ABSTRACT
These words, written by the Cambridge historian R.G.D.Laffan in 1921, form the opening sentence of his contribution to Harold Temperley’s History of the Peace Conference of Paris, and are a reminder of the rapidity with which the Balkan Wars and the First World War transformed dreams into political realities. Recent developments in the Balkans have been an equally poignant reminder of the speed with which political certainties can become ethnic and social nightmares. In 1991 Yugoslavia, a proud successor state of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, itself became submerged in a deleterious and devastating war of succession.
