History : Europe

The Balkan League (Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria) first conquered Ottoman-held Macedonia and most of Thrace and then fell out over the division of the spoils. Tensions among the Balkan states over their rival aspirations to the provinces of Ottoman-occupied Roumelia, namely Eastern Roumelia, Thrace and Macedonia, subsided somewhat following intervention by the Great Powers in the mid-19th century, aimed at securing both fuller protection for the provinces' Christian majority and protection of the status quo. By 1867 Greece, Serbia and Montenegro have all secured their independence, which was confirmed by the Treaty of Berlin a decade later. But the question of the viability of Ottoman rule was revived after the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908 compelled the Sultan to restore the suspended Ottoman constitution, and the significant developments in the years 1909-1911. Serbia's aspirations towards Bosnia-Herzegovina were thwarted by the Austrian annexation of the province in October 1908, and so the Serbs focused their attention onto their historic cradle, Kosovo and the south for expansion. Greek officers, revolting in August 1909, had secured the appointment of a progressive government under Eleftherios Venizelos which they hoped would resolve the Cretan issue in Greece's favour and reverse their defeat of 1897 by the Ottomans. Bulgaria, which had secured Ottoman recognition of her independence in April 1909 and enjoyed the friendship of Russia, also looked to districts of Ottoman Thrace and Macedonia for expansion. In March 1910, an Albanian insurrection broke out in Kosovo. In August 1910, Montenegro followed Bulgaria's precedent by becoming a kingdom. In 1911, Italy launched an invasion of Tripolitania, which was quickly followed by the occupation of the Dodecanese Islands. The Italians' decisive military victories over the Ottoman Empire greatly influenced the Balkan states to prepare for war against Turkey. Thus in the spring of 1912, consultations more...

Price: $7.99

Dennis Hupchick demonstrates that the roots of the turmoil in Bosnia and Kosovo lie in the historically recent disruptive impact of Western nationalist concepts on two traditionally national civilized societies. more...

Price: $35.00

This is the first in a sequence of works by John Pocock designed to situate Edward Gibbon, and his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in a series of contexts in the history of Europe. This is a major intervention from one of the world's leading historians of ideas. more...

Price: $20.00

As Barbarism and Religion develops, its full stature as one of the great scholarly projects of our time becomes apparent: it stands not just as a remarkable analysis of the making of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, but as the definitive history of history-writing in what Hume called 'the historical age'. more...

Price: $28.00

On 11 July 1302, beneath the town walls of Courtrai, the most splendid army of knights in Christendom, the flower of French nobility, was utterly defeated by Flemish rebels, common workers and peasants. The superbly trained noblemen, who had devoted their whole life to the military profession, fully experienced in fighting on horseback in close ranks, were led by an able commander, the count of Artois, victor of a number of campaigns. more...

Price: $85.00