Balkan currents

de Lawrence A. Tritle

Perhaps nowhere else is tolerance in greater need than in the Balkans, a region torn by ethnic, spiritual, and cultural rivalries for over a thousand years. "Balkanize" has entered the English language as a verb to describe division and discord, and today, as in the past, a miscalculation based on misinformation or a lack of information could easily result in an explosion with dire repercussions not only for the European community but the wider Atlantic world as well. The papers collected in this volume, the result of an international symposium held at Loyola Marymount University, offer an attempt toward understanding old hatreds and divisions. They allow us a glimpse of why the Balkans remain, just as in 1914, a powder keg close to explosion.