Im not from Europe. Can someone explain what are the Balkans exactly and why there’s “beef” between them?
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Long story short, the Balkans have spent all of history being some other country’s territory and so a national identity was hard to find.
They were Greek, Roman, Slavic, Bulgarian, Turkish, etc for so long they don’t know who they are as a people.
Also, you have two fun and competing religions in the area that have over a millennia of dislike towards each other so they continually have religious spats, most famously the genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina. You can’t be allowed to live in you believe in the wrong physically abusive, monotheistic God (or God who is three gods all in one).
Plus, the area is heavily mountainous in some places and thus made it harder to control and/or maintain a similar culture. So, 5 miles up the road you’re Albanian, but another 20 miles you’re Croat, etc.
And they all have either really great opinions of each other or they simply want the other ones to stay on their side of the fence.
And then you have to factor in Europe, which always played on their insecurities as a buffer against Ottoman Turkish expansionist policy (up to their collapse). So, they were always allowed autonomy but never economic independence.
So, the Balkans are a really poor area of the world caused by multiple millennia of being the site for exploitation, conquest, and proxy wars.
Or in Risk terminology, the Balkans were where the world powers got cards.
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