THE MODERN SITUATION

The Balkans

The Balkan Peninsula is dominated by mountain systems which, if they are of only moderate height (none attains 3,000 m), nevertheless comprise some two-thirds of its surface area. The most extensive of these systems, that which has the Dinaric Alps and Pindus Mountains as two of its principal elements, forms a vast wedge extending some 1,500 km down through modern Yugoslavia and Greece and possessing a north-west to south-east axis. A second system, that of the Balkan Mountains, forms a large arc extending from the Carpathian Alps, crossing the River Danube at the Iron Gate, and continuing into modern Bulgaria along a west to east axis. Between these a third system, that of the Rhodope Mountains, forms a somewhat similar but more southerly and much less extensive arc. The area in which these three systems come closest to intersecting, the western central Balkans (Macedonia), is inevitably one of extreme structural fragmentation and complexity. (Map 1)

Because of the existence of a north-west to south-east mountain barrier, few major rivers, in the northern half of the peninsula at least, flow westwards into the Adriatic Sea. They tend rather to flow eastwards, north–eastwards, or even directly northwards, into the Danube, and hence into the Black Sea. Such are the Rivers Drava, Sava, Bosna, Drina, Morava and Iskur. This tendency is not, however, an absolute one: in the north the Rivers Neretva and Drin do flow into the Adriatic, and in the south exceptions grow more frequent, the Rivers Devoll, Arakhthos, Akheloos and Alfios all flowing either into the Adriatic or into the Ionian Sea.