ABSTRACT
A specter is haunting Western culture – the specter of Balkans. Even the use of the word Balkans, with its pejorative connotations, appears with the penetration of West-European capital; the subsequent emergence of this world on the European horizon was treated sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with curiosity and most of the time with arrogance and contempt. Meanwhile, and following 1989, the West was to realize that the Balkans constituted yet another potential field of glory, since the newly formed states were in need of financial assistance in order to survive and of political counselling if they were, to benefit from the 'end of history'. Modern banking in the Balkans emerged during the last decades of the nineteenth century and it has to be related to the increasing internationalization of the Balkan economies, one aspect of which is the increasing presence of West-European capital. The Balkans as an economic entity has never existed, unless during the period of Ottoman domination.
