The Balkans was a region of geographical and ethnic variation comprising modern day Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia – Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro.
The inhabitants of these Balkan areas were known as Slavs.
Largely under Ottoman empire, these nationalities witnessed a surge in the nationalist sentiments in the nineteenth century.
As a result, these Balkan nations started declaring their independence one after the other and as they grew fiercely jealous of each other as each hoped to gain more territory at the expense of the others, this region became an area of intense conflict.
The rivalry between the major European powers extended to the Balkan region as each power tried to counter the hold of the other powers over the Balkans.
These rivalries led to a series of small wars and finally the First World War.
