Miranda Vickers's "The Albanians," is one of three novels written by Vickers about the Balkan region, specifically Albania and Kosovo. I first read this book about four years ago for a class on East European history and politics. While the class wasn't that good, I did enjoy reading about Albania. The book fed an interest I've had about Albania since I first heard Radio Tirana on my shortwave radio years ago. Albania is a forgotten land, only newsworthy when a new ethnic conflict flares up in the region or when the country descends into anarchy, as it did in 1997. This edition is an updated version, covering events up into the late 1990's.

"The Albanians" is about as good a survey of the country as you will find. Vickers starts the book with the earliest history of Albania and ends the book around 1999. The goal of the book is to examine how Albanian nationalism worked itself out in the history of the region. Vickers outlines five points she hopes her book will shed light on. She wants to explain why many Albanians converted to Islam; why the Albanian state was the last in the Balkans to develop a national consciousness; how the Albanian state came into existence; why the Albanians of the former Yugoslavia were excluded from that state; and why Albania remained for so long one of the world's most isolated and repressed societies. The following is a partial summary of some of Vickers's claims in answer to her questions:

Many Albanians converted to Islam, explains Vickers, due to the presence of Ottoman domination for some five centuries. While the Ottoman's didn't eradicate other religious faiths from their territories, they did institute programs that favored Muslims and those who converted to Islam. Muslims got appointments to local offices, paid fewer or no taxes, and didn't have to pay the Devshirme, the levy that required Christians to give up one son for the elite Janissary corps of the Ottoman army. Conversion to Islam, therefore, benefited a person and his family.

The Albanian state was the last to develop a national consciousness due to a number of factors. One reason was the Ottoman land system, called the millet. This divided people up according to religious faith, and prevented the formation of a national identity by creating religious divisions that hindered a coalescence of the various Albanian tribes. Another problem was the lack of a systematic, written Albanian alphabet. Three scripts vied for attention: the Latin (eventually adopted at the alphabet congress at Monastir in 1908), the Greek, and the Turkish. A culture that cannot write down its own history, or express itself through a unified language, is not much of a culture.

The Albanian state became a political expression in November 1912. This was a bleak time for Albania, due to the first Balkan war. Greece invaded Southern Albania in an attempt to claim Northern Epirus. The Montenegrins invaded from the north, laying siege to Shkoder, and Serbia marched to Durres on the Adriatic, in order to obtain a port. The independence of Albania was an important event to Austria-Hungary, who hoped to blunt the spread of pan-Slavism. Independence caused problems with Western powers, who tended to ignore Albania in favor of its neighbors. The ultimate outcome of Albanian independence was a political and geographical entity, although many Albanians now resided outside the borders of the Albanian state. The region of Kosova became a major problem for Albania after independence. Kosova flipped-flopped between Albanian and Yugoslavian control until after WWII, when it became a permanent (?) part of Yugoslavia. Serbian claims to Kosova revolved around the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. The Serbs claimed this was an important part of their cultural heritage, a claim that fell on sympathetic Western ears. Further problems for reunification occurred when Albania's communist regime collapsed in the early 1990's. Many Kosovars had no interest in giving up a standard of living that was light years ahead of Albania.

Albania's isolation consists of many factors. Its geographical features are a major problem. A Muslim majority in Christian Europe is another factor. Probably the most important factor is its almost fifty year communist regime, a regime headed up by a pro-Stalinist xenophobe named Enver Hoxha. Hoxha, a mass murder if there ever was one, spent his entire career bouncing Albania between the Yugoslavs, the USSR, and China before instituting a strict isolationist stance. Albania definitely had some concerns with foreign influence, but Hoxha's positions were absurd. By the time Albania came out of its long isolation, the country seemed like a relic out of time.

There are a few problems with the book. Since "The Albanians" is a survey, I constantly found myself asking questions that went beyond the scope of the book. In that respect, maybe the book does do its job; it makes you hungry for more information about this fascinating country. I do think Vickers could have spent more time discussing the likes of Skenderbeg, Albania's national hero. A good portion of this information is stuffed into a small introduction. Another problem is the maps, which are sorely lacking. The three maps included in the book are completely lacking in place names, rivers, etc. For a survey book, detailed maps are a MUST, and this book falls down on the job.

I enjoyed this book the first time I read it, and even more the second time through. Vickers knows her stuff. I can't wait to read her sequel.

Now that the United States has committed large numbers of ground troops to keep the peace in Bosnia and Kosova, it is important that her citizens learn about these areas. The history of the Balkans is typical of that where cultures have met and fought over the territory for centuries. It is the area where the three religions of Islam, Orthodox Christian and Catholicism share a common border with enclaves of each embedded in the other. Nearly all of the borders in that area of the world are artificial, political creations that do not reflect the ethnic and religious composition of the regions. This has led to centuries of hostility, which occasionally explodes into mass killing.
Nearly all of the nations in that area are less than a century old, and in the case of Albania, the idea of the nation is very recent. With substantial differences in customs separating the northern and southern regions, loyalty to the nation over their region among the inhabitants is an idea that postdates the creation of the country. Up until the end of the second world war, Albania was also in danger of being partitioned between the neighboring states.
All of this in combination generates a complex political and social problem that has yet to be resolved. Vickers does an excellent job in describing the events that led to the current battles in Kosova, Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia. The recounting of the centuries of conflict is well done and helps explain why U. S. military forces are needed there. The history of the region is that of more powerful nations achieving and maintaining control by manipulating the hostilities that exist between the various groups. For centuries, this was how the Ottoman empire ruled the region and world war two in the Balkans was largely a local conflict between the ethnic groups where the Germans and Italians favored one group over another.
In reading this history of the region, one finds it difficult to see a way in which the U.S. and NATO presence can easily be removed. Down through the years, there have been years of uneasy peace between the various groups and the current situation could just be another such time. Nevertheless, it is important for the U. S. to be involved and this book is a good way to learn why the forces should be involved and will no doubt be there for some time.

Albania's history is rich and Miranda Vickers has done an excellent job of documenting it.

I was pleasantly surprised that she discussed the Arberesh (the Albanese of Italy), even if it was briefly.

The book is an excellent resource tool and a great addition to any library.

while john r. lampe's book is accurate and very readable, Iwould still like to point out some problems. the main one is, that theauthor deals with slovenians and macedonians very briefly, more like an afterthought. as a slovenian, I may feel a bit strongly about it, but I would like to give two examples: there is no mention of the isonzo front (first world war, between italy and austro-hungary), which went on for twelve battles and has its own novel (and film) - farwell to arms. also, the ossimo accords, which finalized the border between yugoslavia (now slovenia) and italy are not mentioned -and they are important, since italy used them to present all sorts of obstacles to slovenia after 1991. the book is still very much worth reading, but keep in mind that the slovenians (and I imagine the macedonians) are not given the adequate space. read something else as well!

Although this is a general history of Yugoslavia, from ancient times up to 1992, the analysis reflects the fact that Lampe is first and foremost an economic historian.

Lampe's "Yugoslavia as History" is probably the first book that deals with the entire history of Yugoslavia from its inception in 1918 to its collapse in 1991. While discussing pre-1918 developments and (very summarily) post-1991 events, he focuses his discussion on Yugoslavia as it actually existed, doing a commendable job of viewing past events on their own terms rather than through the prism of present-day events (the primary flaw of many recent historical works written both by former Yugoslav and outside scholars, commentators, etc.). Lampe's primary expertise is economic history, and this is evident in his strong analysis of Yugoslavia's frequent economic problems, which would be a crucial factor in the country's eventual downfall. However, this means he often gives short shrift to the cultural, social and intellectual antagonisms which gave expression to the country's underlying problems. Also, while socialist Yugoslavia's decentralized political structure did foment the development of separate economic, social and intellectual cultures, there were also many factors that bound Yugoslav citizens and did create a some sense of community (he only touches on sports and film, but almost completely ignores literature and pop music). Indeed, this appearance of a rudimentary common culture was what made Yugoslavia's violent breakdown so shocking to people in the county itself and to outside experts. Even so, "Yugoslavia as History" is a very strong survey of the country's troubled history and a very useful resource for students and others - it is much, much better and more informative than the many "instant histories" (a term I think Lampe himself used in a journal article) which appeared in droves once Yugoslavia did break up and the war started. The book is also, by the way, a very good reflection and summary of the main streams of American historiography on the former Yugoslavia.

After reading this book, I bought a copy for my son who is a U.S Army paratrooper expecting to be deployed to Kosovo. The author provides good perspective on the history & demise of Yugoslavia, and on subsequent events up to 1995. While especially critical of the Serbs, he demonstrates flaws and errors on nearly every hand, local or global, that have contributed to the terrible events in the region. Some of the analysis seems eerily prescient given the ability to read it with five years more gone by. The brevity of the book is a mixed blessing -- so many people, places and organizations come into play, with so little detail given on each, that I frequently forgot who was who or got different ones confused with each other. However, like the individual stitches in a tapestry, the details still present an overall pattern that has helped me understand the news and recent history much more clearly -- but you have to want to read it. The one crying need in the book is for maps. Each of the three small line drawing maps covers a long and imprecise time period and lacks detail. No topographical features are shown, some political boundaries are indicated vaguely aand others not at all. Many cities and locales that figure prominently in the text are not on any of the maps. I came away with a clearer picture of the politics and ethnicity but completely unable to relate any of my new knowledge to the geography of the region. If you buy the book, get several maps of the region to use with it.

Christopher Bennett gives a very accurate history of Yugoslavia from before WWI up to 1994. Very detailed beginning with 1980 forward. Very informative. Worked well for a research paper I prepared using it.

Enver Hoxha was never a hero of mine. For most of my life I've been fascinated by Albania, its culture, history, music, and literature, but thanks to him I could only visit the country of my fascination in 1996. I found it in sorry shape, again thanks to this son of a landowning family who returned from studying in France and Belgium to be a teacher and subsequently to lead the Communist Partisans against the fascist invaders during World War II. Hoxha prepared for his takeover by fighting with the non-Communist Albanian resistance just as often as with the Italians and Germans. Remaining in power from 1944 to his death in 1985, this Balkan despot eventually quarreled with every power that aided him---Yugoslavia, the USSR, and China---and became ever more paranoid, never leaving Albania for the last 25 years of his life. It is not too much to say that Hoxha and his policies utterly ruined Albania, even if he kept it from being swallowed by greedy neighbors. He murdered, imprisoned, terrified, and kept ignorant an entire people. Seven years after his death, the whole country lay destitute, destroyed, desperate. Albania has had to begin from scratch. What has such a man got to say for himself ?

THE ARTFUL ALBANIAN is an edited version of the many volumes-long memoirs of Enver Hoxha. Of course, it is possible that what Jon Halliday has not put into the present volume is as revealing as what he has. I rather doubt it though. Whatever the case, he has certainly gathered a number of interesting sections, connected by intelligent commentary. I found the book fascinating for what it revealed about this dictator of a 'people's democracy" which, in the end, did not rise far above the Balkan dictatorships of the past. Hoxha emerges as more intelligent and discerning than many world leaders, certainly more than most leaders produced by the Communist "bloc" after World War II. He is at is best in criticizing the vainglorious amassing of the trappings of power of other leaders, in divulging the hypocrisies of the worker states. No word about his own foibles of course. There are a large number of interesting conversations between Eastern bloc leaders complete with open threats and farting dogs, and the intricacies of his relationship with China. Hoxha was a man who can casually speak of "liquidation" of a man or a class without the slightest qualm. In the end he killed his closest ally, Mehmet Shehu, and denounced him as a Western agent. Hoxha's last words in the book are "..the walls of our fortress are of unshakeable granite rock." The pitiful, crumbling concrete pillboxes that dot Albania today, around half a million of them, give a more accurate picture of Hoxha's achievement.

If you are interested in knowing something about Hoxha, about his view of what he did and whom he met, and if you don't mind a fair bit of the old "party line" along the way, (from the horse's mouth) then by all means read this book. For anyone who wants to know what crushed Albania, why it's in the mess that it's in, this book is a good place to start.

There is certainly no shortage of books on the former Yugoslavia, some simply awful and some quite good. this is one of the better written, and the authors are respected academics. Interesting thesis, not entirely original, but sufficiently intersting to be worth the purchase price.

This is an extreme study of the crisis in the Balkans in 1875. It builds up to the year of the outbreaks and exposes the how and why of the crisis. In Harris' book he reveals to the reader that the happenings in the Balkans is directly and indirectly related to the onset of 1914. The author digs deep into numerous sources and uses primary sources. Overall it gives the reader a better understanding of why problems exist in the Balkans. It is a slow read and is highly informative. It should be read by all who are studying foreign relations.

This book is a study of that traditional trick of British diplomacy, partition. Dividing countries is a way of controlling them, before and after independence. The US and British states have divided Yugoslavia, then Bosnia, and now Kosovo. 'Ethnic' divisions suit imperialism. Carlos Westendorp, the High Representative in Bosnia, has said that Kosovo's warring factions must be told, "Kosovo doesn't belong to either of you. It's ours. It's the new empire. It's the new colonialism done in the name of the international community."

Kumar examines other examples of partition and addresses the difficulties of reversing it. For instance, Blair's bullying tactics have now stalled the Irish peace process. He set five deadlines for implementing the Good Friday Agreement; he blustered that 'there was no Plan B'. According to the Agreement, the IRA did not have to decommission its weapons: then Blair said they would, then he said they wouldn't. As long as the British Government has not set a date for withdrawal, all the Irish parties remain dependent on Britain, relating primarily to the British presence, either loving or hating the 'Brits'. Once the Government sets a date, then they will all have to focus on their common task of rebuilding their beautiful country.

In an ironic reversal, partition could now be visited upon Britain; the European Union is regionalising 'Euroland', to break up sovereign nation states. It fosters identity politics, puffing up cultural and regional identifications at the expense of class and national realities.

Kumar points out that the way to reverse partition is to achieve peace through development. But the US-British-EU aim of strengthening 'market democracy' cuts across this goal, because it generates divisions and inequalities. Every country needs to create a common commitment to a strategy of rebuilding; they each need a workers' nationalism to unite and liberate their country.

This book is a fine example of prejudiced & politically correct mind/morals-rottening diatribe against Croat "nationalism" (the central stigma for "liberal" kowtowing/alterocentric historical revisionists thinly disguised as professionals in the field). one thing cannot be dissected in full measure, because it lies beyond the scope of the book. And this is that Ivo Goldstein is a PC historian (PhD and all that jazz notwithstanding), a product of socialist revisionism that sought to curb all "nationalisms" by falsifying many facets of national histories. Goldstein is a product of this Marxist reductionism that coalesced with newer political correctness (after the collapse of Communism) in joint diatribes against that "malign nationalists who prevent the materialization ( a la Sai Baba, I guess) of liberal pigsty paradise".

Also, it is completely in line both with Goldstein's previous work on medieval Croatian history (a book and numerous articles), where he expounds his own "shrinking" and minimalist version of Croatian medievalistics (hopelessly wandering in the desert left by his former mentor, a self-appointed iconoclastic historian Nada Klaic (although he has gone far beyond her; he's elevated her quirky iconoclasm to Croatian hamartiology):

--Goldstein's previous work consists of a book (Hrvatska povijest ranog srednjeg vijeka/Croatian history in early Middle Ages) and numerous articles. They all show similar traits:

a) reductionsim ( Goldstein's misusage of early historical chronicles (Byzantine, Venetian, Frankish) is legendary). His mentor's (Nada Klaic) works had blundered this way, but not so radically. More- his pseudoscholium is based on free distortions of historical sources ("hey- this fits. I'll take it. Hmm. And-*this* must be wrong, some kind of mistake since it gives a mental fodder to nasty nationalists. Hence- I'll ignore this manuscript (Byzantine, Arabic, Venetian) altogether") without a clear argumentation- just pompous pronouncements). For instance, much more equipped historians like Stanko Guldescu, Ivo Peric, Tomislav Raukar etc. are in direct collision with his "findings". He hilariously chopped Croatia's territorry in 9th/10th century by more than 30-40%, with no argumentation whatsoever save a few dismissive remarks.

b) he consciously ignored some "unpleasant" facts about early Croat architecture ( complexities with Stonehengean astronomic resonances) and minimalized the worth of Croatian Renaissance and Baroque literaure (which is the best literary output of any Slavic nation in that period ( add the Danish or Dutch lit, for that matter)), although it lags behind masterworks of Renaissance Spain, France or England.

c) even as a medievalist Goldstein flunked. As a national history surveyor, his short book is a case of heavy misreading serving, as has been said, the new revisionism which tries to rewrite last 10 (or so) ex-Yu history as a sort of mixture of nationalist hysterics heydey and redistribution of "guilt" (not entirely- he knows some things are too transparent). His "treatment" of president Tudjman and his political maneuvres whereby Croatia acquired her independence virtually against the majority of "int. players" is instigated by his vitriolic hatred of all things Croatian that have even an angstromsize connection with the fallen Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Hell- he's always preferred Yu integrations. Under the guise of impartiality Goldstein sells his own agenda: good (but misinformed) internatonales, bad provincial Balkan chauvinists, ..... Just another pamphlet disguised as a history. Read Ivo Peric, Stjepan Antoljak "A Survey of Croatian History" or Marcus Tanner if you want something more reliable. In this case- academic credentials are just a smokescreen.

I purchased this book based on customer reviews posted at that time. Some of the reviews were posted by Croatian scholars and they were very positive. I was under the impression that I would be provided with an unbiased history of Croatia and its conflicts. The reviews also indicated that the book would highlight only the most significant historical details.

This book may be a relatively unbiased account and I will assume that the details covered only the most significant events, however the presentation of this information was extremely difficult to follow. The book includes very few summary paragraphs to introduce broad historical movements and their impact before diving into often exceptionally detailed accounts of specific incidents. There was rarely an adequate summary or closure to a chapter. Some of the most important events were somewhat hidden and de-emphasized. No brief descriptions of significant historical figures and their impact were included. Their names were only briefly mentioned in connection to a specific event, then these figures were sometimes discussed later in the text as being important. IN addition, the order of events was not consistently chronological. More maps with greater detail would have given some of the additional guidance I had expected.

A reader more familiar with the region and some of the historical figures, the geography, etc., may have been much more satisfied with this book. I do not recommend it as an introduction to the country and its development.

It was in the fourth century, when the Roman empire split into East and West, with the boundary between the two new empires stretching from the Montenegrin coast up the river Drina to the confluence of the Sava and the Danube, and then further north. This boundary division was to remain unchanged for 1,500 years and be the line where the European Catholic West met the Byzantine Orthodox East. While there were (and still are) ethnic similarities between the peoples on the two sides of the divide, both their culture and history differ fundamentally. The Croats and Croatia on the western side are traditionally linked with Hungary, Italy, German and Western Europe, and are influenced by their long Mediterranean coastline. Ivo Goldstein is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Zagreb and a former Director of the Institute for Croatian History of the University of Zagreb. In Croatia: A History, Professor Goldstein presents a welcome and scholarly history providing an invaluable, authoritative view of Croatian culture and national character, both in its own terms and in relation to it's immediate neighbors.

As family tradition has it that our name originates in the Balkans, in Bulgaria, I have had a curiousity about the wars and campaigns there, ever since I began studying WW I and perused my sets of Leslie's Weekly, and sets of the New York Times Mid Week Pictorial, a rotogravure mainstay of photohistorians of the Great War. But there have been no known readily available short treatments of those times in the Balkans. So when I saw this listed last month I eagerly sent off for it. As followers of my reviews know, I have a lot of Osprey titles and find them mostly useful.
If this one were a sausage, though, it would burst in the microwave. There is just too much order of battle data and not enough historical interpretation. Another reviewer has caught the author's national slant. (He is a Serb, after all. Try reading some Mexican author on the "Colossus of the North". That era is one of my research specialties.) I think part of the verbal confusion may be due to the translator.
Leaving all that aside, the main fault is just too much available material to cover in the standard volume size of this series. The battle history is too skimpy and should be in a Campaign volume where it could be treated properly. As a cartographer, I am really disappointed at the one inadequate and confusing monocolor map herein. It shows no lines of communications, many place names are missing, and topography is not indicated.
There should be some sense of the life experience of the soldiers both before and during service. Such has been done in the volumes on the British Army for years. We know that all these Balkan proper nations were hard scrabble rural states and most remain so today.
The coverage of the Ottoman Army and the Austro Hungarian forces should be eliminated as the former is covered elsewhere in its own volume and the latter should be. And omit the German forces as well.
This would leave enough room to cover the Serbs, the Romanians, the Greeks, the Bulgarians, etc. in the detail they deserve. This volume should emphasize those national forces not likely to ever have their own volumes, either due to lack of information or lack of importance. Montenegro will never get its own. :-)
The plates are of the usual high quality.

For wargamers and military history buffs for whom World War I has a special fascination, the short shrift given the Eastern Front is frustrating, to say the least. This book helps to balance the scales admirably. The illustrations and uniform details are up to Osprey's usual high standards, and the history of the conflict in that part of the world is presented in a useful synopsis. My only complaint with the book is the obvious pro-Serbian bias of the author. Modern scholarship has shown the Serbia of 1914 to be a rogue state whose sponsorship of terrorist acts and political murder, against both foreign nationals and her own citizens, was a direct cause of World War I; however, the author insists on presenting the old nonsense that Serbia was a beleaguered David fighting the German and Austro-Hungarian Goliath. Setting this aside, this book is a valuable and much-appreciated addition to Osprey's series of books covering World War I.

First, a reminder for the previous reviewers- Central Powers were the AGGRESSORS, the Allies the Defenders.
Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Turks (and in 1915 Bulgaria, seeking to expand its territory) were the bad guys. It was the Turks who perpetrated the ethnic-cleansing and murder of hundreds of thousands of Christian Armenians and Assyrians from 1915 to 1918 (and beyond). The Kingdom of Serbia,and later in 1917 the United States, were Allies against those Central Powers expansionists. The Allies won the Great War, which freed the nationalities of Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians of Transylvania, and yes also those Serbs who lived in Bosnia. See "Tito and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia" by Richard West for the WW2 events in the Balkans.
"Armies in the Balkans 1914-18" accurately recounts, free of 1990s revisionism, the History of the Great War in the Balkans. To read of the 1990s Balkans, readers should of course look elsewhere. But to those Westerners who couldn't find Foca or Bihac on a map before 1992, this is a fine and comprehensive primer, one of the best of the Osprey Men-At-Arms offerings. It is a bonanza of military and historical information on the Balkan Armies of the Great War, in one concise book. The abbreviated sections on certain Armies are necessary to focus on the indigenous armed forces. The Ottoman Turks are already covered in their own Osprey book.
The 1915 Albanian Retreat was a Serbian "Dunkirk", not a debacle. It saved their armies to victoriously fight their way north out of Greece in 1917-1918, after being re-equipped by the Serbian ally, France. They also fought alongside those Russian Expeditionary Forces that were in that theater before 1917.
By the way, there were morale problems with conscripts of the Imperial Russian Expeditionary units in France. But, nevertheless, a sizeable and combat-proven cadre, the Russian Legion ("La Legion Russe") fought successfully on the Western Front, from December 1917 to 11 November 1918 (read "With Snow On Their Boots").

This is a readable brief account of a series of conflicts about which far too little has been written in English, which should serve non-Balkan specialists well. But it falls considerably short of what one would like, even for a book of 176 pages. There are an embarrassing number of editing lapses (e.g., repetition of the sentence beginning "Negotiations..." on p. 69) and typos, for which the publisher bears some responsibility. Forms of proper names are mostly Bulgarian (with inconsistencies), with no cross-reference to, say, the usual Yugoslav spelling of "Pashich" and rendering of Turkish names, when they are given at all, without dotless i's, etc. Previous reviewers have commented on the grossly inadequate maps; the photo on the cover of the paperback edition whets my appetite for more illustrations, which are completely lacking. Anyone with access to a large public or university library should look for old literature on the war, such as Hermenegild Wagner's _With the Victorious Bulgarians_ (1913), which has very good maps of the Thracian theater.

Hall depends heavily on Slavic sources on the wars, especially Bulgarian ones, which he has thorough control of, but the results are some quite idiosyncratic casualty figures. (The Turkish General Staff's official history of the war, _Balkan harbi_, is cited nowhere, presumably because the author doesn't read Turkish.) The Serbian army's casualties seem far too small, considering that they took every Turkish position by direct assault (e.g., less than 4,000 Serb casualties for the battle of Kumanovo, as opposed to 12,000 Turkish losses). If the Turks had simply retreated instantly, the low casualties would seem understandable, but the Ottoman casualties given for the Macedonian theater are quite high, so one might conclude either that Serbian casualties were greatly underplayed or that the progress of the battle is totally misrepresented. The Turkish casualty figure of 100,000 for both theaters seems incredibly high (though Edward Erickson's _Ordered to Die_ , by an author who knows Turkish sources, gives a far more astounding figure, 250,000.)

Hall is addicted to military and diplomatic second-guessing, which grows tiresome by the end of the book. Though he puts his finger on the more consequential faux pas (the inability of the Russian government to arbitrate Balkan League conflicts, the confusion in Sofia at the opening of the 2nd Balkan War), I would prefer analysis of why errors were made to shoulda-coulda. I would also question Hall's understanding of cholera (which rivaled combat as a source of death); it was most likely not spread by armies, but by soldiers' repeated use of untreated water-hence its reoccurrence in eastern Thrace.

Above all, even for a short book, one would like more on the human rather than strictly political consequences of the war. Virtually nothing is said of the fate of the millions of ethnic Turks and Slavic-speaking Muslims trapped in non-Muslim states as a result of the Balkan Wars. Maybe Hall himself will someday write a more complete book on the wars (and, I hope, get better editorial support).

Most students of modern Europe will have learned something of the Balkan Wars, those two localized conflicts involving Turkey which occurred on the eve of, and were among the causes of, World War I. But few studies of 20th century Europe, or even of the Great War and its causes, provide more than mere mention of these obscure wars. Richard Hall goes far towards remedying the problem in this concise (143 pp., 165 pp. with endnotes and bibliography) study.

Hall covers much of the basic ground: why the wars occurred; who was allied with whom and why; the size, training, armaments and disposition of the competing forces; the strategy and tactics of the campaigns; and, a succinct explanation of the results. Hall also appears well-equipped to analyze these wars. In addition to relying on contemporaneous accounts by French, German, British and American observers, Hall also cites numerous works in Serbo-Croation and Bulgarian. Perhaps one reason why there has never appeared a good summary of the Balkan Wars is that a command of several languages is needed in order to write a reliable one. Except for Greek and Turkish sources, Hall seems to have examined the available primary sources.

Only two criticisms can be fairly lodged against this study. First, while readers will recognize that this work was intended to be rather short ( it forms a part of the Warfare and History series under the general editorship of Jeremy Black), Hall might have spent a little more time integrating the Balkan Wars into the larger picture of instability which characterized early 20th century Europe. How did the Balkan Wars affect the attitudes, if not the alignments, of the Great Powers? Did the Balkan Wars really bring the Great Powers closer to European War? Could a remedy to the competing interests of the countries involved have been fashioned in such a way as to defuse the Balkan powder keg? Hall's study might have dealt with these larger questions more thoroughly.

Of less importance, the text is marred by numerous editing errors and by inadequate maps. I always read history with historical atlases by my side; but none that I own provide good maps of these wars. The publishers missed a real opportunity to remedy this problem with Hall's book; more detailed and well-developed maps would have greatly enhanced the text.

Still, this book goes far towards filling in a significant gap in modern European history and is recommended for students of modern Europe and particularly for those interested in the Balkans or in the origins of the First World War.

I've just finished writing a book about the Ottoman Army's participation in the Balkan Wars. Consequently, I've read (or scanned) almost every book ever written in English, German, Turkish, and French about the Balkan Wars.
Dr. Hall's book is the only book written in English which lays out the flow of events in an understandable format that links the various theaters together. Nobody in the past eighty years has ever done a better job in explaining the military side of this war. If you only read a single book on this subject - this is it.
The challenge of writing a balanced book on this subject is extremely difficult due to the problem of access to available sources and the problem of fluency in multiple (and uncommon) languages. Dr. Hall has done a creditable job in crafting a capstone book that captures the overall strategic picture of the Balkans in 1912/1913. While some readers may find criticisms (maps, editing, use of mainly Bulgarian sources, etc.) this should not obscure what the author has achieved.
I enjoyed the book and I refered to it frequently while writing my own book when I neeeded to fall back on a meaningful context and framework of understanding. Finally, "The Balkan Wars 1912-1913" will leave you hungry for more information about this important war. I hope that it will stimulate interest in a long neglected subject. It's worth the money!