Balkanization

This refers to the fragmentation of something into smaller units that are hostile to each other. So, if a country were to break down into smaller regions, all of which went to war with each other, this would be an example of balkanization.

I was familiar with the term from context, and from the history of Yugoslavia. That country – which is located on the Balkan Pennisula – broke into pieces in the 1990s, and many of those now-smaller countries went to war with each other, led by Serbia.

But I got to wondering about the history of the word, because the 1990s seem too recent for that word to have been coined. I felt like it had a history earlier than that.

Well, it turns out the countries of the Balkans have a history of breaking apart, long before the Yugoslav War. They went to war with each other in the early 1900s during the appropriately-named Balkan Wars, and then again at the beginning of World War I.

The term was first documented in 1922, though Google Ngrams shows very slight usage prior to that (along with a huge surge during the 90s).

So, the term has come about for the geographic location of where the political phenomenon seemed to happen, quite often.

Why I Looked It Up

See the narrative above for the larger question.

More acutely, I was prompted to think about it by a reference in The Shortest History of India:

Congress feared that the Akali Dal’s demand for a Sikh state within the Indian union would encourage the Balkanization of India by inspiring other ethno-religious groups to make similar demands.