The decline of the Ottoman Empire created a vacuum waiting to be filled by new forces. The Balkans became an unstable theatre in which the interests of the major powers clashed with the national programmes of the emergent peoples of south-eastern Europe.
In the nineteenth century, the Balkans were the setting for the growing emancipation endeavours of the various peoples in the region, where the seeds of the French Enlightenment and the nationalist ideology, as everywhere in Europe, fell on fertile ground.
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