At the end of the 20th century people spoke as if the Balkans had plagued Europe forever. But 200 years earlier, the Balkans did not exist. It was not the Balkans but the "Rumeli" that the Ottomans ruled, the formerly Roman lands that they had conquered from Byzantium, together with its Christian inhabitants. To Westerners, too, familiar with classical regional terms such as Macedonia, Epiros and Dacia, the term "Balkan" conveyed little. In this account of the region Mark Mazower dispels current Western cliches and replaces stereotypes with a vivid account of how mountains, empires and religions have shaped its inhabitants' lives. As a bridge between Europe and Asia it has been exposed to a constant incursion of nomadic peoples across the centuries. Empires based on religion, not ethnicity, shaped customs and beliefs in ways that did not entirely vanish with the coming of modernity. This book provides not only a vital historical and cultural background to contemporary Balkan politics but also offers the reader a fresh view of the region's relationship with Europe as a whole.