THE Fates were unkind to the Balkan Peninsula. Because of its position, it was forced to stand in the path of the greatest racial movements of the world, and was thus the scene of savage racial struggles, and the depositary of residual shreds of nations surviving from great defeats or Pyrrhic victories and cherishing irreconcilable mutual hatreds. As if that were not enough of ill fortune imposed by geographical position, the great Roman Empire elected to come from its seat in the Italian Peninsula to die in the Balkan Peninsula, a long drawn-out death of many agonies, of many bloody disasters and desperate retrievals. For all the centuries of which history knows a blood-mist has hung over the Balkans; and for the centuries before the dawn of written history one may surmise that there was the same constant struggle of warring races.

The Balkan Peninsula is often referred to as the "powder keg of Europe," but it is more accurately described as the "melting pot of Europe." In The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula: Their Medieval Origins, Alexandru Madgearu discusses the ethnic heterogeneity in modern-day Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia and traces its history. Madgearu examines the historical evolution that led to the genesis of several conflicts in the Balkans. The affected areas and associated events have transformed the Balkan Peninsula into an intricate ethnic mosaic, where no single group of people has the majority. The various ethnic and religious differences these groups possess have survived the many occupations of this land over the years, whether by the Roman, Byzantine, or Ottoman Empires, and then became manifest when the modern Balkan states were created. With the dissolution of the strong outside forces once dominating the area, the Balkan states-prompted by political propaganda and nationalist ideologies-then used history to support territorial claims, defend ethnic-cleansing actions, and justify conflicts with other countries. The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula argues that the current ethnic structure is the basis for the solution of the disputes between the Balkan states and that history should be used to explain, not legitimize, the conflicts. Book jacket.