The Rise of Nationality in the Balkans Author:R W Seton-Watson General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1918 Original Publisher: Constable and Company Limited Subjects: Balkan Peninsula Eastern question (Balkan) Nationalism History / Europe / Baltic States History / Europe / General History / Europe / Eastern Political Science / International Relations / General ... more » Political Science / Political Ideologies / Nationalism Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II TURKEY IN DECLINE That the inevitable process of Turkish dissolution has been prolonged over several centuries is due, not so much to the patient's powers of resistance (though these must not be underestimated) as to the mutual distrust and animosities of the Christian States of Europe. The same short-sighted indifference, the same self1sh calculation on their part which permitted the fall of Constantinople, left the Turks in undisturbed possession of their prey, and on more than one occasion actively supported their designs of aggression.1 It is an unhappy fact that one of the central events of European progress, the German Reformation, should have contributed materially to this result. The clash of warring religious systems and the bigotry displayed on both sides gave rise to the conviction that the Papacy was a deadlier enemy than the Turk, and led for the first time to cooperation between a Protestant and a Mohammedan Power. Nowhere was this more marked than in Hungary, where the opponents of the Habsburg dynasty and its Jesuit allies often preferred the rule of Islam to that of a rival Christian sect. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries their very 1 Cf. the encouragement given by Francis I. to Suleiman's invasion of Hungary, inspired by the French Ki...« less