THE PEOPLES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA—THE GREEK, THE SLAV, AND THE TURK.[6]

By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D.,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

The significant geography of the Balkan Peninsula may best be illustrated by comparing it with the other two south European ones, Italy and Spain. The first point to notice is that it is divided from the mainland by rivers and not by a well-defined mountain chain. Iberia begins definitely at the Pyrenees, and Italy proper is cut off from Europe by the Apennine chain. On the other hand, it is along the line of the Danube and of its western affluent, the Save (see map between pages 614 and 615), that we find the geographical limits of the Balkan Peninsula. This boundary, as will be observed, excludes the kingdom of Roumania, seeming to distinguish it from its trans-Danubian neighbor Bulgaria. This is highly proper, viewed from the standpoint of geography and topography. For Roumania is, for the most part, an extensive and rich alluvial plain; while the Balkan Peninsula, as soon as you leave the Bulgarian lowlands, is characteristically rugged, if not really mountainous.

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From Adrianople west to the Adriatic, and from the Balkan Mountains and the Save River south to the plains of Epirus and Thessaly, extends an elevated region upward of two thousand feet above the sea, breaking up irregularly into peaks often rising above five thousand feet. There is no system in these mountains. The land is rudely broken up into a multitude of little "gateless amphitheaters," too isolated for union, yet not inaccessible enough for individuality. As White observes, "If the peninsula, instead of being the highly mountainous and diversified district it is, had been a plateau, a very different distribution of races would have obtained at the present day." Nor can one doubt for a moment that this disordered topography has been an important element in the racial history of the region.

In its other geographical characteristics this peninsula is seemingly more favored than either Spain or Italy. More varied than the former, especially in its union of the two flora of north and south; far richer in contour, in the possession of protected waters and good harbors than Italy; the Balkan Peninsula, nevertheless, has been, humanly speaking, unfortunate from the start. The reason is patent. It lies in its central or rather intermediate location. It is betwixt and between; neither one thing nor the other. Surely a part of Europe, its rivers all run to the east and south. "By physical relief it turns its back on Europe," continually inviting settlement from the direction of Asia. It is no anomaly that Asiatic religions, Asiatic institutions, and Asiatic races should have possessed and held it; nor that Europe, Christianity, and the Aryan-speaking races should have resisted this invasion of territory which they regarded in a sense as their own. In this pull and haul between the social forces of the two continents we finally discover the dominant influence, perhaps, which throughout history has condemned this region to political disorder and ethnic heterogeneity.

As little racial as of topographical system can we discover in this Balkan Peninsula. Only in one respect may we venture upon a little generalization. This is suggested by the preliminary bird's-eye view which we must take as to the languages spoken in the peninsula. This was a favorite theme with the late historian Freeman. It is developed in detail in his luminous writings upon the Eastern question. The Slavs have in this part of Europe played a rôle somewhat analogous to, although less successful than, that of the Teutons in the west. They have pressed in upon the territory of the classic civilizations of Greece and Rome, ingrafting a new and physically vigorous population upon the old and partially enervated one. From some center of dispersion up north toward Russia, Slavic-speaking peoples have expanded until they have rendered all eastern Europe Slavic from the Arctic Ocean to the Adriatic and Ægean Seas. Only at one place is the continuity of Slavdom broken; but this interruption is sufficient to set off the Slavs into two distinct groups at the present day. The northern one, of which we have already treated,[7] consists of the Russians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks. The southern group, now before us, comprises the main body of the Balkan peoples from the Serbo-Croatians to the Bulgars, as shown upon the accompanying map. Between these two groups of Slavs—and herein is the significant point—is a broad belt of non-Slavic population, composed of the Magyars, linguistically now as always Finns; and the Roumanians, who have become Latin in speech within historic times. This intrusive, non-Slavic belt lies along or near the Danube, that great highway over which eastern peoples have penetrated Europe for centuries. The presence of this water way is distinctly the cause of the linguistic phenomenon. Rome went east; and the Finns, like the Huns, went west along it, with the result as described. Linguistically speaking, therefore, the boundary of the southern Slavs and that of the Balkan Peninsula, beginning, as we have said, at the Danube, are one and the same.