Balkan Wars

Also called: First Balkan War, Second Balkan War

The Balkan League (Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro) attacked the Ottoman Empire and took almost all its European lands; then Bulgaria and its former allies fought over the spoils.

With the Ottoman Empire weakened, having lost Libya in its war with Italy (1911–1912), the Balkan League, formed with Russian backing, declared war on it in October 1912 (the First Balkan War). Defeated again and again, the Ottomans gave up almost all their European territory apart from the area around Istanbul in the Treaty of London of May 1913. Albania meanwhile declared its independence.

Quarrelling over the division of Macedonia, Bulgaria struck first at Serbia and Greece in June 1913, but Romania and the Ottomans also entered the war against it (the Second Balkan War). By the Treaty of Bucharest in August Bulgaria gave back much of what it had won, and the Ottomans regained Edirne.

The two wars greatly enlarged Serbia, alarming Austria-Hungary still more, while a resentful Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915. Where ethnic conflict and great-power rivalry overlapped, the peninsula remained the spark for a wider war.