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Reviews 117 dustry produced some of these goods, it was unable to satisfy domestic demand. This situation led to an increase in the number of imports and to a reduction in the number of commodities that Greece exported, resulting in a worsening ofthe current account of Greece's balance of payments, thus in turn reducing the stability of the drachma. Investors began to exchange drachmas for foreign currencies . Veremis argues that all ofthe factors mentioned above established a chain reaction which helped to intensify the problems. In his conclusion, Veremis provides a concise account of the reasons for the difficulty encountered by Pángalos in his monetary policies, as well as how Pángalos' political concepts combined with his personality helped to bring about these economic troubles. Veremis argues that the failure to solve these problems was not solely Pángalos' fault as a series of events resulted in monetary difficulties which in turn led to England's interference in Greece's internal affairs. The book concludes with an extremely interesting appendix containing selections from the political and diplomatic correspondence of high level Greek and foreign political leaders. This includes the correspondence of I. Drosopoulos, Winston Churchill, and Leónidas Paraskevopoulos. The appendix also contains the 1926 Greek proposals to the United Kingdom. Michael Efthimiades Hellenic Times Barbara Jelavich. History of the Balkans. Vol. I: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Pp. xiv + 407. Vol. II: Twentieth Century. Pp. xi + 476. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. $49.50 per volume . These two volumes, published under the auspices of the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, and funded by the Office of Education, are likely to be judged as an official American statement. Yet in fact they are the work of a single author and carry the individual imprint of an historian who has long specialized in the diplomatic and political history of eastern Europe. The work is narrative, giving principal attention to political and diplomatic affairs. Economic and social history is dealt with in a se- 118 Reviews ries of asides, while cultural history is left out almost completely, save for some comments on peasant life. As Professor Jelavich explains in the Preface: "This book is designed as an introduction to Balkan history ; it assumes no prior knowledge" (I, xii). This presents the author with real difficulty, since she must also sketch in European history as background for the interplay of the Great Powers in the Balkans. Much of the work is therefore elementary indeed, and the preferred pattern of organization, treating each region and people of the Balkans separately and seriatim, makes for awkward cross-referencing . The reader is left with little sense of the whole, if, in fact, there is any wholeness to Balkan history since 1699. For readers of this journal, the principal matter of interest will be Professor Jelavich's treatment of Greece. Her method is to assign scattered segments to the internal history ofthat country. These are always brief (e.g., fifteen pages on the Greek Revolution of 1821-30) and summarize existing scholarship in a competent fashion. Greece's involvement in international affairs, on the other hand, figures in her general account of Balkan and European diplimacy, usually , of course, in a subordinate role. What went on among Greeks living outside the boundaries of the country after 1821 almost disappears from the book because the author tacitly accepts the identification between state and ethnos that became such a dogma for Balkan state builders ofthe nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That is a regrettable shortcoming, for Balkan history differed from that of western Europe largely because until very recently mingling and blending of ethnic identities contradicted the compartmentation of Balkan society into separate nation states. Because Professor Jelavich accepts nationalist pretentions more or less at face value, the agonizing transition from an old to a new ordering of society that she chronicles remains fundamentally incomprehensible, since the claims of the old to continuing validity are simply overlooked. In this respect, to be sure, the author is faithful to the scholarly tradition she draws upon. A better title for such works would be: "Histories of Balkan...

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