This collection of documents has been brought together in an attempt to add a depth of understanding to consideration of the ethnic conflicts within the Balkan region over the last 150 years. It is wide-ranging in its coverage of the position and treatment of ethnic minorities within the Balkan states and beyond. It will be discovered that within each state is a minority of some kind with a degree of persecution formed against them, whether they be Jews, Magyars, Circassians, Muslims, Christians or former residents of a different country such as Greeks in Turkey or Albanians in Greece. The rationale for commencing this work at 1860 is to illustrate the position of various populations and ethnic groups prior to the Congress of Berlin (1878), after which their situation worsened considerably as a result of territorial adjustments based on political and nationalistic considerations rather than ethnicity.
