ \ 



MISS. 



BALKAN PENINSULA 



A good understanding of the size of the 

 Balkan states is reached by a study of the 

 above maps, drawn to the same scale. 



nation, for within its 175,000 square miles are 

 comprised Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, part of 

 Croatia, Greece, Herzegovina, Montenegro, 

 Serbia and that small part of Turkey which is 

 left in Europe. Rumania, though politically 

 a Balkan state, is not geographically a part of 

 the peninsula. These states are described in 

 alphabetical order in these volumes. 



The Balkan Peoples. The people who inhabit 

 the Balkan Peninsula are not all of one race. 

 Besides Albanians, who are descended from the 

 ancient Illyrians, there are several Slavic fami- 

 lies, Greeks and Turks. Yet all the Balkan 

 peoples have certain common characteristics. 

 Hot-tempered and quick to resent injustice, 

 they have always been ready to turn the 

 sword against each other. On the other hand, 

 Greeks, Albanians and Slavs have long been 

 united in their enmity to the Turks. Like the 

 Swiss and other races who have developed 



their national history in a mountainous coun- 

 try, the people of the Balkans are imbued with 

 the spirit of liberty. For centuries they chafed 

 under the weight of Turkish oppression, but 

 little by little they freed their mountainous 

 peninsula from Oriental despotism, until now 

 Turkey rules no more than one-eighteenth of 

 the region. The only instance of a Slav race 

 of the Balkans becoming an ally of Turkey 

 occurred in 1915, when Bulgaria joined the Ger- 

 mans, Austrians and Turks in the War of the 

 Nations. 



Since the peninsula is in a measure isolated, 

 the inhabitants might be left to fight their own 

 battles, but almost inevitably other parts of 

 Europe are drawn into their conflict. The 

 Balkan War (which see) was practically a local 

 affair, but the greatest conflict of all times, the 

 War of the Nations, had its final cause in an 

 outbreak in one of the Balkan states. See 

 WAR OF THE NATIONS. 



Geographical Features. The Danube and the 

 Save rivers form the northern boundary of the 

 peninsula. To the east is the Black Sea, to 

 the south the Sea of Marmora, the Dardanelles 

 and the Aegean Sea, and to the west the 

 Adriatic and the Ionian seas. As a whole, the 

 region is very mountainous, the chief range 

 being that from which the peninsula takes its 

 name, the Balkans. 



Balkan Mountains. This mountain chain, 

 the name of which means high ridge, is the 

 eastern branch of the Alpine system of Central 

 Europe. It forms the watershed between the 

 Danube and the short, rapid rivers of the 

 Balkan Peninsula. Beginning at the Iron Gates 

 of the Danube, where the boundaries of Hun- 

 gary, Serbia and Rumania come together, it 

 extends southward through Serbia, then east- 

 ward through Bulgaria to the shores of the 

 Black Sea. There are a number of peaks over 

 7,000 feet in height, the tallest reaching an 

 altitude of 7,789, and several passes lie at a 

 height of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet. Valuable 

 deposits of iron, copper and lead are found in 

 the western part of the Balkans. E.D.F. 



BALKAN WARS, the wars waged in 1912- 

 1913 by Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and 

 Serbia against Turkey, and another conflict, the 

 outgrowth of the first, in which four Balkan 

 states were allied against Bulgaria. 



The First War. It is sometimes said that 

 the causes of the Balkan Wars go back to- the 

 Treaty of Berlin, in 1878, when the powers of 

 Western Europe intervened between Russia 

 and Turkey. In fact, however, they must be 



