The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

deep root in the newly conquered territories. They did not only occupy towns and villages like the Langobards in northern and central Italy, but they took possession as well of the plains, woody hills and high mountains.

The strength of the Southern Slavs consists in the fact that they are so deeply rooted to the soil. All foreign invasions and all the misery of long centuries of Turkish rule could not dispossess them of their hold. For that reason their occupation of the Balkan countries is more like colonisation than military conquest. But the disadvantages of their new situation were many. ‘The vastness of the occupied territories; the sparseness of the population, together with the division of the country by large tracts of forest and by high mountain ranges, hindered them through centuries from forming stronger bonds of political unity. The peaceful character of these agricultural settlers, who possessed no supreme administrative or military organisation, contributed also to endangering their independence. Fate placed them in a most exposed position: on the high road connecting the East with the West, or rather on the boundary between two worlds, the East and the West, in the countries coveted by all conquerors from the Romans to William II. Therefore it is little wonder that the Southern Slavs had a very stormy history and were the prey of many foreign invaders.

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