The Debated Lands

The negative connotations of the word “balkanization” neatly sum up current attitudes to this maligned region. In The Debated Lands, Andrew Hammond studies hundreds of examples of travel writing to chart the complex history of British and American conceptualizations of the Balkans. Hammond begins with the imperially influenced discourses of the eighteenth century, continues with the sudden allegiances of World War I, observes the ambivalent mixture of sympathy and disappointment that characterized the cold war, and reveals the return to vilification in the 1990s. Comprehensively documenting centuries of criticism and fear, Hammond’s study of the alienation of the Balkans is unique.

Andrew Hammond is a senior lecturer in English literature at the Swansea Institute of Higher Education and editor of Cold War Literature: Writing the Global Conflict.

Introduction: The Concept of the Balkans