Why were the Balkans referred to as the powder keg of Europe in the years prior to the First World War?
Shortly before his death in 1898, the renowned German statesman Otto von Bismarck, predicted that he would not live to see the next great war, but that it would occur over some damn foolish thing in the Balkans. During the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire, the main power in the region, had entered into a period of terminal decline. The Greeks and the Serbs were the first Balkan peoples to take advantage of the weakness of their Ottoman masters and assert their demands for independence in the early 19th century. During the 1870s, with significant Russian assistance, Bulgaria and Romania were also successful in freeing themselves from Ottoman rule. At the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the great powers of Europe sought to negotiate a peaceful solution to what came to be known as the Eastern Question. How the various Balkan national disputes that were emerging in the wake of Ottoman decline could be prevented from triggering a major European conflict became a crucial issue. The Congress of Berl
