RIGHT HON. JAMES BRYCE, D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S. VOLUME V SOUTH-EASTERN AND EASTERN EUROPE WITH PLATES AND MAPS LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1907 W PREFACE E feel that a word of apology is due to our subscribers for the delay which has attended the publication of the present volume. The difficulties of production have been greater than we anticipated. Our contributors found, in several cases, that it was impossible to give a satisfactory account of the subjects which they had undertaken without making independent researches on an extensive scale. We hope that the delay is justified by the result; the present volume may fairly claim to be a fuller and more accurate account of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe than any which is to be found in the older universal histories. Special attention has been devoted to the origins of the peoples whose history is here narrated. On this side of the subject the volume is particularly indebted to the work of J. Marquart on "East European and East Asiatic Migrations (Leipsic, 1903), and to that of N. Jorga on the "History of the Roumanians" (Gotha, 1905, 2 vols.). The last-named work is included in the "Staatengeschichte" series of Lamprecht. Dr. Armin Tille, the editor of this portion of the series, courteously placed the proofs, as far as the middle of the second volume, at the disposal of Dr. Helmolt. In this, as in previous volumes, we have departed from the practice of similar works by treating with exceptional fulness those peoples and regions which have been generally neglected as unimportant. It is hoped that our volume will be, for this reason, more generally useful than if we had followed the beaten track. Moreover, it is impossible to settle the relative importance of events and movements on a priori principles. To give only two instances, the question of Bulgarian origins turns out to be of unsuspected interest; and the history of the Bogumiles, as investigated in the following pages, supplies a missing chapter in the history of Slavonic ecclesiastical literature. Our general subject is Eastern Europe, in the wider sense which we have given to the term in our introduction to Vol. VII. The subject has been divided into seven sections. The first of these, from the pen of Dr. Rudolf von Scala, forms a continuation of Vol. IV., Chap. V., and traces the development of Hellenism from the death of Alexander the Great. Part of this section is devoted to the history of mediæval Greece, and illustrates more particularly the influence of Byzantium upon her subject provinces. The sections on the Albanians and European Turkey are connected with one another at several points, and may be regarded as supple 163301 |