Very rarely is a shooting war in the Balkans about the subject which everyone claims was the Cassius Belli. Sometimes it is about a political slight related the the topic, but usually it’s about money. The same is true of economic wars. The Great European Imperial Spheres of Influence criss-crossed the Balkans, and frequently collided …
On 1 March 1906 Austria-Hungary decided they had enough of what they considered Serbia’s perfidy and decided to hit the Balkan country back where it would hurt – by denying Serbian products entry into the Austro-Hungarian market. This decree hit one economic sector in particular, and it is that sector that gave this crisis its …
In the 1940s an uncomfortable truth was emphasized by the Portuguese Labor Inspectorate in the colony of Sao Tome – the conditions of the workers on the cocoa plantations there could only be compared to slavery. “The reality today is the following: many agriculturists of Sao Tome organize their agricultural possessions on the basis …
As is emblematic of Balkan countries, when the Greek Prime Minister and head of the Fourth of August Regime, Ioannis Metaxas, died of septicemia from a throat abscess on 29 January 1940 there were whispers of a dark conspiracy of assassination. The whispers seemed to converge on the arrival of a British medic who …
In February 1979, Joe Biden – the future American president – attended the funeral of Edvard Kardelj in Yugoslavia. Kardelj, although scarcely remembered outside the former Yugoslavia, was a figure of enormous importance in his time. An early adopter of communism (at age 16 in 1926), he spent time in a Kingdom of Jugoslavia jail …
On 25 January 1971, Idi Amin seized power in Uganda. Amin’s rise through the ranks of the British Colonial Military had been meteoric, and his speedy journey through the Ugandan ranks was no less so. Within five years of independence he was head of the army. Within ten, the head of the military. From …
The events of this novel draw on the infinite well of human memory, whose treasures may be brought to the surface in any period, including our own. In view of this, any resemblance between the characters and circumstances of this tale and real people and events is inevitable. –Ismail Kadare Published first in 2003 (in …
Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward to guarantee the future of their children. When Amilcar Cabral was shot by his own men on 20 …
It was pretty much a requirement that politicians of a certain age in Yugoslavia have served as Partizans during World War II, and Džemal Bijedić was no exception to that rule. Raised by Muslim parents in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, by 1939 Bijedić had joined the League of Communists. He was arrested at least four …
On 15 January 1970 Muammar Qaddafi was named Premier of the Libyan Arab Republic. A military revolutionary who looked to Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser as a personal hero, Qaddafi’s future as the dictator of the oft-renamed country the rest of the world would know in shorthand as Libya would never be anything less than interesting. …
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