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It is my purpose in this paper to consider how development was thought about and imagined on the Balkans from the middle of the nineteenth century to World war II.(1) I am particularly interested in modernizing ideologies, i.e., such that viewed modernization in a certain formulation as highly desirable and strove to bring it about or to accelerate it. I am especially interested in the competition between alternative views on modernization, differing in the general direction or emphasis or in the view on the pace of development (rapid change versus continuity). Lastly, I am interested in altogether negative reactions (of rejection) towards modernization. I will consider the modernization projects (or visions) of nationalism (with its subsequent national-statist development), of liberalism, socialism, agrarianism and some negative responses of a more literary character (of romantic poets, Slavophiles, populists, of what can be termed autochtonism and of fascism). While not every intellectual current had a fully elaborated view on modernization, all took part in the debate on the vital issue of development and had something distinctive to say about it. It was the contact with (Western) Europe, experienced as more and superior, that posed the problem of development (progress, modernization) to the Balkan peoples under the reign of two empires (the Ottoman and the Habsburg). The impact of the Enlightenment (and of the French revolution) was first felt among the Greeks, the Rumanians and the Serbs under Habsburg rule because of more favorable geographic location, trade relations (the Greek trade colonies acting as outposts in the West) and closer cultural and educational ties with the West. The merchant Diaspora of the Balkan peoples played an outstanding role as a mediator.(2) The influence of the Enlightenment in the stricter sense was confined to intellectual circles among the Greeks and the peoples under Habsburg domination and to single intellectuals of the peoples under Ottoman domination. But it exerted a more diffuse influence and precipitated a sort of popular self-education movement among the Bulgarians and the Serbs under Ottoman domination, in Bosnia and Macedonia.(3) Due to the European influence the Balkan peoples increasingly turned away from Eastern orthodoxy with its restricted religious education and were introduced to a new age of secularism and nationalism. Consonant with the Enlightenment belief in the advance of Reason was the idea of a unitary, goal-oriented change, conducting from a more primitive to a more advanced state of the society. For the elites of the Balkan peoples, deeply impressed with the achievements of Western Europe, she was a naturally given paragon of progress. One can find in the writings of the time the metaphoric vision of a single path of with all nations marching along it and finding themselves at different points, the (West) European nations at the head of this march.(4) Especially at the early stage, modernization was equated to Europeanization and sometimes defined more generally as civilization. At a most general level meant reason, knowledge, education, science. The Balkan observers saw its particular manifestations in the advance of technology, the growth of industry and commerce, of material well-being but also in the establishment of political democracy, citizen rights and freedoms.(5) One may speak about a proto-project of modernization in the Balkans under diffuse Enlightenment influences, with knowledge and education as leading ideas. Under conditions of foreign domination on the Balkans, the idea of development and progress became closely associated, and in fact inseparable, from the project of nationalism. Ottoman (Turkish, Asian) backwardness, the presumable immutability and lack of potential for development of the empire were opposed to progress and development, which were associated in their turn with Europe; the contrast had strong emotional and moral overtones, with the Ottomans standing also for subjugation of peoples and despotic rule, superstition and religious fanaticism, the corruption of moeurs, etc. …
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