Review article
The eastern question and its reflections on governmental legal procedures in the Balkans
Nebojša Ranđelović
Abstract
The geographical unity of the Balkans and Podunavlje and the strategic pursuit of major powers inherited from previous centuries have determined the starting points of European movements in the 19*1 century. The German invasion in the East, the Russian expansion in the South and aspiration for priority in the fight for the Turkish inheritance, Turkish attempts to resuscitate its Empire by reforms and to remain on the right hill of the Sava-Danube Basin keeping it as their natural border, and the aspirations of the Balkan people for liberty have carved the geographical, strategical and governmental legal characteristics of that which the Eastern Question is the common term. In the context of forming and breaking great alliances the result and often also the starting point of which were congresses of the major powers of this period, the Balkan people, finding with difficultv the right ways to constitute and develop their own statehood, were faced with an irreconcilable inheritance and opposing influences. Such influences would often lead them up the wrong path of governmental legal development. Bringing together ali the details of this question demands one large study but the space and the framework which one article offers give the possibility of emphasising the important moments and the influences which have marked the governmental legal development of the Balkan people. The summary of these influences can be best seen through the peculiarities of creating Croatian statehood, the conflict between the East and West and the formal and the factual in Serbia's path to building a civil state, the peculiarities of the inception of Bulgaria and the ethnic religious galimatias of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This paper is a contribution to the deliberation on the most important segments of the Eastern Question the unresolved traces of which burden the Balkan in contemporary times as well.
Keywords
Eastern Question; governmental legal development; Serbia; Croatia; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Bulgaria; concert of powers
Hrčak ID:
37839
URI
Publication date:
15.11.2006.
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