The bloody break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the region's wider struggles with a post-Communist transition suggest continuing Balkan burdens for the peoples and states of Southeastern Europe. The author disputes this Balkan background. He traces the region's traumatic twentieth century through wars and postwar transitions.

The bloody break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the region's wider struggles with a post-Communist transition suggest continuing Balkan burdens for the peoples and states of Southeastern Europe. Ethnic conflict, disputed borders, forced migration and foreign intervention had already scarred the countries from Romania south to Greece during the decades surrounding the two world wars. John Lampe disputes this pejoratively Balkan background. He traces the region's traumatic twentieth century through wars and postwar transitions that adopted or confronted European ideologies, institutions and interventions.

List of Maps and Tables - Preface - Introduction: Transitions at the Turn of Two Centuries - Balkan States and Borderlands Before the Balkan Wars - Balkan Wars, First World War, Postwar Settlements, 1912-1922 - Struggling with Liberal and National Transitions in the 1920s - Illiberal Directions During the Depression Decade - Second World War, Civil War, and
the Communist Advantage - Communist and Cold War Transitions, 1945-1963 - Continuity and Contradictions, 1964-1989 - Wars and Transitions since 1989 - Bibliography - Index