Montenegro has been rather in the news this week following its recent referendum and declaration of independence from its historical overlord, Serbia. That makes it the world's newest independent country, and, although ranking 157th overall in terms of size, it's not a big one, the fact that Montenegro is independent at all is a fairly major event in historical terms - it represents the final break-up of the nations that formed the former Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia, of course, was the country that was created out of the various states of the Balkans - the area of rough, mountainous land lying north of Greece and south of central Europe - at the end of the Second World War. In Europe, the Balkans have always been a byword for bitter, internecine feuds and warfare. The area has had more civil wars, assassinations, revolutions and general trouble than any other region of comparable size in the entire world. It was certainly a perpetual thorn in the side of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the central European polity that ruled the area during the nineteenth century. The event that sparked the First World War - and, indirectly, the end of Austro-Hungary - was the assassination of an Austrian Arch-Duke by a Serbian in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo in 1914.
In many ways, the long period of peace the Balkans enjoyed in the second half of the twentieth century was the result of war: in 1945, the partisan leader Josip Tito, who remains a controversial figure in the former Yugoslavia to this day, consolidated Serbian-led Yugoslavia, the "greater Slav nation" which had initially been formed after WWI. However you view Tito, whether it's as a benign dictator who had the nerve to stand up to Stalin or as an oppressive tyrant, there's no denying he kept the peace in the Balkans for longer than anyone else in recording history.
All that, of course, fell apart with the Bosnian and Kosovan conflicts of the 1990s. The states of the former Yugoslavia are now beginning to pull themselves into shape and stand on their own two feet once more. Some, like Croatia, are relatively flourishing. Some, such as Serbia, which once had the dominant role in the Yugoslav federation, still seem unsure of their position in the new world order. What the future holds for Montenegro, "The Black Mountain" - nobody knows.
Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History
The Balkans: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)
The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999
Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus
SAVE THE LAST BULLET FOR YOURSELF: A Soldier of Fortune in the Balkans and Somalia