Early Nation-States

Abstract

None of the Balkan states was satisfied nationalistically by the results of the Berlin Congress. Fired by Romantic ideals of ethnic unity regarding the “nation” concept, their leaders considered the borders drawn in Berlin unacceptable—their respective boundaries encompassed too little of their historically claimed ethnic “homelands” and too few of their conationals. The political reality demonstrated by Berlin, however, initially precluded any major unilateral action on their part to satisfy their nationalist territorial interests. It was obvious that the nature and extent of the Balkan states’ existence depended on the European Great Powers’ will and not on that of their own. Thus their leaderships made every effort to shape their states as springboards for national territorial state expansion should future international circumstances permit them to present the Great Powers with faits accomplis.