Map1 Diocletian built his palace at Split, on the Adriatic.  Why?  He split the Empire, east and west, with  different co-rulers.  Then the empires split.  Split is close to the

intersection of Turkic-Islamic, Greek Orthodox and Hapsburg-Roman Catholic "civilizations".  All because of Dio!

Map2 Serbias

Map2aa 1st Bulgarian Empire, 10th century, and Map2a 2nd Bulgarian Empire, 13th century, both on "three seas"

Map3 Dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire (excl. N. Africa and Arabia)

Map3a SE Europe in 1859: note Greece

Map4 Balkans in 1899

Map4a The Balkan League 1913 (before First Balkan War)

Map5 Just before the Balkan wars: national territorial objectives

Map6 1914 Bulgaria aspires to "its" Macedonia

Map7 1914 Serbia aspires to "its" Macedonia

Map7a           1922 Greece's 'Megali Idea' -- Reestablishing a Greek (Byzantine) Empire -- or the Athenian League?

Map8  Territorial transfers from 1900 to 1938

Map9  Cold War boundaries

Map10 "Irredentist" Macedonia

Map11 "Third Balkan War," dissolution of Yugoslavia

Map11a NATO "surrounds" the remaining Balkans. Will they  surrender?

Map12 NATO in the Balkans.  (I thought the Austro-Hungarian Empire colonized B-H.  Foolish me!)

Map13 The EU intrudes on the Balkans, Or, Creation of a zone of peace