Balkanized Britain

"Balkans" is a movable term. Not only do borders have a mysterious habit of moving in the night - and sometimes in the broad light of day - but the entire landmass known as "the Balkans" is an amorphous compound of ideas, languages, religions, ethnicities, and, perhaps above all, atmospheres. How anyone can call the Balkans a "peninsula" - bordered on most sides by water - amazes me and, I suspect, most historians. It is an undefinable landmass which defies both the future and its own history.

"Balkanization," however, is more easily defined, as the fragmentation of a region into smaller states with a tendency to mutual hostility and self-assertion. This is true today of Macedonia, Thrace, Epirus, Kosovo and Cyprus, because they all depend on both subjective and objective interpretations.

If you look at the literature of the Balkans, from Edith Durham's "High Albania"...